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Congress's Monstrous Legal Legacy - WSJ

2010-12-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

The historians will long be fighting over the legislative legacy of the 111th Congress. As to its legal legacy, the only real question is whether this just-finished Democratic Congress was the most unserious in decades, or the most unserious in history.

That much is clear from the recent ObamaCare court proceedings. Federal Judge Henry Hudson, responding to a lawsuit by the state of Virginia, last week struck down the core of the law, the individual mandate. His decision came the same week that a coalition of 20 states presented oral arguments against the health law in front of Florida federal Judge Roger Vinson. In October, Judge Vinson ruled against the Obama Justice Department's motion to dismiss the states' lawsuit.

The law professors and think-tankers and media folk who initially ridiculed these lawsuits have now had to dream up sinister reasons for why they are succeeding. Judges Hudson and Vinson, we are told, were both appointed by Republicans and obviously can't be trusted to fairly interpret the law. Some commentators have gone further, suggesting that we are witnessing a cabal of right-wing activists, lawyers and judges conspiring to kill not just ObamaCare, but the entire New Deal. If only.

What the observers seem not to have done is read the briefs, arguments or rulings. Had they done so, they'd see a far simpler explanation for what's going on: Congress earlier this year punched through audacious yet unvetted health legislation, a slapdash political product that is now proving to be an historic embarrassment in its legal shoddiness. The Justice Department is in fact having to play games to defend it, which has only further provoked the courts.

And really, is that such a surprise? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the bigger, more complex pieces of legislation in U.S. history. Yet Democrats never gave it the respect it deserved.

Look at any other consequential piece of legislation, and the record is brimming with sober congressional investigations into its legal merits and ramifications. ObamaCare? It was a largely unread, 2,700-page fiend—crafted in secret, fed on deal-making, birthed on late-night votes. The Senate and House judiciary committees didn't hold hearings. The record is bereft of letters from congressional chairmen requesting Justice Department legal analyses of the bill. Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus actually ruled out of order an amendment that would have required expedited judicial review of the individual mandate. Asked about the bill's constitutionality, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's only retort was: "Are you serious?"

The result is a bill that is "in its design, the most profoundly unconstitutional statute in American history; in its execution, one of the most incompetent ones," says David Rivkin, the lawyer who represents the 20 state plaintiffs in the Florida suit. The best example is the individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.

Democrats' first drafts of ObamaCare all decisively called this penalty a "tax." Legally, that made sense; few dispute Congress's authority to tax. But as the unpopularity of the bill grew, fewer Democrats wanted to vote for a "tax," and President Obama didn't want to own one.

So Democrats went to plan B. That was to make up an entirely new legal theory—to wit, that the federal government is allowed, under the Commerce Clause, to penalize Americans who do not take part in a specific economic activity (buying insurance).

Put another way, in order to avoid the political inconvenience of a "tax," Democrats based the very core of their bill on a new and untested legal premise—one that is a far bigger affront to the Constitution than New Deal legislation. That's why Judge Hudson struck it down. And since Congress adopted this theory sloppily, in response to political pressure, it has left a record that is killing the Justice Department in court.

Knowing how audacious the commerce-clause theory is, Justice has been trying to argue that the penalty is, in fact . . . a tax. This has only annoyed Judge Vinson, who is well aware of the history, and in fact rapped the Justice Department for the bait-and-switch.

"Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing," Judge Vinson wrote in October, "after which the defenders of that legislation take an 'Alice-in-Wonderland' tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely." Ouch.

And yet the Justice Department has continued to put forward wild theories in court—about the Commerce Clause, about the Necessary and Proper Clause—that have no basis in the statutory language of ObamaCare. And it is now playing games with the appeal of Judge Hudson's ruling, arguing against having it go straight to the Supreme Court, where the nation could get some quick clarity. The administration believes its best shot is to drag out the litigation, and hope that time pressures the courts to leave the law alone.

But what else can the Justice Department do? It's stuck defending a steaming pile of a statute. This is the 111th Congress's legacy, one that will last long after its 535 members finish their term.

Write to kim@wsj.com

SOTUS

2010-12-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

I’m the President’s Trusted Counselor
February 10, 2010 by ab

My name is Straw Man, and I’ve got a direct pipeline to the Oval Office.

Some people get quoted in presidential speeches by writing heartfelt letters to the president about personal loss, or by doing something heroic, like landing a plane in the icy Hudson River.

I just sit in the Oval Office, and mouth off to President Barack Obama, one inanity after the next. And sure enough, my words—word for word, mind you!—show up in his biggest speeches.

Who am I? Sotus—Straw man of the United States. I’m Mr. Obama’s most trusted rhetorical friend.

In his speeches, Mr. Obama says there are “those” who suggest we “can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures.” He suggests there are “some” who are content to let America’s economy become, at best, “number two.” He says that on health care, “some people” think we should do nothing.

Listen, there is no “some people.” He’s just quoting me, Sotus.

Why, just a few weeks ago, I said: “Hey, Mr. President, you know, why don’t we just fight tired old battles, run up the deficit, and, you know, just chuck common sense to the wind?” Imagine my thrill when I heard Mr. Obama during the recent State of the Union: “Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense.” Ouch, Mr. President, you got me there!

And then there was the nice talk we had right before that historic January afternoon, when he was sworn in. I turned to him and said: “Mr. President-elect, our system of government can really only tolerate small plans, and limited ambitions.” Think how good it felt to hear my own words echoing across the Mall: “There are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done.” Good one, Mr. President!

A few days later, as we were shooting baskets, I said: “Mr. President, you know, I think that in the face of the biggest financial crisis in three generations, you should really do nothing.”

And sure enough, at a press conference on Feb. 9, 2009, he quoted me: “There seems to be a set of folks who—I don’t doubt their sincerity—who just believe that we should do nothing . . . I don’t think that’s what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.” They don’t? Guess I lose again!

And you know, I’m not just about policy. I also care a lot about presidential leadership. My preference: Go slower. Do less. Don’t try so hard. Don’t care so much. Don’t be so bold.

Conservatives cry foul when they hear me quoted. They can’t imagine anyone is saying the things that Mr. Obama stands up as arguments that he proceeds to knock down. Of course, they haven’t met Sotus.

Some say Mr. Obama should make a stronger case for his opponents’ positions than his own. The cynics think straw-man arguments by definition prove that the speaker has no proof or logic on his side. Some would force presidential speechwriters to choose between a nifty setup for a zinger and boring rhetoric that puts audiences to sleep.

See, this straw man thing is pretty easy. I just rattled off three of them. Maybe I need to give some of this material to the big guy. He’s been saying he needs more material on false choices.
__________
Mr. Neusner is a principal with 30 Point Strategies and was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Understanding Taqiyya

2010-10-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

Understanding Taqiyya - Islamic
Principle of Lying for the Sake of Allah

by Warner MacKenzie

30 April, 2007

Lying and cheating in the Arab world is
not really a moral matter but a method of safeguarding honor and
status, avoiding shame, and at all times exploiting possibilities,
for those with the wits for it, deftly and expeditiously to convert
shame into honor on their own account and vice versa for their
opponents. If honor so demands, lies and cheating may become
absolute imperatives.” [David Pryce-Jones, “The Closed
Circle” An interpretation of the Arabs, p4]

“No dishonor attaches to such primary transactions as
selling short weight, deceiving anyone about quality, quantity or
kind of goods, cheating at gambling, and bearing false witness. The
doer of these things is merely quicker off the mark than the next
fellow; owing him nothing, he is not to be blamed for taking what he can.” [David Pryce-Jones, “The Closed Circle”, p38]

The word "Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing, precaution,
guarding.” It is employed in disguising one's beliefs, intentions,
convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions or strategies. In practical
terms it is manifested as dissimulation, lying, deceiving, vexing
and confounding with the intention of deflecting attention, foiling
or pre-emptive blocking. It is currently employed in fending off and
neutralising any criticism of Islam or Muslims.

Falsehoods told to prevent the denigration of Islam, to protect
oneself, or to promote the cause of Islam are sanctioned in the
Qur'an and Sunna, including lying under oath in testimony before a
court, deceiving by making distorted statements to the media such as
the claim that Islam is a “religion of peace”. A Muslim is even
permitted to deny or denounce his faith if, in so doing, he protects
or furthers the interests of Islam, so long as he remains faithful
to Islam in his heart. (See endnotes)

Like many Islamic practices, taqiyya was formed within the
context of the culture of Arab tribalism, expansionary warfare,
Bedouin raiding and inter-tribal conflict. Taqiyya has been used by
Muslims since the 7th century to confuse, confound and divide 'the
enemy’.

A favoured tactic was ‘deceptive triangulation’; used to persuade
the enemy that preparations for a raid were not aimed at them but at
another tribe altogether. The fate in store for the deceived enemy
target was an unexpected plunderous raid, enslavement of the women
and death to the post-pubescent males.

The core foundation of hyper-masculine Arab culture is bound up
in perceptions of "honour and shame". At all times, he (it's usually
a male) must avoid having his face "blackened" by words or actions
which are a slight upon, a challenge or affront to, his status in
the family or broader social / tribal group. To be open, frank and
forthright or to make self-damning admissions in his dealings
(particularly with the infidel enemy) is to leave himself open and
vulnerable to humiliating shame and to the subsequent disrespect
from his peers. Tongues will wag in the bazaar’s coffee shops and
rumours will rapidly spread that so-and-so has lost his "manliness"
and status. In short, he is no longer worthy of deferential respect;
to an Arab, this is worse than death itself.

The higher one is placed in the social order (or rather, on how
important the individual perceives himself to be), the more
imperative it becomes to strenuously avoid “loss of face”. The
male's perceived loss of honour and status, must be redressed and
his face "whitened", i.e. his honour regained and restored, at any
cost; even to the extent of (as in the honour killing of daughters)
murdering the person “responsible” for causing the initial
humiliation. When taqiyya is used to avoid making an admission or
concession it is simply an essential means of ensuring that ones
honour and standing remain intact and untarnished. Blood feuds and
vendettas, caused by an ancient humiliation of a long dead ancestor,
can persist, fuelled and propelled by shame and honour, for
generations. Muhammad, who is promoted as every Muslim’s exemplar,
set the precedent for vengeful retaliation when he ordered the
murder of those who mocked or satirised him and, as he was an Arab,
caused him potential loss of face. [See link, “Muhammad’s
Dead Poets Society”]

Outwitting:

Islamic spokesmen commonly use taqiyya as a form of 'outwitting'.
The skilled taqiyya-tactician doesn’t want the matter at hand to be
debated or discussed; so his opponent must be outwitted or
preemptively outflanked by the use of taqiyya. The objective is to
divert attention away from the subject through duplicity and
obfuscation.

The claim is often made that difficulties in translating from
Arabic to English makes the meaning of what they say or write
difficult or impossible to convey….this is simply another
subterfuge. Keysar Trad has repeatedly claimed that Sheikh Hilali’s
obnoxious, inflammatory and misogynistic comments have been
“mistranslated”, misquoted or “taken out of context”. The aim of
this ploy is to dilute or neutralise public opprobrium. The use of
independent translators has, in the past, disproved his assertions.
The Sheikh states what he believes to be correct according to
Islamic precepts and his “interpreter” reconfigures the statement to
make it palatable to the unwitting listener.

Consider the following statement by Mr. Trad on the February 24
2006.

Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association of
Australia, told Reuters that Australian Muslims

agreed with Costello's (Australia’s Treasurer, Peter Costello)
sentiments about being good, law abiding citizens.

"But to continually single out the Muslim community like this is
very unhelpful, it's very divisive and it does stir up
Islamophobia”,

Trad said.

"We're proud to be Australian and our religion strongly
stipulates that if you make an oath, whether it's an oath of
citizenship or any other oath, that you honour it, abide by it."

However, the Prophet Muhammad seems to have a different idea on
the subject.

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 67, Number 427:

“By Allah, and Allah willing, if I take an oath and later find
something else better than that. Then I do what is better and
expiate my oath.' "

Role playing as the victim:

When placed under scrutiny or criminal investigation, (even when
there is overwhelming, irrefutable evidence of guilt or complicity),
the taqiyya-tactician will quickly attempt to counter the allegation
by resorting to the claim that it is, in fact, the accused who are
the 'the victims'. Victims of Islamophobia, racism, religious
discrimination and intolerance. Currently, this is the most commonly
encountered form of distraction and 'outwitting'….. Defence by
offence.

Manipulative ambiguity and Semantics:

Sheik Hilali and the late Yasser Arafat are both on public record
as (a) 'condemning' the 9/11 attacks, in ambiguous terms, to the
Western media and (b) praising suicide bombings, or “ martyrdom
operations”, to their Arabic speaking audiences .

Islamic spokesmen will rarely unequivocally condemn a specific
act of terrorism and direct questions will be skillfully evaded.

(NB: because Muslims regard Islamic attacks as “jihad”, and not
terrorism, their spokesmen can truthfully deny any support for
terrorism.)

Interviewers would be better advised to ask the more precise
question “do you believe in jihad against the unbelievers?

However, a direct question requiring a simple "YES" or "NO" reply
is rarely forthcoming and is usually deflected by responding with a
tangentially irrelevant rejoinder or, in an attempt to neutralise
the original question, counter-challenging with another question
such as “are you in favour of killing children in Iraq?”…..Touché
and Checkmate!

Diversion, deflection and "tu quoque”:

Questions relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks will usually be
diverted by either making outrageously wild conspiracy claims “the
CIA did it to give the U.S. an excuse to attack Muslims,… Mossad was
the perpetrator… No Jews came to work at the World Trade Centre on
September 11” etc. or by making an irrelevant counter reference to
“the plight of the Palestinians”,.. Iraqis,.. colonialism,.. the
crusades, or US foreign policy’s support for Israel” as the 'root
causes' of terrorism.

Then, of course, there’s the ever popular, specious allegation
that George Bush is a bigger terrorist than Osama bin Laden.

Diversionary “tu quoque” response ploys usually start with the
words “but” or “what about…?” in an attempt to turn, and transfer an
equal culpability back on their interlocutor.

Demanding 'evidence':

Islamic spokesmen practice a form of taqiyya defined in
psychology as 'cognitive denial' by repetitive and persistent
demands of 'where is the evidence!' and 'prove it!' whenever there
is Muslim complicity in terrorist acts, evidence, which they know
very well, for security or legal sub-judice restraints, can not be
disclosed. If indeed the “evidence” were to be publicly presented,
they would then move on to the familiar “prejudicial to the
defendant receiving a fair trial--grounds for a mistrial” default
position.

Tactical denial:

Rather than admitting that a proposition concerning a subject
under discussion can be partly true, an Islamic spokesman will
flatly deny a claim or proposition in absolute terms. For example,
"It is impossible to be a Muslim and a terrorist”; this semantic
argument is purely a matter of definition, because radical Islamists
don’t define their violent attacks as terrorism, but jihad. (i.e.
holy war in the way of Allah) .Another popular assertion is that
'Islam forbids suicide', which is true, but by virtue once again of
definition, irrelevant, because suicide bombings are regarded as
“martyrdom operations” and are therefore not forbidden, but on the
contrary, admirable and praiseworthy. Muslim spokesmen are also fond
of using extreme hyperbole. Their refutations regularly include the
word “percent”. e.g. “I am 150% certain that Jews orchestrated
September 11”…. “I guarantee the accused is 200% innocent”.

Exploiting cognitive dissonance:

Islamic spokesmen regularly perplex and baffle interviewers and
their audiences as they resort to double talk, 'clichés and
platitudes' concerning Islam. A state of cognitive dissonance (i.e.
holding two contradictory beliefs and attempting to resolve them) is
therefore induced in viewers and readers as they attempt to mentally
process the claim that Islam is a peaceful religion despite the
indisputable evidence before them of Islamist involvement in
terrorist acts or criminal conduct.

The Islamic 'defence' script:

Islamic spokesmen repeat the same predictable duplicitous clichés
concerning Islam in Europe, as do their counterparts in Australia
and America. They appear to follow a well prepared script as they
repeat "Islam is tolerant and peace loving”. In instances where they
find themselves presented with, and cornered by, undeniable evidence
that murderous radicals are indeed guilty as charged the spokesman
will then fall back on the old chestnut that the culprits are only a
“small minority” and not “true Muslims” anyway. Islamic spokeswomen
use taqiyya when making the somewhat Orwellian claim that wearing
the hijab, niqab, burqa etc. is “liberating” and “empowering”, and
that, for reasons known only to them, these symbols of submissive
exclusion offer them more freedom than Western women, thereby
implying that women in Muslim countries are somehow 'freer' than
women in the West. This ruse is designed to preclude further
examination into the well documented inferior status of females in
Islamic societies. Being put on the spot, and having to admit their
true obedient and subservient status, would be embarrassing and
therefore shame inducing so resorting to denial and exaggerative
taqiyya is their only option.

There’s a common and oft repeated lie that “Islam” means peace”,
it doesn’t, it translates as “submission” (to Allah).

Islamic falsehoods are echoed uncritically by Western politicians
and other apologist dupes, for example "A small group of
fundamentalists have hijacked a great and noble religion”. This
timely, skilful, misleading and diversionary theme of the
'hijacking' of Islam was introduced into public, political and media
discourse by an Islamic 'spokesman' in the United States shortly
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and has become an “accepted fact”
repeated, ad nauseum, ever since.

The "Islam has been hijacked” myth is now a clichéd media and
political reference which serves to deflect attention from the
empirical proof of a fourteen hundred year continuity of the
doctrinal, political and religious nature of Islamic jihad.

A related theme that “a small minority of Muslims are engaged in
terrorism” is utterly irrelevant as terrorism is always perpetrated
by 'small minorities' or more accurately small groups or cells.
Surveys consistently reveal that between 10-15% of all Muslims
sympathise with the aims and methodology of this radical strain of
Islam which has been “hijacked”. This means, that within an
estimated world population of 1.2 billion Muslims, there are 120-180
million people prepared to fund, facilitate and in general, give
moral and financial assistance to the jihadists….. “a small
minority”?....you decide!

The indisputable truth is that there has been no “hijacking” of
Islam. Islamic extremists can, and do, find ample inspiration,
justification and encouragement for their violent ideology in the
Quran and Hadith.

Taqiyya as impressions and perception management

Pathos and the tactical use of children:

Australian television viewers may recall that interviews with
terrorist suspects raided by ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation) and AFP (Australian Federal Police) frequently
featured women in hijabs holding small children or a crying baby as
they plaintively protested their husband's innocence and attested to
his innate piety, decency and kind-hearted nature.

Trembling fingers and quavering voices pointed out damage,
disruption and disarray to the family home. In some interviews the
suspect / father holds the child, whilst denying any involvement in,
or knowledge of, radicalism .

Sheikh Hilali’s daughter, in a newspaper interview, played the
taqiyya pathos card by claiming that, because the cold northern
winter was imminent, her father was travelling to Lebanon to “hand
deliver” thousands of blankets to “orphanages” and homeless victims
of the war between Israel and Hizbollah.

In the same Israel /Hezbollah war, a photojournalist filmed a
Lebanese man, strewing, for the purpose of emotional impact, the
contents of a large cardboard box full of children’s stuffed toys
amongst the wreckage and debris. This was obviously for the benefit
of a large contingent of international TV film crews who were about
to be taken on a guided tour of the bombed buildings later that
morning.

Photos of carefully placed baby’s bibs and dummies (pacifiers)
also appeared to be extraordinarily abundant on the internet, as
were “staged” photos of a “body” being removed from the piles of
collapsed concrete. One sequence of photos clearly shows the “body”
in question, alive and well, walking around with his “rescuers”
before and after the “retrieval” of his dusty, “lifeless body”. This
is taqiyya by imagery!

The above are examples of taqiyya in the age of impressions and
perception management and are designed to, dupe, play on the
emotions of, and elicit sympathy from, the compassionate, unwitting
public.

Taqiyya and the Deceptive definition of Jihad:

The contemporary political meaning of jihad is clear: it is
“Jihad of the sword” and not the peaceful internal struggle for
spiritual improvement as their spin-doctors would have us believe.
Islamic fundamentalists consider jihad to be the sixth pillar of
Islam, a binding duty and integral to the faith. Claiming that Jihad
is a subjective and psychological state to become a better person is
taqiyya. In contemporary terms, Jihad means – HOLY WAR - against the
unbelievers and it is in this context that Al Qaeda training manuals
and other radical preachers use and refer to jihad.

The study of taqiyya is crucial to an understanding of Islamic
fundamentalism and terrorism. Its use ranges from the issuing of
false terrorist threats, operational and strategic disinformation
issued by Al Qaeda in the form of 'intelligence chatter' for the
purpose of throwing national defence groups into confusion.
Terrorist in captivity resort to taqiyya during interrogation. It is
most frequently used by Muslim 'spokesmen' whilst intentionally
making misleading public statements concerning Islam and terrorism.

The Arabs have a story which exemplifies subtle, semantic
dissimulation (taqiyya) perfectly. Legend has it that Mohammed’s
nephew, son-in-law and future Caliph, Ali, was sitting on a stool
outside his dwelling when one of his allies ran red-faced and
gasping into the village and hid in Ali’s home. Perceiving that the
man was being pursued, Ali promptly got up and sat on another nearby
stool. A few minutes later, a group of angry pursuers ran into the
encampment and asked Ali if he had seen the man they were pursuing.
Ali responded with the statement “AS LONG AS I HAVE BEEN SITTING ON THIS STOOL I HAVE SEEN NO ONE”

This story demonstrates why nothing an Islamist says can be taken
at face value. Every statement and utterance needs to be thoroughly
analysed, or “unpacked”.

After yet another violent incident in Sydney, involving “Males of
Middle-Easter Appearance”, a spokesman for the Muslim community
appeared on a Sydney television evening newscast. In the brief
soundbight he defensively declared “our religion teaches us that we
must be kind to one another” ….and indeed it does, it simply depends
on how we are to interpret the words “one another”, as these verses
from the Quran demonstrate:

Muslims are harsh against the unbelievers, merciful to one
another. – (Q 48:25)

Muhammad is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to
the unbelievers but merciful to one another.

Through them, Allah seeks to enrage the unbelievers*. – (Q48:29)

So, was this spokesman lying?

Or was he telling the truth?

The answer is both, YES,… and NO! –Or, perhaps neither, and if
you are confused by this apparent contradiction?,. You’re meant to
be, because he was practising taqiyya; ……where the devil is ALWAYS
in the detail.

* The precise identity of the “unbelievers” in the above
references requires no further explanation.

Endnotes

1. Imam Abu Hammid Ghazali says: "Speaking is a means to achieve
objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling
the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying
because there is no need for it.

When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by
telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is
permissible." (Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, The Reliance of the
Traveller, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, amana publications,
1997, section r8.2, page 745)

2. Bukhari Vol 3: 857 “Narrated Um Kulthum bint Uqba”:

That she heard Allah's Apostle saying, "He who makes peace
between the people by inventing good information or saying good
things, is not a liar."

3. Bukhari Vol 4: 269 “Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah: The Prophet
said, "War is deceit."

4. Bukhari Vol 5: 668 “Narrated Zahdam:

“When Abu Musa arrived (at Kufa as a governor) he honored this
family of Jarm (by paying them a visit). I was sitting near to him,
and he was eating chicken as his lunch, and there was a man sitting
amongst the people. Abu Musa invited the man to the lunch, but the
latter said, "I saw chickens (eating something (dirty) so I consider
them unclean." Abu Musa said, "Come on! I saw the Prophet eating it
(i.e. chicken)." The man said "I have taken an oath that I will not
ea (chicken)" Abu Musa said." Come on! I will tell you about your
oath. We, a group of Al-Ash'ariyin people went to the Prophet and
asked him to give us something to ride, but the Prophet refused.
Then we asked him for the second time to give us something to ride,
but the Prophet took an oath that he would not give us anything to
ride. After a while, some camels of booty were brought to the
Prophet and he ordered that five camels be given to us. When we took
those camels we said, "We have made the Prophet forget his oath, and
we will not be successful after that." So I went to the Prophet and
said, "O Allah's Apostle ! You took an oath that you would not give
us anything to ride, but you have given us." He said, "Yes, for if I
take an oath and later I see a better solution than that, I act on
the later and gave the expiation of that oath"

5. Bukhari Vol 6: 138 Narrated Aisha:

“That her father (Abu Bakr) never broke his oath till Allah
revealed the order of the legal expiation for oath. Abu Bakr said,
"If I ever take an oath (to do something) and later find that to do
something else is better, then I accept Allah's permission and do
that which is better, (and do the legal expiation for my oath ) ".

"We are at war"

2010-10-05T18:08:00.001-07:00

EHR KUMT - a Rosh Hashanah sermon by Rabbi Shalom Lewis

EHR KUMT

First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2010

By Rabbi Shalom Lewis

Many years ago a Chassid used to travel from shtetl to shtetl selling holy books. On one occasion he came to a wealthy land owner and asked if he would like to purchase a book of Torah teachings. The banker agreed and not only purchased the book, but paid for it with a hundred ruble note. He then began to chat with the Chassid and offered him a cigar, taking one also for himself. The Chassid noticed that the banker proceeded to rip a page from the holy book he had just bought and holding it to the open flame on the stove, used the page to light his cigar. The Chassid said not a word but simply drew out from his pocket the 100 ruble note he had just received from the banker, held it over the stove as well and used it to light his cigar.

This simple, little tale reflects a profound divergence of values. Our sympathy clearly and instinctively is not with the banker but with the pious Chassid. None of us would come to the defense of the banker. None of us would claim moral supremacy for the banker. None of us would justify his boorish deed. As the sages of the Talmud would say – “Pshita – It is so obvious.” Sadly though our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest – where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain.

I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much. We want to be guiltschlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.

I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious. I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.

Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing. In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence.

We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists. To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.

A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.

After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me.

“Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania.” “Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?” “Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.”

He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drash on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ”

We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. We got out but most did not.”

We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.

Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, coconspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not. The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeera condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.

I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion. Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished. I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”

This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.

I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.

“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glen Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.” But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.

Ask them, ask all of them – ask the American GI’s we sit next to on planes who are here for a brief respite while we fly off on our Delta vacation package. Ask them if it’s bad. Ask them if it’s real.

Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s. Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Feuhrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?

The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?

Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.

Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.

If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.

Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start to finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.

William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”

Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.

Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Queda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathesome evil.

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.

Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.

There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.

There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.”

A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone –

“Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?”

I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.”

“What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired.

“Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today” and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading.

“Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.”

The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.

Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade.

Looking for logic?

Looking for reason?

Looking for sanity?

Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond.

It is exhausting and dispiriting. We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered species.

Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be.

How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us? How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?

Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure, is at risk.

The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading

Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.

I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.

I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.

Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.

That is the enemy (show enlarged copy of magazine cover.)

If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”

“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.

We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.

Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.

A rabbi was once asked by his students... “Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”

During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.

Democracies don’t always win. Tyrannies don’t always lose.

My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “EHR KUMT.”

Islam allows marriage to One-Year old girl

2010-09-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub'i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant:

It Is Allowed to Marry a Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is Postponed. The Prophet Muhammad, Whose Model We Follow, Married 'Aisha When She Was Six and Had Sex with Her When She Was Nine.

LBC TV (Lebanon) - June 19, 2008 - 03:08

Dead Yemeni bride, 13, ‘a victim of childhood abuse’

2010-09-16T18:39:00.000-07:00

Dead Yemeni bride, 13, ‘a victim of childhood abuse’

Mohammed al Qadhi, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: April 09. 2010 1:46PM UAE / April 9. 2010 9:46AM GMT

Mohammed al Qadhi / The National

SANA’A // Elham Mahdi al Assi, a 13-year-old girl, died from severe haemorrhaging and the rupturing of internal organs as a result of sexual intercourse, just five days after she was married.

Her death follows a number of high-profile child marriage cases that have shaken Yemen and, activists hope, may go some way towards bringing about a law that would establish a minimum age for marriage.

Elham, who lived in the village of Qalat Hameed in Hajja province, about 130km north of Sana’a, was married on March 29 to a man in his 20s in a traditional arrangement known as a “swap marriage”, in which the brother of the bride married the sister of the groom. She died on April 2, though it is not clear if she was dead before arriving at the hospital.

Her body remains at al Thawra hospital, in the province’s capital.

“Her death is the result of the opposition to the ban on child marriage. She is a victim of childhood being abused in Yemen,” said Majed al Madhaji, the press officer at the non-governmental Arabic Sisters Forum for Human Rights (ASFHR).

Mansur Abu Ali, a Hajja-based activist with ASFHR, said the girl’s family had claimed she was 18, but after speaking to people in her village, including social dignitaries, he was able to confirm she was only about 13.

Local police have arrested the husband and also carried out initial interrogations.

Prosecuters are expected to start their own investigations tomorrow.

Mr al Madhaji said ASFHR had also hired a lawyer in Hajja to look into the matter.

“We have assigned a lawyer to follow up the case as this should become a public opinion case,” said Mr al Madhaji.

“However, we find that the legal position is difficult as the law does not criminalise the husband who forces his wife into sex or rapes her. But we have asked for a forensic medicine report as this is a lethal attack.”

Sigrid Kaag, regional head for the UN children’s agency, Unicef, described underage marriages as a “harmful practice”.

“The death of Elham Mahdi al Assi,” said Ms Kaag, “is a painful reminder of the risks girls face when they are married too soon,” said Ms Kaag.

Elham’s death is the second suchcase to be reported in the province in the the past several years. Fawzia Abdallah Youssef, a 12-year-old child bride, died in September 2008 in Hajja of haemorrhaging as she gave birth to a baby, which was stillborn. She had been married in 2007.

More than half Yemen’s girls are married before they reach puberty, according to UN figures.

The latest incident comes amid a controversy over proposed legislation to set a minimum age for marriage.

Thousands of conservative women protested outside parliament last month in opposition to the law, answering a call by Islamist parties. Some days later, hundreds of women’s rights activists held their own demonstration at the same venue in support of the law.

The proposed law, first approved by parliament last year though which has yet to pass into law, stipulates that parents who marry off their daughters before the age of 17 and sons before the age of 18 could face a year in jail or be fined US$500 (Dh1,800).

Conservative MPs who had opposed the measure called for the issue to be debated again before it was passed into law. The proposed legislation was sent back to parliament’s Sharia committee, which recommended that no age for marriage be set.

A number of clerics followed that up by issuing a fatwa last month in which they banned setting an age for marriage on grounds it goes against Sharia.

The legislative debate followed the highly publicised story of Nojoud Mohammed Ali, who, aged 10, sought a divorce in 2008 from her 30-year-old husband. Her story and that of 12-year-old Fawzia helped fuel the movement in favour of a minimum age for marriage.

Ms Kaag of Unicef called for lawmakers to pass rules that set a “reasonable minimum age for marriage”.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to free and full consent to marriage. But when either party to a marriage is too young to make an informed decision, such consent is neither free nor full,” she said.

A study on early marriage carried out in 2008 by the Gender Development Research and Studies Centre at Sana’a University found that 52.1 per cent of girls are under 18 when they wed, compared with 6.7 per cent of boys.

malqadhi@thenational.ae

* With additional reporting by James Reinl at the United Nations

Comments on Islam from an article at forbes.com

2010-08-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

I like this post, and heartily agree and hope that the destruction of Islam will come to pass, freeing the millions who suffer under its cruel yoke.

Posted by drmusic | 08/24/10 10:08 AM EDT

A group of muslims is called "a nest of muslim parasites".

Let them build the mosque at ground zero.. Taller than the towers..it's fine...let Barak Husain Oh!Bama build a mosque on the white house lawns.... Taller than the white house....it's fine....let Prince Charles build one on the palace lawns....taller than the palace....it's fine....let the pope build a mosque on the Vatican grounds....taller than the Vatican building....it's fine ....the more mosques the better and the taller they are the better... That is the only way common people will start seething at intrusive and evil Islam.

I predict that within a 100 years there will be no mosques left in this world and there will be no Islam on the planet because Saudi Arabia and the Muslim countries will be wiped out by the anger of the rest of the planet's non-Muslim people. Islam is in it's death swirl...but it is dying with a lot of blood and shouts...but it is definately dying... The mask of religion it has been hiding behind will soon be lifted off by the courts around the world.... People, including Muslims who actually think out of the box of Islam are starting to see Islam for what it is...Islam is a robber cult started by a woman-hating mass murderer and a legendary pedophile amonst other things. Islam's days are numbered... Let us help them build their mosques so we can pull them down en-masse. Their daggers are out but we have our bulldozers and our logic.

Posted by drmusic | 08/24/10 10:03 AM EDT

Daisy khan is absolutely right....we all hate hate hate Islam... Have no doubt about it...all this PC crap about Islam being a religion was started in Europe and by the Brits too and now Islam is biting them on their arses with it's rabid mouth and stinking putrifying but still not dead body...

Daisy khan is right right right... We all hate Islam and all all all Muslims because we all know how evil it is. Thank you Daisy for clearing this up. Islam labels people who are all alike differently and builds walls separating them instead of bringing them together.

Islam glorifies death by calling its murderers the soldiers of Allah. Islam preaches superiority of the "we" and inferiority of the "other." It is a creed steeped in superstition, demands blind obedience to authority, and sanctions just about every form of freedom. Everything in Islam is in black and white. One is either Muslim -- good -- or non-Muslim -- bad. Men are superior; women are subservient. This life is worthless and should be offered for the pleasure of Allah as defined by the evil clergy.

Islam is a creed of a primitive age. It is fixated in time and place; it harbors the ambition of taking the 21st-century world back fourteen centuries and ruling it by its dogma of intolerance, injustice, and death. Yet Islam is not only an obsolete vestige of a defunct era, but itself is an infinitely fractured belief that can hardly put its own home in order. The numerous Islamic sects are at each other's throats; sub-sects and schools despise one another as much as they hate the non-Muslims. Hatred, not love, drives Islam.

We have to try and avoid the yoke of Islamic slavery and its blinders that imprison a billion and half people by walls of superstition, hatred of others, and celebration of death.

If You Put Your Mind To It You Can Believe Anything

2010-03-30T15:39:00.000-07:00

By Tim Sadler
March 30, 2010 | ISSUE 46-13

I'm not one of those people who spends his whole life wishing things had turned out differently. Sure, the so-called "real world" can be a pretty cruel place sometimes, but why sit around all day worrying about the way things are when, with a little imagination, determination, and blinding denial, you can convince yourself that everything is great?

It may sound crazy, but I'm telling you, if you put your mind to it, you can make yourself believe just about anything!

Don't let annoying little hang-ups like logic, reason, or even reality stand in the way of what you want to be true. Your mind is the most powerful tool you have, and if you use it correctly, you'll be amazed at all the incredible things you can deny.

Lose your job due to gross incompetence and whispers of corporate malfeasance? No, you didn't. You left your job voluntarily and without incident, because it was stifling your creative energy. Wife hates you because you're a pathetic shell of the man she used to love? Wrong again. In fact, you don't even have a wife.

Not if you don't want one!

It's surprisingly simple. All you have to do is block out what the actual, known universe is telling you is "happening." Voilà! It doesn't matter if your son repeatedly confides in you that he's gay, even going so far as to introduce you on three separate occasions to the person he calls his boyfriend. Your brain knows better than that. Your brain knows that your son is a virile heterosexual man like his father, and that he has definitely not chosen a lifestyle that might be threatening to his father's sense of self, which is strong, by the way, and in no way insecure. The boy likes to fuck women, okay? End of story.

See? Wasn't that easy? And now you don't have to go to bed at night with all those horrible "truth pangs."

And remember that no matter what happens, you must never throw in the towel. A lot of people who are confronted by difficult circumstances in their lives will turn to drugs or alcohol as a way of "escaping" their problems. Not me. I am able to tell myself that that my drug and alcohol use is totally under control, that I could quit at anytime, and that I don't use cocaine and tequila as a means of escape but merely as a way of cutting loose after a long day of being neither lonely nor unemployed.

It's all in the way you don't look at things!

It may seem hard at first, but once you start believing in God, and presupposing that this God condones all of your thoughts and actions, it gets a whole lot easier. Believing in a supreme being like that not only absolves you of any responsibility whatsoever, which is handy, but it also allows you to be self-righteous about the made-up stuff you've convinced yourself is true in order to gain some sense of structure or meaning in your worthless life.

If that seems too good to be true, it isn't. It is not too good to be true. Just tell yourself that. Over and over.

Now prepare yourself, because a lot of people out there are going to claim that what you're trying to believe is impossible. They'll try to "help" you by pointing out how you're destroying yourself through willful acts of self-delusion, and how your behavior is slowly eating away at the people who care about you most in this world. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not true. What they are saying is not happening. In fact, they are not even saying that. They are not even there. They are somewhere far away, many miles from the warm, tropical beach where you are now relaxing in total, peaceful silence, undisturbed by what for a moment sounded like your wife banging on the door to your basement office, but what in reality—your reality—was just a few coconuts falling from a palm tree and landing with soft, reassuring thuds on the cool white sand below. Thud. Thud.

What was that, Alohanani? Would I like another mai tai? Why, yes, I would adore one. Much obliged, my portly Hawaiian friend.

Much obliged, indeed.

Ex-Palestinian Spy Talks About Evils of Islam, Hamas' Brutalities

2010-03-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK — Mosab Hassan Yousef, who helped Israel's security forces kill and arrest members of the Islamic militant group Hamas, is probably marked for death.
He should be keeping silent. But he's got a story to tell, one he delivers in his new book published this week, "Son of Hamas."
"To be honest with you, being killed is not the worst thing that can happen," he said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press. "If they want to do kill me ... let them do it, and they will be responsible for my blood."
In his memoir, Yousef, the 32-year-old son of a Hamas founder, claims he was one of the Shin Bet security agency's best assets and was dubbed The Green Prince, a reference to his Hamas pedigree and the Islamists' signature green color.
During his 50-minute interview, for which he arrived with armed security, Yousef took shots at Hamas leaders including political chief Khaled Meshaal. He lashed out at Hamas, saying the organization lives in the Middle Ages.
And he hurled his most inflammatory comments at Islam, which he called a religion that teaches people to kill.
"It is not a religion of peace," said Yousef, who converted to Christianity. "The biggest terrorist is the God of the Quran. I know this is very dangerous and this will offend many people. The more you follow the steps of the prophet of Islam and the God of Islam, the more you get close to being a terrorist."
Yousef said he started working with the Shin Bet after he was arrested and witnessed Hamas brutalities inside prison. When he was released in 1997, he started meeting with the Shin Bet and gravitating toward Christianity.
Yousef thought he could do some good, preventing the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians.
"I got a chance to stop killing," he said.
In his book, Yousef clearly relished his importance to Shin Bet and even designed his own missions, one involving duping Meshaal, who lives in Damascus.
"I love this spy stuff, especially with Israeli intelligence paving the way," he wrote. "In this way, a new communications channel was established with Damascus, even though Meshaal had no idea that he was actually on a party line with the Shin Bet listening in."
Yousef said Hamas has no idea how Shin Bet operates and accused Hamas of killing innocent people suspected of collaborating with Israel.
The U.S. government considers Hamas a terrorist organization. Hamas says it provides schools and other social benefits to residents in the areas it controls.
Yousef declined to discuss certain aspects of his intelligence relationship with the Israeli security organization, saying he didn't want to hinder its operational capabilities and give Hamas a "free gift."
"They're facing a dirty, difficult war," he said, referring to the Shin Bet battles with Hamas. "I don't agree with everything that they do. But their job is very important."
His relationship with the Shin Bet lasted for more than a decade until he decided he'd had enough. He ended his lonely and dangerous existence as a spy in 2007.
Yousef said the Israelis allowed him to leave the region for a few months to take a break from his harrowing job and travel to America, where he stayed, working as a security guard at a grocery store.
When he told his story to his new friends in America, people didn't believe him. But folks seem to be believing him now. His father, a senior Hamas leader, disowned him Monday.
Sheik Hassan Yousef said in a letter that his family had renounced "the one who was once our eldest son, who is called Mosab."
The son "disbelieved in God" and "collaborated with our enemies," said the father, who's serving a six-year term in an Israeli prison.
Mosab Yousef said he didn't take it personally.
"I know his heart," Yousef said. "My dad is a loving person. He would never disown me. At some point we will be together again. I love my father, and he loves me."
Yousef blamed his father's decision on the Quran.
"The God of Quran is trying to unskin Muslims from their humanity," he said, later adding, "Muslims are good people. But their God is absolutely bad."
Yousef's claims have rocked Hamas and exposed its vulnerability. His book comes on the heels of the assassination of a top Hamas operative in Dubai in January. Yousef denounced this latest killing in which Israel has been blamed and said the timing of the book was just a coincidence, not some Israeli scheme to generate even more paranoia among the ranks of Hamas.
Israel has not commented on Yousef's claims or on widespread speculation that it carried out the Dubai assassination.
Asked about why people should believe his book, which was displayed at a Manhattan bookstore's Christian inspiration section, Yousef said: "I am not expecting everybody to believe this story. Some people will doubt it."
Yousef said Hamas had no idea how to govern and he hoped the violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis would end. He said he thinks his traitorous efforts will pay off.
"A change," he said, "will happen for the next generation."

To the graduating class of ...

2010-02-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to each and every one of you, who, through diligent attention to your studies, through hard work, determination, and in many cases, good luck, have achieved an essential element of that great American dream: a college education; a degree from a prestigious and accredited university. This is not only an American dream, but a dream for all civilized people everywhere in the world.

Your degree will open doors to opportunities that are not available to those who do not possess one. You are now among the elite of the nations; the best, the brightest; the educated. And, you now have the documentation to prove it.

However, although you may have thought otherwise, the truth is that your true education is just beginning.

I say beginning, because most of you have yet to master the most important skill of all: how to think. It is true that you know how to study, you know how to research an assigned topic, you know how to argue persuasively, and you know how to pay attention.

But, do you know how to form your own opinion, based on facts, even in the face of extreme peer pressure, in spite of your own ego? Do you truly understand the many levels of human motivation that may be behind the assertions made by many? Are you able to objectively examine your own beliefs? Are you even interested in facts, in truth? You have learned much. You have been told much. Undoubtedly, some of what you have learned is not fact; it is unsubstantiated and unjustified opinion.

Most of you are young. You are energetic, idealistic, compassionate, sincere, eager to show the world how to do it right. Some want to go out and change the world, to make it a better place for all. Some are interested in personal success. Some want to be respected, or famous, or feared. Some want to be left alone.

The world has no shortage of deceivers, demagogues, and deluded “leaders”, who want your unwavering support and loyalty. If you are unable to think for yourself; if you base your decisions and beliefs on your emotions, then you can become the pawn of those who can arouse passionate emotions within you. You would become like a member of a cult – always supporting whatever you are told is right, without even knowing why. Think of the millions who supported fascism, Nazism, communism, because each of these causes had eloquent spokesmen who aroused passion in their followers, and promised a better life for all. Think of the billions who blindly follow religious ideas and traditions, without even thinking about the reason they do so. Think of the unspeakable suffering of humanity throughout the centuries, and even occurring at this very moment, because of blind devotion to political, cultural, and religious institutions and ideas.

This world is indeed a mess. If you listen to some, the end of all humanity is near. Insurmountable problems seem to be facing us. Religious fanatics seem poised, even anxious, to cause the destruction of millions, of billions of their fellow human beings. Tyrants have set their sights on ruling the world, or at least large parts of it.

The list of the world’s ills is long. It seems like you have inherited inconceivably difficult problems to solve. But, it has always been like this. In all ages, mankind has been faced with problems, the mere contemplation of which can leave one weak, trembling, and despairing. There has always been a wolf at the door, waiting to devour. Yet, somehow, we manage to survive.

Over time, most things have gotten better. But what our ancestors and forefathers have achieved over centuries, and millennia, can be lost in a single generation, if we allow it. And, once it is gone, who can say how many centuries will pass before we get it back, if ever? We, you, must continue the fight for what is right, for human freedom. Freedom to be what we want to be. Freedom from fear. Freedom from those who would dictate how we should live and what we should think. Freedom from dogmas; physical, economic, and intellectual slavery. Every child, every little girl and every little boy born into this world must have every opportunity for happiness and fulfillment that the world can provide.

Thornton Wilder wrote: "I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is a struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country."

Every good and excellent thing. Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. As Americans, you are heirs to a great tradition of liberty. Cruel policies have been made, atrocities and great injustices have been committed in our nation, and by our nation. We must see where we have been wrong, and admit it. We should not let that stop us, though. We must go forward, promoting the ideals upon which America was founded; political, economic, social, and intellectual liberty for all. Justice, peace, and security.

Now go forth, as leaders among men and women, as true thinkers; challenge your own beliefs, examine every assertion, be willing to admit that you may be wrong. Listen to the arguments of intelligent advocates for each position. Weigh the facts. Let your dedication to truth motivate you to dispassionately decide, based on the facts. Let compassion and idealism be your guide, but do not deceive yourself because you wish a thing to be true.

You have your whole life ahead of you. Spend that life wisely, for you only have one.

Do something important.

The New Fascists - by James Hudnall (BigGovernment.com)

2010-02-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

“My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!”
- Charles Baudelaire, Le Joueur généreux, February 7, 1864

Forget everything you think you know about politics. It is probably wrong.

There is no left or right. Communist, Socialist, Liberal, Conservative, Progressive, Democrat, Republican, those are all meaningless terms. They are used to confuse people so they miss the point. The most important point about politics there is. There are only two schools of political thought and they have predictable results. All the names and labels for them are just smoke and mirrors.

Political ideology is designed by elites to trick the masses into doing what they want. Each side tells you something designed to get your emotions going so they can play you. They get you to agree to give them more power, money and control over your lives by telling you some kind of story.

We need to put that vicious cycle to an end. It’s time to understand what their real goals are. But to free your mind, you need to be educated first. Only by seeing the road ahead can you avoid tripping on stones or falling off cliffs.

There are only two real political choices to make. And it has nothing to do with parties. It has to do with core beliefs. You are for one side or another. These sides are diametrically opposed. The best way I can describe the two choices is, freedom or slavery. That is what it boils down to. And the slave in question is you.

Do you want to be a slave or a free person? It’s your choice.

I’m sure some of you reading this have your guard up now. So take a deep breath and walk with me for a second. I am going to open your eyes.

There are only two forms of government. Every kind of government is a branch or variation of one of the two forms. All the side issues, are just window dressing because the root form of government determines a lot of crucial matters that effect everything else.

The first form has many branches and is called many by names. It is common. It is the oldest form. It is, in fact, ancient. It has many names because so many of those names have fallen into disrepute. So they keep re-branding it and try to sell it in a different package. But no matter what name it takes, it still leads to the same end result.

The second form has very few branches and is rarer than any precious stone. It is something many people want but few have had. The believers in the first form are always trying to destroy this second form. They lie about it. Try to corrupt and subvert it. Because they know it will always be more popular with the people if they knew they had a choice. So the second form must always be defended from the predators from the first, because it is precious. I like to refer to each system as the minus and plus system. But we’ll call them BG or LG here. Big Government or Limited Government.

Those who believe in BG go by many names, and many of these believers don’t even know that they’re supporting the same goals as people they think are bad. But they have been tricked into selling out their own freedoms to enrich someone elses. All BG systems lead to the same result. I classify this as a minus system because it’s negative. The end result of a BG system is bad for most involved.

The BG system is designed to feed all resources to a few at the top. All else are diminished in power and wealth. But the citizens are told that they must support the government and its rules in order to receive some kind of “benefits.” In order to get the treats the government doles out, you have to give up your freedoms and your property. It sells the idea of some glorious future that is never attained and only gets worse over time. But it always maintains that it will lead to some kind of paradise.

It never does. It usually leads to some kind of hell. But it always finds people to subscribe to its ideas who become fanatical in defense of it, no matter how much the system abuses them. And it deludes many others into wanting it because it preys on their human nature, the very thing that destroys it in the end.

The LG or Limited Government system is the best system for human freedom. As a result it has been very rare in human history. Where it has been allowed to flourish, human beings have flourished. But those who believe in BG are always trying to corrupt and destroy LG societies. This is because LG denies ultimate power to those who seek it. An LG system is more fair because you get what you put in. You have the ability to advance to any level as long as you don’t abuse the success that you have made or use it against others.

Before we explore how each system works, we need to understand the mindset of the people who believe in either system. I once did a cartoon illustrating the philosophies ( http://thehud.com/2009/12/clash-of-the-titans/) in the form of two Greek Philosophers, Aristotle and Plato. Each philosopher created the groundwork for understanding these schools of thought.

LG (Plus) believers are Aristotlian. They are like engineers. If something is proven to work, then they believe in it. They are not opposed to experimentation, but only if it involves proven principles. Ideas that are demonstrated to fail are rejected. They understand that human beings are flawed creatures. Humans are born hungry and spend their lives seeking to fulfill those hungers. In science terms, humans are driven by genetic hard wiring. It is part of their nature. In religious terms, humans are born with “original sin”. We can’t radically change who we are and remain human. We can only seek to improve ourselves through discipline, education, reason and morality.

LG believers understand that humans are often given to a lust for power because we all want some kind of control. LG societies are designed to limit governance so the state can never become tyrannical. It realizes that human nature is a constant so you have to develop a system that works within its framework, and keeps its basic problems in check. That way a politician’s greed is limited by what they are allowed to do by laws. The less interference a government has in human affairs, the more free the people are to progress on their own and flourish. LG believers are for individual rights. They believe a perfect society may not be possible, but it can be best achieved by respect for others rights and liberties. They believe in a social contract and the rule of law. They want people to be free in order to live their life without interference, as long as they respect other’s rights. The LG is there to enable the society to function and keep the peace, but it is not there to dominate or dictate how one should live.

BG (Minus) believers are Platonic. They posit that there’s an ideal form of society somewhere in the future, a utopia populated by an idealized form of humanity. This can only be achieved by forcing people to change through rules, laws and governance. It wraps itself in good intentions, but it ignores human nature, believing people can be changed by rules. Making the public follow orders will correct their bad behavior as the state sees it. It does not believe it can be tyrannical because BG systems are always sure they’re correct, not matter what happens. Dissenters are ridiculed or punished. No matter how many mistakes a BG society makes or disasters it causes, it does not admit its fault. BG believers preach dependence on the state. It denies individual empowerment or freedom and instead promotes group think. It pushes the group over the individual to keep people in check. It does not want leaders so much as followers. Its leaders are usually the hungriest for power that make their way to the top by gaming the system.

BG societies are constantly creating diversions to keep the public focused on policies it wants to sell. So it often creates “crises” of some kind that the people are supposed to rally around. In order to get them to give up more freedom or personal wealth, it often uses scare tactics. Threats of invasion, threats of nature, etc. The elites in a BG system always live vastly better than those at the bottom, but it always promises some kind of “equality” that never exists in reality. And because the BG system is large and complex it relies on bureaucracies to manage them. But because bureaucracies are made of humans, human nature always corrupts these systems. A bureaucracy becomes inefficient and corrupt in direct proportion to its size. The larger, the less effective, the more corrupt.

BG systems usually lead to economic collapse and stagnation. Usually with dire consequences for millions of people. That is why citizens in BG societies often yearn to go to LG societies. Many of them risk their lives to escape from BG societies that hold them captive. Because in worst case scenarios, BG systems imprison their citizens. They are all, to some extent, anti-freedom. It’s a matter of degree.

In contemporary American terms, the common names for BG and LG is “progressive” or “conservative”. Those terms have been used misleadingly by the media and others, so I avoided them. In part two I will do side by side comparison of the two systems performed in history. And I will explain the title of this series.

MLK's neice on Racism and Abortion

2010-01-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

LifeNews.com Note: Alveda King is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King is a leading pro-life voice who formerly had two abortions before having a faith conversion and she now is a speaker for and representative of the educational outreach of Priests for Life and the Silent No More network. This editorial originally appeared in the Washington Times.

Let me begin by telling you that two of 50 million children taken away by abortionists since 1973 were mine. I can still see them in my mind's eye.

Like many black women, I once believed the doctor who told me my babies were no more than "a blob of tissue." I wanted to believe it. Eventually, I realized I was wrong, that I was a secondary victim of abortion. I repented and found healing through God. Today, I work in the civil rights movement of our century -- the right of every one of every race to live.

I am asking you to join me. Let me tell you why. Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular.

Abortion has taken a gruesome toll on the black community, killing more than AIDS and crime combined. Some 14 million black babies have been aborted since the 1973 US Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in all stages in all 50 states. That's equal to one-third of the number of blacks living today.

By the abortion industry's own statistics, black women are 4.8 times more likely to abort than are non-Hispanic white women. Blacks comprise about 13% of the population, yet have 37% of all abortions.

When dramatic racial disparities like these appeared in employment and education, it was enough to conclude that institutionalized racism and discrimination were present in our corporations and colleges. Why should we apply a different standard to the abortion industry?

Racism and abortion are twins in many other ways.

Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated. So it is with abortion.

Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit. While victims die physically, practitioners die spiritually. So it is with abortion.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals. So it is with abortion.

A majority, perhaps as many as 75%, of abortion clinics are in areas with high minority populations. Abortion apologists will say this is because they want to serve the poor. You don't serve the poor, however, by taking their money to terminate their children.

The abortion movement in this country was started by Margaret Sanger, the founder of an organization known today as Planned Parenthood. Ms. Sanger was quite open that she wanted "more children from the fit, less from the unfit." The unfit, she made clear, were blacks and poor whites. She had no qualms about speaking to as many as 12 Ku Klux Klan meetings. As I discuss in the new film, "Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America" (produced by Life Dynamics Inc.), she targeted blacks in her eugenics-based campaigns.

Does an overtly racist past mean that the abortion industry is racist today? Consider last year's widely reported account of seven Planned Parenthood offices that agreed to accept a donation on the sole condition that the money only be used to abort black babies. The recordings of the phone calls to Planned Parenthood are chilling. Why were some offices of the organization willing to take money based on race?

Abortion targets blacks disproportionately, but it affects everyone. And as my uncle, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote from the Birmingham jail, "[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Abortion is an attack on the family and the humanity that unites us all.

My Uncle Martin also wrote: "The Negro cannot win if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety." Those words are still true today. After all, how can the dream survive if we let them take our children?

MLK's Neice on Abortion

2010-01-18T17:44:00.000-08:00

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- On a day when Americans across the country are celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his desire to regard all people as Americans worthy of equal treatment, his niece says King's dream, if announced today, would also include protecting unborn children from abortion.

Dr. Alveda King, today, is celebrating Uncle’s life and she said he would agree that, when it comes to treating all people with respect, that he would include babies before birth.

“Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of a Beloved Community where all are treated with respect and dignity,” Alveda King told LifeNews.com today.
“He fought against society’s exclusion of people who were treated as less than human because of their appearance," she added. "Today, we are compelled to continue Uncle Martin’s fight by standing up for those who are treated as less than human because of their helplessness and inconvenience."

King told LifeNews.com, “The unborn are as much a part of the Beloved Community as are newborns, infants, teenagers, adults, and the elderly."

The niece of the great civil rights leader also said those who follow his ideals of tolerance don't always show that to unborn children.

"Too many of us speak of tolerance and inclusion, yet refuse to tolerate or include the weakest and most innocent among us in the human family," she said.

King concludes, "As we celebrate the life of Uncle Martin, let us renew our hearts and commit our lives to treating each other, whatever our race, status, or stage of life, as we would want to be treated. Let us let each other live."

King had an abortion but now speaks out for protecting human life. She has called abortion and racism "evil twins."

Alveda King and her family will be joined by pro-life leader Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life as a program participant in the Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Commemorative Service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Deja Vu?

2009-11-16T14:44:00.000-08:00

Political cartoon from 1934. Does anything look familiar?

Dennis Miller: The other side of 'but'

2009-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Dennis Miller: The other side of 'but'
By: Dennis Miller
Op-Ed Contributor
October 16, 2009

I guess I've been hearing it for years now as the country has slid into knee-jerk relativism. Till now though, it's merely been an equivocating grandfather clock in the background, metronomic, at worst nettlesome. It was at the beginning of l'affaire Polanski, though, that I realized how much I've come to detest the word "but."

One liberal pundit or another (banality = interchangeability) was bleating on and on, and I actually heard the words "what Roman Polanski did was wrong but ..." and it hit me like an air horn in a Trappist monastery. With a simple wave of the conjunctive wand, we now believe that we can explain away absolutely anything!

I know man does not live by declarative sentences alone, although you can certainly do a lot worse than Hemingway. Purely and simply, there are certain times in life that you have to pull up short of the logic abyss that is the word "but" and pitch camp on the near side of it. This is one of those times.

To apply a caveat to the forcible rape of a 13-year-old girl by a 40-year-old euro-lech armed with quaaludes and bubbly (and ably assisted by a brain-dead parent) is akin to sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to visit the corner store.

Now while I'm pretty certain Whoopi Goldberg is going to try to put a Roadrunner cloud between herself and her "not a rape-rape" gem, I'm not even sure she has to anymore! I think our society is so inundated with misinformed faux wisdom these days that her swing and a miss moment has already passed. The dogs bark, the caravan/news cycle moves on.

And where do you most often find this contorted gibberish masquerading as insight? Invariably on the backside of the word "but." Liberals have commandeered "but," conservative bunko artists favor "nevertheless," and moderates put you into an induced coma with their incessant "howevers." Pick your poison, fact is we'd all be better off staying on this side of the "but."

If you feel you've got something so wise, so precious, so singularly sagacious, that you want to tag it onto Polanski's atrocity to "shed some light on it," light is in fact your biggest problem because you've got your head shoved so far up your tuchus that they're gonna have to cut in switchback trails to get to it.

The Roman Legions came over the hill flying a single flag, the liberal one. Make of that what you will, I guess occasionally a man is going to be pushed too far. Think Van Heflin in "Shane." Evidently some liberals felt pushed too far by the arrest of Polanski. No doubt some airtight progressive notion about the day of the rape paling in comparison with the days since the rape. Now, I can't tell if Polanski's defenders are completely underthinking this or overthinking it. Either way, they're obviously not thinking. Theirs is a flat-line electroencephalogram.

If we don't have unanimity on the rape and sodomy of a 13-year old girl, well, we're never gonna have it, are we? If "but" appears as a fulcrum in a sentence about an occurrence this horrific, it signals a brokenness in the American spirit that even a card carrying, "eyebrow-raised-higher-than-Pelosi's" skeptic like me could never have imagined.

"But" appears to have become America's verbal Continental Divide. Rainwater falls down one side, drivel the other. Polanski is a monster and the evil he perpetrated on that child demands punishment. No "buts."

*Author's note. Short of its parenthetical use to remind the reader which word was the butt of this screed, not one "but" was used (at appreciable difficulty I might add), in the composition of this piece.

Comedian and commentator extraordinaire Dennis Miller appears regularly in the "Miller Time" segment of "The O'Reilly Factor "on Fox News, as well as his own daily talk radio show heard on more than 250 stations across the country.

An Open Letter to the President

2009-10-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Dear President Barack Obama:

You are an annoying prick.

Please get the fuck off of my television.

I am sick of hearing your irritating speech patterns and your goofy-looking face, and then the sickening boot-licking sycophants in the mainstream news media slobbering over your every pronouncement like you are the Saviour of all humanity.

Sincerely,

The Citizens of the United States of America.

P.S. Now that you are making some extra bucks, how about getting that stupid mole removed from your face?

Nationalized Health Care

2009-09-19T12:57:00.000-07:00

For my entire adult life, I have worked and struggled and sacrificed most of my dreams to provide for my family, and to make sure each one received medical care as they needed it. I have foregone opportunities because I could not afford to take the chance of not having health insurance, for even a short while.

Now, with my children grown and able to take care of themselves, I am being asked, no, told that I must now support a new, more "socially just" system that will provide health insurance to millions of people who do not take personal responsibility in their lives, who do not, and will not make the necessary sacrifices to take care of themselves and their families. I must accept a lower standard of care, and outrageously confiscatory taxes, in order to provide this "free" service to millions of people, a huge portion of whom are of virtually no value to society.

I wonder why, and what is the morality behind it, that I must pay for the health care of other people's children? It is the parents' responsibility to provide for their own offspring, to feed them, educate them, and keep them healthy. It is not mine.

Hard-Learned Lessons

2009-09-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

Each generation, it seems, has to learn first hand of the depth of corruption of the Democratic party. After years of bitching and complaining, name-calling and slander about the Republican party and it's leadership, the Democrats have finally convinced millions of otherwise apathetic young voters to come out to the polls and end the Republican corruption. Well, congratulations to you, young voters. You have gotten your wish. Who knows how long this brave new socialist world will last? You have believed in a saviour, and now he (with the assistance of his co-conspirators, thugs, demagogues, criminals, liars, thieves, and henchmen) is busy delivering on his promises, by stealing money from people who work, and giving it to his own political supporters.

This change in government is not just switching from Republican to Democratic leadership as it has been in the past; since the Democratic party has become dominated by those whom we used to call Communists, Socialists, Fascists, and Anarchists, the whole system is in danger.

These people are trying to institute such changes in the American form of government that it is nearly as bad as if we had lost a war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and been taken over by soviet bureaucrats and regulators.

I can remember when I was a child, I used to hear a then-common phrase: "It's a free country, isn't it?", meaning "I can do whatever I want to, as long as it harms no one else". It's been decades since I've heard this phrase, or even the sentiment.

Over the past several years, I have heard the leftists repeat various versions of the Benjamin Franklin quote about freedom and security: "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." I don't know about whether they would deserve neither, but that is what they will get, for sure. The quote has been used to beat up on George W. Bush, because of the Patriot Act, wherein the government took upon themselves the right to monitor communications with foreign enemies.

Now, we are in a great battle about nationalized health care, where the left wants the government to provide us with the SECURITY of free health care, in exchange for our FREEDOM to choose whether we want to participate. They, who know better than we, will TAKE our money, and give us minimal health care, after siphoning off trillions of dollars for the vast bureaucracy that will be administering this boon from our "generous" government.

The opportunities for corruption are vast. It will be bad for our country, and bad for our citizens, and bad for the people of the earth. I am against it, but there seems little I can do about it. Too bad. I am mostly concerned with the lower quality of life that my children and their children will enjoy due to this power grab. It is very sad.

Vasquez Rocks

2009-08-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

I climed up here just before closing time a few weeks ago.

McDonald's

2009-08-21T22:15:00.001-07:00

McDonald's
Originally uploaded by jhcarr830

Sepia toned. I like the diagonals in this picture.

Winston Churchill on Islam

2009-08-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

WINSTON CHURCHILL ON ISLAM - IN 1899!

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!

Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."

-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

Hey Poor People - Listen Up!

2009-08-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

If you think that increasing taxes on "the rich" is not going to affect you, then you are going to be disappointed.

Let me give you a lesson in very basic economics. Don't worry, there is no mathematics involved, just clear, logical thinking.

1. Why are you poor?
2. Why are the rich rich?
3. Who pays the rich man's taxes?
4. Why does raising taxes on the wealthy hurt you, the poor?

1. Why are you poor?
You are poor for one or more of the following reasons: A) You are stupid. B) You are ignorant. C) You are smart (capable), but make stupid and/or ignorant decisions. D) You are smart, but made stupid and/or ignorant decisions. E) "The Man", or "Whitey" is keeping you down. F) Your parents fucked up and damaged you for life, rendering you incapable of overcoming your situation, essentially mentally and socially retarded. G) You had some or a lot of bad luck.

2. Why are the rich rich?
The rich, successful, wealthy, or whatever you want to call them are successful for one or more of the following reasons: A) They are smart. B) They make smart decisions. C) They work hard for success, even if "The Man" or "Whitey" is trying to keep them down. D) Even if their parents fucked up, they realized that now they are independent adults, their past does not have to dictate what their future will be. E) They had some or a lot of good luck.

3. Who pays the rich man's taxes?
The rich man, nearly every one in America, got rich through his own efforts. Most of the people whom you would call "rich" own some kind of business, that sells stuff you want to buy, or services you want to buy, or sells stuff or services that companies you buy stuff or services from want to buy. In other words, they start a company; sometimes it is a corporation, sometimes it is just a little mom-and-pop store. They work hard. When the government steals money from them (which the government calls "taxes"), the business owner increases the price of the stuff or services that he is selling. It cannot be any other way. He cannot pay money he does not have; he has to get it from you.

4. Why does raising taxes on the wealthy hurt you, the poor?
Now that you know how it works, here is what you need to understand: Raising taxes on the rich is raising taxes on EVERYONE, including YOU! YOU are paying the taxes, not "The Rich". YOU are paying. When you pay more for stuff you NEED, you have less money left over for stuff you WANT.

The message you need to understand is, whenever the government raises taxes on ANYONE, it is raising taxes on EVERYONE!

So, stop being stupid, stop being ignorant, stop doing stupid and ignorant things, like voting for politicians that raise taxes. Learn how to manage your money, start a business, and become rich yourself.

THIS IS THE REAL AMERICAN DREAM! GETTING TO KEEP THE MONEY YOU EARN!

Rich People

2009-08-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Why are wealthy people always vilified? They aren't all evil, any more than all members of any particular group are evil. The rich, in our country, usually got rich because they did something great, and America allows people to be rewarded for doing great things. (It used to, anyway).

Rich people are generally smart, and very good with managing their money.

I never had a good job that was owned by a poor person. I did work for a less than rich person once, and during that time I always had to worry about first, getting a paycheck, and then, my paycheck clearing the bank.

Just like I don't want to go to a doctor who drives a crappy old car and lives in a cheap apartment, I do not want to work for anyone who is not personally rich. Wealth is a sign of competence. It makes me comfortable to know that the people who issue me my paycheck know exactly what they are doing, and that I can count on continued income, and always getting paid for the work I do.

When did Doctors become the Bad Guys?

2009-08-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

When did Doctors become the bad guys? President Fuck Up says that doctors are performing unnecessary procedures just to collect higher reimbursements from insurance companies. What a laugh! Fraud does indeed occur, but when it does, it is big news. What that means is that it is extremely rare.

And, what is so terrible about health insurance as it now stands? My health insurance has enabled me to be able to afford to save the lives of my children and wife, and myself, on numerous occasions. The insurance companies are good, not bad.

The fact that some people have no insurance is what is bad. This can be remedied by congress, but they want to take a sledge hammer to fix something that only takes a quarter of a turn with a screwdriver. They want to dismantle the entire system of health care, including how doctors perform their jobs, and how much they can be paid, when the market place can handle that much more efficiently than any government regulation could.

As for me, I would be uncomfortable getting medical care from a doctor who drives a 1992 Pinto to work, and has plastic stacking chairs on bare linoleum floors in his waiting room. He had damn well better be driving at least a $50,000 car, and living in a nicer house than me. That means he is good at what he does. When I am sick, or a member of my family is sick, I want the most competent help I can find, not the cheapest.

Taxation is Killing the American Dream

2009-08-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

Freedom includes the right to earn and keep your own money. People who work hard should be allowed to keep their money. That, indeed, is the American dream, not owning a house and driving a big car. The right to put yourself into a better position than you started out, by hard work, saving, sacrificing, and careful planning.

My parents had a better life than their parents, and I had a better life than my parents. This was accomplished with hard work (and as always, some good luck). But we were allowed to keep nearly all of what we earned. Now, with all the massive spending of the new federal government, under the administration of President Fuck Up and the Chicago mob, taxes will only go up. They propose new taxes on everything. They are even proposing taxing the air we breathe! Carbon dioxide is going to be taxed! That is absurd. CO2 is a natural gas that is generated whenever anything burns, and by all living animals as they breathe. CO2 is used by plants and converted back into O2, which is what we need to live. Taxing it is outrageous.

Global Whining

2009-08-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

Global whining alarmists are touting that the consensus of scientists around the world agrees that the average global temperature is increasing. So what? Big deal. The earth’s temperature has been fluctuating for billions of years. They claim that human production of CO2 is causing it. Maybe it is true, but maybe it isn’t.

A consensus does not make a scientific fact. In the 1700s and 1800s, the vast consensus of scientists agreed that Negroes (black Africans) were an inferior race of humans. In the 1900s, the consensus of German scientists, along with many others around the world, agreed that Jews were an inferior race. These scientific “conclusions” were used to justify slavery and mass murder.

Carl Sagan, a scientist, made a statement regarding extraordinary claims: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” There has been no “extraordinary evidence” regarding global whining, just computer models. These computer models, when fed information from the past several decades, are not even able to project the actual climate we are having today. How can they be relied upon to predict what will happen in the distant future?

One last thing – it is well known among scientists and scientifically literate people (who are not ideologically driven), that correlation is not necessarily causation. Just as ice cream sales increase in hot weather, it is not accurate to say that increased ice cream sales causes hot weather, likewise, just as CO2 levels rise with warmer average temperatures, it is not accurate to say that the CO2 causes the higher temperatures. They may go hand in hand, but it may be that either one causes the other, or that a third factor is involved.

Health Care Reform

2009-07-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

The Democrats and President Obama are trying to institute health care reform. They will create such a fucked-up mess that everyone will pay more and suffer more. Health care will benefit only people who are not very ill.

The blame lies, in my opinion, with the REPUBLICANS. For several years, they had virtual control of the legislative and executive branches of government. Everybody who thinks knows that health care is in need of reform. Republican sponsored reform would have been fucked-up too, but it would have been better than the abortion being sponsored by the Democrats now. When they had the opportunity, the Republicans simply ignored the problem. Too expensive, so we will just ignore it.

Every thinking person knows that in politics, as in everything else in life, the pendulum swings back and forth. The Republicans could not hold on to power indefinitely, so they should have addressed this issue when they had the chance.

Now we have this national nightmare that will last for generations before being fixed or abandoned. Thanks a lot, you self-serving politicians who call yourselves Republicans. You deferred the decision until the neo-communists who call themselves the Democratic party were able to call all the shots.

I would like to propose that we march to Washington, DC, with pitchforks, torches, and AK-47's, and lynch the entire lot of them; both Houses of Congress, the Executive branch, and the Supreme Court.

Of course, realistically speaking, the problem is, we would simply have replacement politicians filling in the gap, probably in about two weeks, and everything would be back the way it was.

Maybe a military takover would be good?

Just thinking out loud.

St. Augustine on Curiosity

2009-07-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity... It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.

- St. Augustine

Articles worth looking at today

2009-05-20T14:34:00.000-07:00

Adios, New York

The Great Ethanol Scam

Letter from a Dodge Dealer

Far Left Crank Now Poking Fun at Crippled Conservatives

Response to Joe Klein

Joe Biden under Enemy Fire in Bosnia

Iran tests missile that could hit Israel, Europe

Great financial advice

2009-05-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Obvious to people who are good with money, but for the rest of us, this is the best advice I've heard in a long time:

... "I realize $400 seems like a lot of money right now, but it’s not the end of the world. Get on a written, monthly budget, and give every dollar you make a name on paper before the month begins. You’ll have to pay some Stupid Tax, but you can take care of this in no time if you stop eating out for a while and have a monster, blow-out garage sale this weekend. Close the account, cut that card into tiny, little pieces, and never go back into debt again!" ...

Here's another great piece of advice I overheard years ago: "If you don't save money, you're stupid!"

The Democrat War on Morality

2009-05-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

I take my title from the ridiculously titled book, "The Republican War on Science".

Government policy decisions often, if not always, have a moral component. Intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals (who are very influentual in the Democrat party) try very hard to remove morality from any consideration of the value of a proposed policy...unless, of course, the moral position supports their idea.

As an atheist, I do not believe there is an absolute standard of morality dictated by an omnipotent supernatural being. So what am I talking about? Morality is whatever we say it is, right? Well, yes. The important thing that these "intellectuals" seem to forget is that we, as a society, do say what morality is.

Even if the ultimate source of our western (or American at least) morality is ultimately from Judeo-Christian influences, the fact remains that we have a moral code. Some aspects of this moral code are in dispute, some are under attack; however, there is still an underlying, albeit unspoken sense of what is right and what is wrong. Nearly everyone has it. Liberals and conservatives each agree on most questions of right and wrong. Who would argue against this list?

Wrong
Murder
Robbery
Rape
Torture
Imprisonment

Right
Fairness
Kindness
Saving a Life
Sharing
Freedom of Choice
Justice

Don’t all Americans find the practice of killing infant girls (in China) repulsive? Don’t we all find the radical Muslim practice of kidnapping and beheading westerners to be evil? Didn’t we all think the murder, in German death camps, of over 12 million humans to be an abhorrent and despicable action? Don’t we all think the deliberate starvation of entire populations in Africa to be evil? Can you remember how you felt in the hours and days after the attacks on America on September 11, 2001? Didn’t you cry, thinking of the thousands of murdered people, the families left without a father or without a mother, the sons, daughters, wives, husbands, and friends murdered by murderous fanatical religious freaks?

So, why do "liberals" and "conservatives" (as opposed to the political left and right, which are affiliated, but not necessarily the same) disagree on what is right and wrong? It appears to be a matter of perspective. Most people don’t think about why they feel the way they do, they just feel that way. If you are opposed to capital punishment but in favor of legal abortion, or vice-versa, it does not make you a bad person, even if demagogues (A.K.A. politicians) try to convince you otherwise.

Capital Punishment
Liberal: Killing is wrong, and allowing the state to kill for revenge is also wrong. Sometimes innocent persons are convicted and executed. Because of this, capital punishment should be eliminated.
Conservative: When an innocent person is killed, the murderer should pay with his life. To do otherwise is a mockery of principles of justice. The system is not perfect, but there are many safeguards built into our legal system, so the incidence of innocent people being executed is extremely rare. Though tragic, this is not a good reason to abandon the principle of executing murderers.

Abortion
Liberal: A woman has the right to decide what to do with her own body. It is a matter of personal freedom.
Conservative: A baby is the most innocent person there is. Aborting a baby is as evil as killing a newborn infant.

Torture
Liberal: We must never use enhanced interrogation techniques, because it is torture. Torture is wrong under all circumstances. Information obtained under torture is unreliable.
Conservative: When the lives of thousands of Americans are at stake, enhanced interrogation techniques should be used to protect lives. Aggressive interrogation has been effective in getting valuable, reliable information that has protected American lives.

…and so the debate goes. Both sides have merit, but often one side prevails and imposes its will on the other. This leads to discontentment, which politicians exploit for their own advantage. What should be done is compromise. This partly assuages the deeply felt feelings of each side of an issue. For example, abortion should be legal up to a certain point, but not after. Capital Punishment should be an option only when the case and evidence is reviewed by an impartial panel of judges. Enhanced interrogation techniques must only be used under the approval of a bipartisan panel of Senators and the President.

Morality is an important part of being human. Even criminals have their own moral code. Our laws and policies must be moral. If they are not, then people lose respect for the law in general, and ignore it. This will lead to social chaos.

Andrew McCarthy's Letter to Attorney General Holder

2009-05-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Declining the invitation to endorse a pre-determined policy of releasing trained terrorists into the United States

By email (to the Counterterrorism Division) and by regular mail:

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.

Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases. An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.

The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants -- or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith. Nevertheless, it is quite clear -- most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany -- that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.
Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities. This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case. Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate America’s “commitment to the rule of law.” Indeed, you elaborated, “Nothing symbolizes our [administration’s] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay…. President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.]” (Emphasis added.)

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting. After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.

For what it may be worth, I will say this much. For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated. Essentially, there have been two camps. One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s. The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission. Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorism—a new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.

There are differences in these various proposals. But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing: Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted. We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from theUnited States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade.

Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties. It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States. I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Reno—as I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the “blind sheikh” would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment. In any event, I’ve always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology. Thus, my conservative political views aside, I’ve made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, who’ve thought tapping my experience would be beneficial. It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.

Very truly yours,

/S/

Andrew C. McCarthy

cc: Sylvia T. Kaser and John DePue
National Security Division, Counterterrorism Section

Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld

2009-04-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

Great review. Red Eye is my favorite television show. Watching it is addictive.

‘Red Eye’ at 500
by Matt Patterson

Is there a stranger show on television than “Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld“?

Careening between train wreck and brilliance (often within the same five minute segment), “Red Eye” has been providing necrophilia jokes and toilet humor alongside serious political commentary and biting social satire for over two years now. In fact, “Red Eye,” which airs nightly at 3:00 am on Fox News, recently celebrated its 500th show. In honor of this momentous occasion, I would like to address those poor unfortunate viewers who have yet to tune in, and inform them why they need to start warming up their TiVos like, NOW! people.

The ringleader is Greg Gutfeld, former editor of Maxim U.K and Men’s Health magazines. His cohorts include Bill Schulz (the best side-kick since Andy Richter) and droll and dreary ombudsman Andy Levy. This crew is rounded out nightly by a rotating rogue’s gallery of bloggers, comedians, news anchors, beauty queens, medical examiners, rockers, freaks, and former C.I.A. agents. Oh, and Gutfeld’s mom.

The beauty of this ever simmering stew is you never know how it’s going to go down - sometimes it warms the belly, and sometimes you gag on the mix (Nutmeg?! In stew?!). You find ostensibly serious people being unexpectedly hilarious (Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter’s fierce, young-Mr. Burns-visage belies a devastating Don Rickles wit), and ostensibly funny people addressing serious subjects - all with wildly varying success.
“Red Eye” is like a great punk song - individually the instruments are out of tune and none of the musicians have the slightest clue what they’re doing. But somehow it all comes together in a life-affirming vortex of awesomeness that makes you bang your head and pump your fist and thank God that the Ramones were too stupid and too smart to do anything else.

But “Red Eye” is not a punk song - it is a television show. Its sire is not the Ramones, but Steve Allen (R.I.P.), a mantle once picked up and gloriously carried by David Letterman, before he got infected with namby-pamby liberalism and I-know-what’s-best-for-you paternalism.

“Red Eye” will have none of that, and as a consequence is both the most daring and disgusting hour on the air. The “Red Eye” crew act like they are not even aware that they are on television half the time; or at least, they act like they are acting like that, and that is their genius.

So the question is not really “Is there a stranger show on television?” to which the answer is manifestly no. The question is “Is there a better show on television?”

Yes, frequently. But watch anyway. We’d hate for these boys to have to get real jobs.

Matt Patterson is a columnist and commentator whose work has appeared in The Washington Examiner, The Baltimore Sun, Townhall, and Pajamas Media. He is the author of “Union of Hearts: The Abraham Lincoln & Ann Rutledge Story.” His email is mpatterson.column@gmail.com.

Americans with No Abilities Act

2009-04-15T12:56:00.001-07:00

Washington, DC - Congress is considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans.

The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.

'Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,' said California Senator Barbara Boxer. 'We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.'

In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.

Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement warehouse stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).

Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, 'Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?'

'As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,' said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint , Michigan , due to her inability to remember "Righty-Tighty, Lefty-Loosey." 'This new law should be real good for people like me,' Gertz added. With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Said Senator Dick Durban (D-IL): 'As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.

'Cause I'm the Tax Man

2009-04-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

What's next? Is nothing sacred in this world?

From BBC:

Sweden targets strippers for tax

Sweden's tax authorities are seeking the bare facts about webcam strippers' income, estimating that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law.

The search involves tax officials examining websites that feature Swedish strippers, in an effort to identify them and chase them for tax returns.

The tax loss is estimated at about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually.

Project leader Dag Hardyson said 200 Swedish strippers had been investigated so far. He said the total could be 500.

"They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," said Mr Hardyson, head of the tax authority's national project on internet trade.

The investigation into strippers is part of a wider tax project that includes online poker and fake trader locations.

Detective work

Mr Hardyson told BBC News that the strippers could be liable to pay about half of their earnings in tax. Striptease via webcam is quite legal in Sweden, unlike prostitution, he added.

"I don't think they have any costs really - almost 100% of what they earn is pocketed. Many have regular work and this is extra income. We want them to register their activity as a business - it's still taxable, even if it's a hobby," he said.

He stressed the difficulty of identifying strippers, saying the contact information on the websites was often "not obvious".

"We have to visit the companies behind the websites to get the information, then we have to work with the electronic wallets where the money is going in."

He said the Swedish tax authorities had been tipped off about Swedish internet strippers by the Dutch authorities, who had started a similar investigation earlier.

Web search tools like spiders had failed to detect the Swedish strippers.

"When we investigated the sites manually it worked better," he added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7993694.stm

Taxman
by George Harrison:

Let me tell you
How it will be.
There's one for you,
Nineteen for me,

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Should five percent
Appear too small,
Be thankful I don't
Take it all.

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

If you drive a car,
I'll tax the street.
If you try to sit,
I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold,
I'll tax the heat.
If you take a walk,
I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

Don't ask me what I want it for,
(Uh-uh, Mr. Wilson.)
If you don't want to pay some more.
(Uh-uh, Mr. Heath.)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman.

And my advice to
Those who die.
(Taxman!)
Declare the pennies
On your eyes.
(Taxman!)

'Cause I'm the taxman.
Yeah, I'm the taxman,
And you're working for no one but me.
(Taxman!)

The New Politics of Fear

2009-02-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." - Barack Hussein Obama, January 20, 2009

From the Wall Street Journal:

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

Obama's Rhetoric Is the Real 'Catastrophe'

By BRADLEY R. SCHILLER
President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

This was reflected in unemployment rates. The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That's more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%). You simply can't equate 7.6% unemployment with the Great Depression.

Other economic statistics also dispel any analogy between today's economic woes and the Great Depression. Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That's comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%.

Auto production last year declined by roughly 25%. That looks good compared to 1932, when production shriveled by 90%. The failure of a couple of dozen banks in 2008 just doesn't compare to over 10,000 bank failures in 1933, or even the 3,000-plus bank (Savings & Loan) failures in 1987-88. Stockholders can take some solace from the fact that the recent stock market debacle doesn't come close to the 90% devaluation of the early 1930s.

Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.

Mr. Schiller, an economics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, is the author of "The Economy Today" (McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Juan Williams Agrees With Me

2009-01-21T18:42:00.000-08:00

He must have been reading my mind.

Here is the article:

Judge Obama on Performance Alone
Let's not celebrate more ordinary speeches.

By JUAN WILLIAMS

JANUARY 20, 2009, 11:31 P.M. ET

With the noon sun high over the U.S. Capitol, Barack Obama yesterday took the oath of office to become president of the United States. On one level, it was a simple matter of political process -- the symbolic transfer of power. Yet words alone cannot convey its meaning.

The calloused hands of slaves, the voices of abolitionists, the hearts of generations who trusted in the naïve promise that any child can become president, will find some reward in a moment that was hard to imagine last year, much less 50 years ago. Our history, so marred by the sin of slavery, has come to the day when a man that an old segregationist would have described as "tea-colored" -- the child of a white woman and an African immigrant, who identifies as a member of the long oppressed and despised black minority -- was chosen by a mostly white nation as the personification of America's best sense of self as a nation of power and virtue.

At the end of the 1965 march calling for passage of the Voting Rights Act, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said politics held the potential to reflect the brilliance of the American creed of justice for all, and a "society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience." Years of hard work lay ahead to shift racist attitudes born of political power being limited to white Americans, he said, then added that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. How long? Not long. Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King's moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?

If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else -- fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism -- then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.

During the Democrats' primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.

For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he'd long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.

The importance of a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions was frequently and embarrassingly lost. When Mr. Obama's opponents, such as the Clintons, challenged his lack of experience, or pointed out that he was not in the U.S. Senate when he expressed early opposition to the war in Iraq, they were depicted as petty.

Bill Clinton got hit hard when he called Mr. Obama's claims to be a long-standing opponent of the Iraq war "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." The former president accurately said that there was no difference in actual Senate votes on the war between his wife and Mr. Obama. But his comments were not treated by the press as legitimate, hard-ball political fighting. They were cast as possibly racist.

This led to Saturday Night Live's mocking skit -- where the debate moderator was busy hammering the other Democratic nominees with tough questions while inquiring if Mr. Obama was comfortable and needed more water.

When fellow Democrats contending for the nomination rightly pointed to Mr. Obama's thin proposals for dealing with terrorism and extricating the U.S. from Iraq, they were drowned out by loud if often vacuous shouts for change. Yet in the general election campaign and during the transition period, Mr. Obama steadily moved to his former opponents' positions. In fact, he approached Bush-Cheney stands on immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperate in warrantless surveillance.

There is a dangerous trap being set here. The same media people invested in boosting a black man to the White House as a matter of history have set very high expectations for him. When he disappoints, as presidents and other human beings inevitably do, the backlash may be extreme.

Several seasons ago, when Philadelphia Eagle's black quarterback Donovan McNabb was struggling, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh said the media wanted a black quarterback to do well and gave Mr. McNabb "a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve." Mr. Limbaugh's sin was saying out loud what others had said privately.

There is a lot more at stake now, and to allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.

President Obama deserves no less.

Mr. Williams, a political analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News, is the author of several books, including "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965" (Penguin, 1988), and "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- and What We Can Do About It" (Crown, 2006).

Happiness and Euphoria

2009-01-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Of all the delusions, self-delusion is the sweetest. - James H. Carr

Perhaps you remember the saying, "The only thing worse than not getting what you want, is getting what you want."

I have observed much celebration, happiness, expressions of satisfaction and general euphoria since the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama yesterday, as the 44th President of the United States of America, along with some extremely low-class, rude behaviour toward the outgoing President. These incidents of disrespect have only served to show what low class assholes Obama supporters, and Democrats in general are.

I believe that I will be one of the few people who are pleased during the Obama presidency, because I expect absolute disaster. With such low expectations, I can only be pleasantly surprised when he makes some policy decision that I like. As President, he can no longer evade making decisions. This will cause dissatisfaction among the various factions who support him. Making decisions and establishing policy will only decrease his popularity over time.

However, this decrease in popularity will be mitigated by a compliant, fawning, lying media; NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. Since these people in the media virtually coerced millions of less than clear-thinking (a.k.a. stupid) voters to elect Obama, by portraying him as some sort of miracle-working saint, they will be heavily invested in saving face by brushing aside and underplaying negative consequences of his policies, and spinning nearly everything as masterful, briliant, outstanding, inspiring. In a word, genius.

The news and entertainment media in this country, and throughout the world, really, chose this new figurehead to usher in a bright, brave new world, where hunger and misery will end, the lion shall lie down with the lamb, etc., and once again, the whole world will love the USA (which in fact was never the case). They successfully made millions of voters feel guilty at the prospect of voting against him because he is black, or African-American. Nobody wants to be thought of as racist, so this is one great way to prove that America is not racist. And, the mentality that has been fostered over the last 8 years that George Bush is Hitler, and has taken away all of our civil liberties, therefore ANYBODY would be an improvement, so long as he is a Democrat, has successfully convinced enough muddle-headed people to go out and vote for some vague, undefined "Hope", "Change We Can Believe In"; with empty, meaningless slogans like "Yes, we can!", and phrases like "Sea levels will drop", etc.

Martin Luther King said in his "I have a dream" speech, that he dreamed of the day when a man would be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. MLK was a great man, and that was a great sentiment. But people who voted for Obama because of his race (and they number in the tens of millions) are equally racist as those who voted against him because of his race (these number probably in the thousands). To judge a man because of his race is improper, immoral, and is the very definition of racism. Even if your judgement is to vote for him. America, and Democrats in particular, is not a color blind society. MLK looked forward to the day when it would be. It is sad that that day has not yet arrived, and may not arrive for many decades to come.

BHO will go down in the history books as the first African-American President, but he isn't, really. To me (a white person), an African-American, or Black American, is a descendant of slaves brought over from Africa in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. He (or she) is a person who has suffered, or whose parents and/or grandparents have suffered discrimination, revulsion, injustice, and general unfairness, solely because of their race. An African-American has suffered at the hands of an unfair system, even though great strides have been made in the last 50 years or so. An African-American has suffered from a "black" culture that rewards ignorance and ridicules education and accomplishment as selling out to the white man. An African-American, for the most part, has had to grow up in externally or internally imposed "ghettoes", or mostly black communities, with high unemployment and high crime rates. A young black man has an extremely high probability of dying before he reaches maturity, because of the crime and violence in these neighborhoods.

BHO is the son of a young white woman from a wealthy family. His mother was impregnated by a Kenyan philanderer, a serial inseminator, a womanizer, who abandoned his own flesh and blood; indeed, from my admitedly sketchy information, he fathered several children from various women over the years. He was, in my opinion, based on this, an irresponsible, immoral and cruel jerk, an asshole of the highest order. Any man who would abandon his own child is despicable, in my opinion.

BHO was raised in white society by a white grandmother, while he was virtually, partially abandoned by his own mother. He grew up as a brown-skinned white boy. He attended Harvard University. He grew up in Hawaii. He had priveleges, resources, and opportunities that would be the envy of most middle-class whites.

BHO is undoubtedly a smart man. It is apparent from listening to him. But smart does not mean wise. When the fate of millions of Americans is at stake, we need wisdom much more than high intelligence.

And, his abandonment issues leave me worried. Nobody could get away unscathed from those experiences.

I voted against him because I am not racist. His policies, his history, has shown him to be a knee-jerk liberal of the highest order, and a pandering, lying, slimey politician from the Chicago political environment, one of the most corrupt in the nation. I judged him by the content of his character and not the color of his skin.

This is a dark time for America (and I don't mean that as a pun). All great nations have their heyday, and then decline. I fear that America will begin to decline with the Obama era. The once bright "beacon on a hill" is fading, in my opinion.

If I am wrong, that will be wonderful. Perhaps some day we will be able to dig ourselves out of the mess and severe financial burden that the Democrats will be creating. But it's not likely. How many government programs have ever been terminated, after all?

If you disagree with me, then you are obviously stupid, and WORSE THAN HITLER!

Muslims and Socialists Unite to Urge Killing of Jews

2009-01-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

We should have never let these barbaric, cruel, evil muslims into our country. I say it's time to round them all up. I blame this on the election of Barack Hussein Obama.

Protester Calls for Jews to 'Go Back to the Oven' at Anti-Israel Demonstration
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Fox News

Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews.

Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters.

Most of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel's invasion of Gaza a "crime," while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a "terror state."

But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.

"Go back to the oven," she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

"You need a big oven, that's what you need," she yelled.

Millions of Jews were gassed and burned in crematoria throughout Europe during Adolf Hitler's rule of Germany. The protest organizers, asked to comment on the woman's overt call for Jewish extermination, said she was "insensitive" but refused to condemn her statement.

"She does not represent the opinions of the vast majority of people who were there," said Emmanuel Lopez, who helped plan the event, one of many sponsored nationwide on Dec. 30 by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism ) Coalition.

Lopez, a state coordinator for ANSWER, admitted there is a problem with anti-Semitism within his organization's ranks. But then he went on to call the supporters of Israel across the street "barbaric, racist" Zionist terrorists.

"Zionism in general is a barbaric, racist movement that really is the cause of the situation in the entire Middle East," Lopez said.

The unidentified woman, who protest organizers said was a Muslim, wasn't the only protester who raised hackles that day. Other demonstrators held signs that said "Nuke Israel," and a number made comparisons to the Holocaust, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

More than 670 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, have been killed in the 12 days of Israel's campaign in Gaza. At least 30 were killed Tuesday by Israeli shelling of a U.N. school that had been housing refugees. (Israel said its forces fired at militants who launched mortars from that location.)

"This is absolutely inhumane," said Ahmed Suid, who attended the demonstration, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "This is a modern-day Holocaust."

The comparisons of the Israelis to the Nazis has Jewish organizations concerned about a "growing trend" at protests in America, where they say hatred of Israel and Jews is being increasingly preached.

"We're worried about hate speech. We're worried because hate speech eventually leads to pain and suffering and death," said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been tracking Gaza protests.

"Comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are a deeply cynical perversion of history, an attempt to turn the tragedy that befell the Jewish people into a bludgeon against Israel," he said.

Even though police had to intercede and break up a potentially violent confrontation between the two factions at the Fort Lauderdale protest, organizers called it a success, saying it drew crowds of new activists.

"It was not just an academic exercise . . . not just a protest," Lopez told FOXNews.com. "It's a material force."

Eurabian Muslims Plan New Holocaust

2009-01-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

Didn't someone say, long ago, "Never Again"?

Here's the story:

European Jews Attacked in Response to Gaza Conflict
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Associated Press

PARIS - Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.

Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.

Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm.

In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week, opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.

France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence flaring when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, some 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis. A day earlier, his interior minister said she was concerned about the prospect of contagion and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to "preserve national unity."

Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi was giving a course to adults inside, authorities said. They said unlighted gasoline bombs were also found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue, but fled when the building's alarm went off.

"It could have been very, very serious," Partouche said in a telephone interview. "There were people inside; there could have been deaths."

He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.

"We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic," he said.

In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza. The group said it had recorded 20-25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.

London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.

Community Security Trust spokesman Mark Gardner said that in another incident last week a gang of 15-20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting "Jew" and "Free Palestine" at passers-by.

"It could get worse," Gardner said. "We tend to see these things happen in waves."

The government in Belgium on Tuesday ordered police in Antwerp and Brussels to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. Police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.

In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees have been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.

"They kept cursing and shouting at us," Ruvio told The Associated Press. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.

Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted "slaughter all the Jews."

"I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else. If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel," he said.

Religion of Peace Enforces its Rules

2008-06-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

The "Religion of Peace" at work in Iraq:

If you don't follow the beliefs and customs of the local MUSLIM religious fanatics, then you deserve to be RAPED, SHOT IN THE HEAD, or otherwise MURDERED.

From CNN:

'I killed her with a machine gun’
May 21, 2008

BASRA, Iraq (CNN) -- The man, blindfolded and handcuffed, crouches in the corner of the detention center while an Iraqi soldier grills him about rampant crimes being carried out by gangs in the southern city of Basra.
"How many girls did you kill and rape?" the soldier asks.
"I raped one, sir," the man responds.
"What was her name?"
"Ahlam," he says.
Ahlam was a university student in the predominantly Shiite city of Basra. The detainee said the gang he was in kidnapped her as she was leaving the university, heading home.
"They forced me, and I killed her with a machine gun, sir," he says.
The suspect, who is unshaven and appears to be in his 20s or 30s, was arrested by Iraq security forces after they retook most of Basra in April.
CNN was shown what authorities say was his first confession. On it are the names of 15 girls whom he admitted kidnapping, raping and killing. The youngest girl on the list was just 9 years old.
Basra turned into a battleground between warring Shiite factions vying for control of the country's oil-rich south after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Basra's streets teemed with Shiite militias armed with weapons, mostly from Iran, according to the Iraqi forces and the U.S. military.
For four years after the invasion, Basra was under the control of British forces, but they were unable to contain the violence and withdrew in September last year.
Women bore the brunt of the militias' extremist ideologies. The militants spray-painted threats on walls across Basra, warning women to wear headscarves and not to wear make-up. Women were sometimes executed for the vague charge of doing something "un-Islamic."
In the wasteland on the outskirts of Basra, dotted with rundown homes, the stench of death mixes with the sewage. Local residents told the Iraqi Army that executions often take place in the area, particularly for women, sometimes killed for something as seemingly inocuous as wearing jeans.
Militias implemented their own laws with abandon, threatening stores for displaying mannequins with bare shoulders or for selling Western music. Many store owners are still too frightened to speak publicly.
But the horrors of militia rule are now surfacing as some residents begin to feel more comfortable speaking out.
Inside her rundown home, Sabriya's watery eyes peer out from under her robe. She points to the first photo of one of her sons on the wall.
"This one was killed because he was drinking," she says.
She draws her finger across her neck and gestures at the next photo.
"This one was slaughtered for his car."
"This one the same," she adds, looking at the third.
Her three sons, her daughter and her sister were all killed by the hard-line militia. Her sister was slaughtered because she was a single woman living alone.
"They said [to her], 'Why don't you have a husband?' " Sabriya says. "They came in at night and put a pillow on her face and shot her in the head."
Sabriya lives on what was once dubbed "murder street" for the daily killings that happened there last year.
On the day CNN visited, dozens of young men sat where there used to be piles of bodies. Sheik Maktouf al-Maraiyani shudders at the memory.
"Every day, we would find 10 or 15 of our men killed," he says, adding sorrowfully "one of them was my son." His son was 25 years old.
Now, "murder street" is part of a citywide effort to get Basra back on its feet. In a project funded by U.S. forces, Sheikh Maktouf and others are being paid $20 a day and upwards to clean up trash.
Basra may be part of the country's oil rich south, but it wallows in its own sewage and trash. The stench of filth is impossible to escape. The effort also helps with the massive unemployment plaguing the city.
British forces officially handed over responsibility of Basra to Iraqi forces in December.
"The situation was so bad because the security forces were controlled by the militias," says Brig. Gen. Aziz al-Swady, who commands the 14th Iraq Army Divison.
To help curb the violence, British troops have returned to the city, adopting the U.S. approach of embedding with Iraqi units as advisers. The Iraqi prime minister also has flooded the city with additional troops, bringing in soldiers from western Iraq along with their American advisers.
"Now the citizens have started to trust the Iraqi security forces," said al-Swady.
The biggest difference is that residents are starting to leave their homes -- something unthinkable just a few months ago. At one of the parks in the city this past weekend, a father named Al'aa was out with his three young children and his wife.
"It's the first time that we have dared to come here in two years," he said.
The park was once often used for executions.
Everyone, residents and soldiers alike, knows the battle for Basra is not over. Militias still lurk in the shadows, and the security gains may not last without economic gains.
"The most important thing, our government must focus on finding jobs, different jobs for these people," says Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Azawi.

Freedom of Speech Dead in France

2008-06-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

In France, you can't say mean things, even if they are true.

From BBC News:
June 3, 2008

Bardot fined over racial hatred

A French court has fined former film star Brigitte Bardot 15,000 euros (£12,000) for inciting racial hatred.
She was prosecuted over a letter published on her website that complained Muslims were "destroying our country by imposing their ways".
It is the fifth time Ms Bardot been convicted over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. This is her heaviest fine so far.
The French film idol, who is 73, was not in court to hear the ruling.
The fine - equivalent to $23,000 - related to a letter she wrote in December 2006 to the then Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, which was published on her website, in which she deplored the slaughter of animals for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
She demanded that the animals be stunned before being killed.
She said she was "tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts".
In a letter to the court Ms Bardot, who is a prominent animal rights campaigner, insisted she had a right to speak up for animal welfare.
The prosecutor said she was weary of charging Ms Bardot with offences relating to racial hatred and xenophobia.

Witch Hunts Alive and Well in The Religion of Peace

2008-02-14T14:41:00.000-08:00

In Saudi Arabia, an illiterate woman has been sentenced to death for bewitching a man and making him impotent. In the twenty-first century.

(Pfizer would love to hire this woman. Viagra sales would skyrocket.)

Here is the article:

Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'
By Heba Saleh
BBC News

Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.

In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Tobacco - the Cure for Global Warming

2008-02-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

According to Global Warming Hysterics (GWH), the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by human activity, is causing the earth's average surface temperature to rise. In a decade or two, it will be hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalks of Green Bay, Wisconsin in January.

Well, since people are the cause of this catastrophe, then the cure is to get rid of people, right? Just in time, here is a report from the World Health Organization (WHO).

From the report:

Tobacco Could Kill 1 Billion by 2100
By EDITH M. LEDERER

NEW YORK (AP) — Tobacco use killed 100 million people worldwide in the 20th century and could kill 1 billion people in the 21st unless governments act now to dramatically reduce it, the World Health Organization said in a report Thursday.

Governments around the world collect more than $200 billion in tobacco taxes every year but spend less than one-fifth of 1 percent of that revenue on tobacco control, it said.

"We hold in our hands the solution to the global tobacco epidemic that threatens the lives of 1 billion men, women and children during this century," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said in an introduction to the report.

The problem is, WHO is recommending that all countries raise taxes to combat this and reduce the number of people who use tobacco.

So what is more important, saving the planet or saving a billion human lives?

WHO needs to get together with GWH and devise a strategy. People should be encouraged to smoke. We need fewer people, not more.

Archbishop of Canterbury Mentally Ill

2008-02-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

I knew that religious leaders were not exactly paragons of critical thinking, but surely the head of the Church of England should be smarter than this.

From the article:

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty".

Peaceful Hindu Religion Inspires Yet Another Murder

2008-01-02T11:29:00.000-08:00

Subhash Chander, 57, of Oak Forest, Il, murdered his daughter, son-in-law, and grandson because the daughter married the man, who was from a lower caste. Why is it that it's usually the "superior" or "spiritual", or "enlightened" classes that are doing most of the killing?

Season's Greetings

2007-12-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

To All My Democrat Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great.

Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

And to My Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

McCain Ignores Supporter while Lieberman Laughs

2007-12-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

"Senator McCain, I am one of your biggest fans. Senator? Senator?"

Muslims Enforce Slave Status of Women in Rape Case

2007-11-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

In Saudi Arabia men are men, and women are property. Justice is a foreign concept to these backward, barbaric people.

From the BBC:

Saudi gang rape sentence 'unjust'

A lawyer for a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-months in jail says the punishment contravenes Islamic law.

The woman was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man's car at the time of the attack.

When she appealed, judges doubled her sentence, saying she had been trying to use the media to influence them.

Her lawyer has been suspended from the case and faces a disciplinary session.

Abdel Rahman al-Lahem told the BBC Arabic Service that the sentence was in violation of Islamic law:

"My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international conventions," he said.

"The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit."

The lawyer also said that his client his will appeal against the decision to increase her punishment.

Segregation laws

According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia's Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in Qatif in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago.

Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years.

The rapists' sentences were also doubled by the court. Correspondents say the sentences were still low considering the rapists could have faced the death penalty.

The rape victim was punished for violating Saudi Arabia's laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.

On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence.

'Personal views'

Mr Lahem accused the court of letting personal views influence its decision:

"It seems that the sentence was influenced by the fact that the woman escalated the issue with her lawyer and also with the supreme judicial authorities," he said.

"This is astonishing because justice is supposed to be independent from all pressures as well as personal considerations, be it a feeling towards the lawyer or defendant herself," he added.

The Arab News quoted an official as saying the judges had decided to punish the girl for trying to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.

Mr Lahem said that the judges' decision to confiscate his license to work and stop him from representing his client is illegal.

Lieberman Agrees: Democrat Politicians are Paranoid Assholes

2007-11-09T17:13:00.000-08:00

"But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops. "
- Senator Joe Lieberman, Nov 9, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 9, 2007
Contact: Marshall Wittmann

Lieberman Delivers Major Address on "The Politics of National Security"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, November 8, 2007, Senator Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) addressed a Center for Politics and Foreign Relations/Financial Times breakfast at The Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The subject of Senator Lieberman’s talk was “The Politics of National Security,” in which he spoke about the future of the Democratic Party and its response to the threat of Iran.

In the address, Senator Lieberman stated, “Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

“Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.”

Senator Lieberman also indicated, “…there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.”

Below is the full text of his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

“Thank you so much, Bob, for that kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here this morning at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

SAIS bears the name of a great American statesman and strategist. Paul Nitze served in six presidential administrations, from the outbreak of World War II through the twilight of the Cold War. As the principal author of NSC-68, he quite literally wrote the road map that guided America to victory in our long struggle against the Soviet Union.

Nitze is a figure of particular resonance for me, and his career provides an ideal starting place for the subject of my talk today—the politics of national security.

As many of you know, Paul Nitze was a Democrat, but he worked for Republican presidents as well as Democratic ones. He did so because he understood that, whatever domestic political differences divide us, they must never blind us to the far more profound national security challenges we face together from abroad.

Throughout his long career, Nitze put country before party, policy before politics. Although he was a Democrat, he did not look to the Democratic Party to tell him how or what to think about foreign policy.

The foreign policy convictions that animated Nitze, it so happened, were also the convictions that animated the Democratic Party from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Confronted by the totalitarian threats first of fascism and then of communism, Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy forged a foreign policy that was simultaneously principled, internationalist, and tough-minded.

This was the Democratic Party I grew up in—a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders, to draw a clear line between what Nitze in NSC-68 called “the free world” of the West and the “slave society” behind the Iron Curtain. It was a party that grasped the inextricable link between the survival of freedom abroad and the survival of freedom at home—that recognized, as Nitze wrote, that “the idea of freedom is the most contagious idea in the world.” And it was also a party that understood that a progressive society must be ready and willing to use its military power in defense of its progressive ideals, in order to ensure that those progressive ideals survived.

This was the worldview captured by President Kennedy, when he pledged in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

That Democratic foreign policy tradition—the tradition of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy—collapsed just a few years later, in the trauma of Vietnam. And in its place, a very different worldview took root in the Democratic Party.

Reflexively skeptical about America’s authority to make moral judgments about the rest of the world, inclined to see the planet’s leading problems as more often the result of American involvement than American disengagement, and viscerally opposed to the use of military force, this rival worldview was in many respects the polar opposite of the self-confident and idealistic internationalism that had, just a few years earlier, animated the Democratic Party under President Kennedy.

Nitze was among those who courageously fought against this turn in the Democratic Party. He was a critic of the anti-war, isolationist candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 and later broke with Jimmy Carter over his arms control policy, which Nitze felt was weak and misguided. With Eugene Rostow, Nitze reestablished the Committee on the Present Danger, to keep alive the principled, internationalist, and muscular foreign policy tradition that had once lay at the heart of the Democratic Party.

Throughout this period, although Nitze remained a Democrat, he did not hesitate to challenge Democrats with whom he disagreed, or to work with Republicans with whom he agreed. One of the Republicans that Nitze came to support, in fact, was Ronald Reagan, himself a former Democrat, who welcomed Nitze to his foreign policy team after winning the presidency in 1980.

Reagan was the last president Nitze would serve, but in the proud legacy he has left, Nitze offers us important lessons for our own time about the politics of national security.

I arrived in Washington, D.C., as a first-term Senator in January 1989, just as Paul Nitze was departing government to return to his office here at SAIS. As I began to make foreign policy decisions in the Senate, I found myself drawn to the Democratic tradition of my youth—the morally self-confident, internationalist, and muscular tradition of Truman and Kennedy, whose inaugural address had inspired me to be a Democrat in the first place.

By the late 1980s, that tradition had been out of fashion in Democratic circles for twenty years. But then, Democrats had also been out of power for most of those twenty years—something that struck me and many others as more than coincidental. Simply put, the American people didn’t trust Democrats to keep them safe, and the McGovernite legacy was a big reason why.

By 1989, historic changes were taking place in the world that made the strong, self-confident foreign policy that linked Democrats like Truman and Kennedy to Republicans like Reagan look increasingly justified. Although too many Democrats had grown accustomed to criticizing Reagan’s approach to the Cold War as simplistic and dangerous, now the Soviet Union was imploding—economically and ideologically.

The collapse of communism emboldened those of us who felt that the McGovernite legacy had been a disastrous detour for the Democratic Party, and that it was time to reclaim our own lost tradition of strength abroad.

Then in 1991, America’s stunning victory in the first Gulf War presented anti-war Democrats with graphic proof of why their reflexive opposition to the use of military force was substantively wrong and probably politically wrong too.

It was not until the Clinton-Gore administration, however, that a tectonic shift really began inside the Democratic Party about foreign policy. In particular in the Balkans, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic—Democratic attitudes about the use of military power began to change.

Ironically, just as Democrats in the White House were growing more comfortable with the idea of an interventionist foreign policy, Republicans in Congress were moving in the opposite direction. In the absence of the Soviet Union, Republicans in the 1990s too often defined their own foreign policy vision as instinctive opposition to whatever President Clinton was doing in the world.

It is worth remembering, however, that some Republicans rose above this partisan reflex. Senator John McCain and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole courageously championed our intervention in the Balkans, without regard to domestic politics. But many others didn’t—and by the time of the 2000 presidential contest, it was the Democratic Party that was the more hawkish and internationalist, not the Republicans.

And in the 2000 campaign, it was Vice President Gore, who championed a values-based foreign policy, confident of America’s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He promised $50 billion more in new defense spending than his Republican opponent—and, to the dismay of the party’s left, made sure that the Democratic Party’s platform that year endorsed a national missile defense.

Incidentally, he also chose a hawkish Democratic senator from Connecticut as his running mate.

Governor Bush, by contrast, campaigned for the presidency promising a “humble foreign policy,” criticizing the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. He signaled his intention to appoint as his secretary of state a retired general, who had counseled against military intervention both in Iraq and in Bosnia. One of his top foreign policy advisers warned that “America’s armed forces are not a global police force”—a line that another prominent Republican noted was “closer to the spirit of George McGovern than Ronald Reagan.”

In the politics of national security, it seemed, Democrats and Republicans had traded places.

Certainly no one listening to George W. Bush in the fall of 2000 could have imagined that, scarcely four years later, this same man would stand on the west front of the Capitol building and pledge, in his second inaugural address, that “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.”

Indeed, as Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has written, it is easy to imagine these words being spoken by Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton. But it was George W. Bush, who—in the aftermath of September 11—responded to the attacks with a national security strategy not of isolationism or realpolitik—but by drawing on the same morally self-confident, internationalist, and muscular foreign policy tradition he had once scorned.

In particular, President Bush defined the nature of this new conflict in quintessentially liberal terms—as a struggle for freedom against tyranny. Like the Cold War, he described the war on terror as ultimately “between two fundamentally different visions of humanity.” On the one side of this struggle are the Islamist extremists who “promise paradise, but deliver a life of public beheadings and repression of women and suicide bombings.” And on the other side, “are huge numbers of moderate men and women…” in the Muslim world, who believe that “every life has dignity and value that no power on Earth can take away.”

That is why, to defeat radical Islam, President Bush has repeatedly argued that we must simultaneously fight—and fight hard—to uproot their networks, while offering our own, more powerful vision of the future, based on the universal values of freedom and justice and opportunity.

In this regard, the Bush administration’s post-9/11 ideological conversion confronted Democrats with an awkward choice. Should we welcome the President’s foreign policy flip-flop? Or should Democrats match it with a flip-flop of our own?

Between 2002 and 2006, there was a battle within the Democratic Party over just how to answer this question—a battle I was part of.

I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework that the President articulated for the war on terror as our own—because it was our own. It was our legacy from Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton.

We could rightly criticize the Bush administration when it failed to live up to its own rhetoric, or when it bungled the execution of its policies. But I felt that we should not minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamist extremism, or the fundamental rightness of the muscular, internationalist, and morally self-confident response that President Bush had chosen in response to it.

But that was not the choice most Democrats made. Instead, they flip-flopped.

It did not happen all at once. In the weeks and months after September 11, Democrats and Republicans put aside our partisan divisions and stood united as Americans. As late as October 2002, a Democratic-controlled Senate voted by a wide bipartisan margin to authorize President Bush to use military force against Saddam Hussein.

As the Iraq war became bogged down in a long and costly insurgency, however, and as President Bush’s approval ratings slipped, Democrats moved in a very different direction—first in the presidential campaign of 2004, where antiwar forces played a decisive role in the Democratic primaries. As you may recall, they also prevailed in Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary last year.

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.

Part of the explanation for this, I think, comes back to ideology. For all of our efforts in the 1990s to rehabilitate a strong Democratic foreign policy tradition, anti-war sentiment remains the dominant galvanizing force among a significant segment of the Democratic base.

But another reason for the Democratic flip-flop on foreign policy over the past few years is less substantive. For many Democrats, the guiding conviction in foreign policy isn’t pacifism or isolationism—it is distrust and disdain of Republicans in general, and President Bush in particular.

In this regard, the Democratic foreign policy worldview has become defined by the same reflexive, blind opposition to the President that defined Republicans in the 1990s – even when it means repudiating the very principles and policies that Democrats as a party have stood for, at our best and strongest.

To illustrate my point, I want to talk about a controversy in the current Democratic presidential primaries, in which I have played an unintended part.

I offered an amendment earlier this fall, together with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and impose economic sanctions on them.

The reason for our amendment was clear. In September, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker testified before Congress about the proxy war that Iran—and in particular, the IRGC and its Quds Force subsidiary—has been waging against our troops in Iraq. Specifically, General Petraeus told us that the IRGC Quds Force has been training, funding, equipping, arming, and in some cases directing Shiite extremists who are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers.

This charge had been corroborated by other sources, including the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, the independent assessment of the Iraqi Security Forces led by General Jim Jones, as well as the on-the-ground reports of our division commanders in Iraq.

It was also consistent with nearly three decades of experience with the IRGC, which has been implicated in a range of terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies—long before the invasion of Iraq.

In light of this evidence, Senator Kyl and I thought that calling for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization was a no brainer. Rather than punishing Iranians indiscriminately, it would apply a set of targeted economic sanctions against the part of the Iranian regime that was responsible for the murder of our troops in Iraq.

One big reason Kyl and I thought that calling for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization would be politically uncontroversial was because a bipartisan group of 68 senators, including several of the Democratic presidential candidates, had already signed onto a piece of legislation introduced earlier in the year that asked for the IRGC’s designation along exactly the same lines as our amendment. Whatever the differences or disagreements on foreign policy or even on Iran, I assumed that tougher, targeted economic sanctions against the IRGC were something that we could all agree on.

I was wrong.

What happened instead is a case study in the distrust and partisan polarization that now poisons our body politic on even the most sensitive issues of national security.

First, several left-wing blogs seized upon the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, offering wild conspiracy theories about how it could be used to authorize the use of military force against Iran.

These were absurd arguments. The text of our amendment contained nothing—nothing—that could be construed as a green light for an attack on Iran. To claim that it did was an act of delusion or deception.

On the contrary, by calling for tougher sanctions on Iran, the intention of our amendment was to offer an alternative to war.

Nonetheless, the conspiracy theories started to spread. Although the Senate passed our amendment, 76-22, several Democrats, including some of the Democratic presidential candidates, soon began attacking it—and Senator Clinton, who voted for the amendment. In fact, some of the very same Democrats who had cosponsored the legislation in the spring, urging the designation of the IRGC, began denouncing our amendment for doing the exact same thing.

The problem with the Kyl-Lieberman amendment of course had little to do with its substance, and a lot to do with politics.

I asked some of my Senate colleagues who voted against our amendment: “Do you believe the evidence the military has given us about the IRGC sponsoring these attacks on our troops?” Yes, they invariably said.

“Don’t you support tougher economic sanctions against Iran?” I asked. Again, yes—no question.

So what’s the problem, I asked.

“It’s simple,” they said. “We don’t trust Bush. He’ll use this resolution as an excuse for war against Iran.”

I understand that President Bush is a divisive figure. I recognize the distrust that many Americans feel toward his administration. I recognize the anger and outrage that exists out there about the war in Iraq.

But there is something profoundly wrong—something that should trouble all of us—when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.

There is likewise something profoundly wrong when we see candidates who are willing to pander to this politically paranoid, hyper-partisan sentiment in the Democratic base—even if it sends a message of weakness and division to the Iranian regime.

For me, this episode reinforces how far the Democratic Party of 2007 has strayed from the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and the Clinton-Gore administration.

That is why I call myself an Independent Democrat today. It is because my foreign policy convictions are the convictions that have traditionally animated the Democratic Party—but they exist in me today independent of the current Democratic Party, which has largely repudiated them.

I hope that Democrats will one day again rediscover and re-embrace these principles, which were at the heart of our party as recently as 2000. But regardless of when or if that happens, those convictions will continue to be mine. And I will continue to fight to advance them along with like-minded Democrats and like-minded Republicans.

Some of you in this room are students at the beginning of what will be long and distinguished careers in public policy and public service. Chances are, you already have formed some strong convictions about American foreign policy, and for that reason, identify more with one party than the other.

But as you consider your future, I ask you to reflect for a moment on the past, and the dramatic shifts that I have described in the foreign policy orthodoxy of Democrats and Republicans alike over the past sixty years.

These shifts are almost certain to continue to occur. Just as the foreign policy convictions of the Democratic Party of 2008 are very different from those of the Democratic Party of 2000, so too will the Democratic Party of 2016 and 2028 look very different from the Democratic Party of today.

I ask that as future practitioners of foreign policy, you do not become so wedded to a party that you are unwilling to diverge from it, when your convictions diverge from it. Let your views about national security determine your politics, rather than the other way around.

If you choose to identify as a Democrat or a Republican, in other words, I encourage each of you to be independent Democrats and independent Republicans.

It may mean that you belong to a smaller and, at times, lonelier caucus. You may even find yourself on the losing end of an election or two. But far more important, you will not lose your convictions about what you believe is best for the security of our great country—and that, as Paul Nitze understood, is what matters most.

Thank you so much.”

Pious Muslims Murder School Children

2007-11-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

59 schoolchildren killed in Afghan blast

(The "Religion of Peace" strikes again. Thank Allah for the peaceful ways he has taught his devout followers.)

By FISNIK ABRASHI, Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan - Dozens of schoolchildren and five teachers were among those killed in a suicide attack in northern Afghanistan earlier this week — the country's deadliest since the fall of the Taliban — the government said Friday.

The 59 schoolchildren had lined up to greet a group of lawmakers visiting a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan on Tuesday when a suicide bomber detonated explosives.

"The education minister has ordered that no children should be ever again be used in these sort of events," said Zahoor Afghan, an Education Ministry spokesman. He said the children ranged in age from 8 to 18.

In all, the explosion claimed the lives at least 75 people, including several parliamentarians, and wounded 96. It was the deadliest attack in the country since the toppling of Taliban regime from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared three days of mourning Wednesday and ordered an investigation. No group has claimed responsibility, and the Taliban denied any involvement.

Also Friday, NATO and Afghan troops battled Taliban fighters near Gulistan district in western Farah province. The soldiers seized the district center, killing up to 20 suspected militants who overran it last week, said Gen. Abdul Rahman Sarjang, the provincial police chief.

On Thursday, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops surrounded a compound where militants had gathered near Tirin Kot, in Uruzgan province, sparking a clash which left seven suspected Taliban fighters dead, said Juma Gul Hamat, the provincial police chief. Four militants were detained, he said.

There were no casualties among coalition and Afghan forces, Hamat said.

In southern Zabul province, Taliban militants on motorbikes ambushed and killed Shahjoy's district chief and two bodyguards as they were shopping on Thursday, said Mohammad Rasool Khan, a district police chief.

Coalition and Afghan troops, meanwhile, came under fire from Taliban insurgents in southern Helmand province's Nahr Surk district on Wednesday, a coalition statement said.

"The combined force immediately engaged the Taliban fighters with small-arms fire and close air support, killing many of the insurgents before they fled the area," it said.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the Taliban's ouster. More than 5,700 people, mostly militants, have died so far this year in insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Separately, a British soldier was killed Friday in a vehicle accident in Afghanistan, the British Ministry of Defense said.

Associated Press writer Amir Shah in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Americans at War

2007-10-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

US Army taking care of business:

Not smart to shoot at United States Marines:

The US Air Force is not slacking either:

Muslims Still Murdering Their Daughters and Sisters

2007-10-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

Thank Allah for the civilizing influence of Islam. Otherwise, who knows what else these people might do?

Honour crime fear of Syria women
By Lina Sinjab
BBC News, Damascus

Seventeen-year-old Bushra is too scared to give her real name. She talks in a low, trembling voice, her face full of fear.
"They want to shed my blood, they want to kill me," she says, as she recounts how she escaped being murdered by members of her own family in a so-called "honour killing".
A Sunni Muslim, she had fallen in love with Fadel, from Syria's Alawite Muslim minority. He went to her family to ask for her hand in marriage, but he was rejected.
The family said Bushra must marry her cousin. But on their wedding day, she ran away with the man she loved and family members began to hunt her down, to "erase the dishonour" she had caused.
Bushra's story is not an exceptional one in Syria, where women's organisations estimate more than 200 women are murdered every year by brothers, cousins or fathers.
But she is one of the lucky ones. Bushra was arrested after her family reported her to the police, and taken into custody.
The juvenile centre where now lives gives her some protection, but her freedom of movement is severely limited.
'Rehabilitation'
The Syrian authorities are trying to crack down on the practice of "honour killing", and they have widespread support.
About 10,000 people have signed a petition calling for an end to the practice, in a campaign backed by senior Muslim officials.
Although Bushra has been in contact with the family, her eldest sister told her not to come back unless she married her cousin.
"She said: 'Even if you do (get married), hide for two or three months until things calm down. But don't come now, the family will definitely kill you'," Bushra tells me.
So she waits at the centre run by the National Organisation for the Development of Women (NODW) and the interior ministry, whose aim is to rehabilitate the girls and get them ready for a new life.
Many of them are serving sentences for vagrancy, prostitution, begging or running away.
But when they leave, they are still at risk, as the case of 16-year-old Zahra al-Ezzo tragically showed.
Zahra was kidnapped and raped by a family friend. The family reported the incident to the police and three days later the kidnapper, Taiseer Muhanna, was arrested and Zahra was freed.
He was sent into jail and she was brought to the juvenile centre, where she remained for 10 months until her family had her released after arranging that she marry her cousin.
One month later, Zahra's brother Fayez paid the young couple a visit. On the third morning of his stay, he murdered her while she was asleep.
"Zahra was a victim at the beginning and a victim at the end," says NODW head Rania al-Jabiri.
Her organisation is campaigning along with other groups for a change in the law. They have prepared a draft law which has been passed to parliament.
"We cannot do everything. We need the whole society with us to change this idea. It takes time and a change in mentality," she says.
It is an issue for all communities - Christian, Muslim and Druze - says Daed Musa, a lawyer and women's rights activist
"The laws are old and go back to the 1940s. No woman can feel safe under the current legislation."
Murders considered to have been in defence of honour are not considered a "crime" under Syrian law, but an "offence". It carries a maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment, but could be reduced to a month by a judge.
Some families entrust the task of erasing dishonour to a juvenile, further reducing the penalty.
Cultural change
After Zahra's death, the NODW renewed the campaign, circulating the petition and mobilising religious clerics to denounce the killing.
Syria's top Sunni cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun, rejects any suggestion that "honour crime" is sanctioned by Islam.
He explains that Islamic law requires four witnesses for the crime of adultery - an almost impossibly high burden of proof, which means in effect that no-one can be found guilty of it.
The mufti believes, however, that the starting point should be in education and tolerance especially with religious preachers.
"It is difficult to change laws that people are used to it and considered it as Sharia. In many cases, it is traditions rather than laws," he says.
"What we need is to educate people and spread awareness among the society. The problem is when you have people preaching at mosques and don't have a profound knowledge on Islam."
No women can be protected of an act of killing unless legal changes are introduced. This will take political will to actually happen. Until then, women in Syria will still be at risk.

Monument to Gullibility Completed

2007-10-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

The world's fourth largest church is built at the shrine of Fatima in Portugal.

This is where the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in 1917.

Children can be forgiven for believing in magic, but how ignorant and gullible does one have to be to believe as an adult?

Oh, yeah. I forgot. I guess most adults are that ignorant and gullible. Just look at all the churches and religions in the world. And don't even get me started about the casinos.

Turks: Stupider Than Ever

2007-10-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

Here is the article. I will add emphasis and comments as needed.

US Armenian vote: Readers' views Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Washington after a US congressional committee voted to recognise the mass killing of Armenians during World War I as genocide. Turkey denies claims it was genocide, while Armenia has welcomed the vote. Here, readers from Armenia and Turkey discuss the resolution, which has rekindled a heated and long-running debate.

CAVDET CANER, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Labelling this as genocide is wrong. [Yeah, Cavdet. They only raped, murdered, and starved one and a half million christians. It must have been a local incident.] Genocide happens when one side is superior to the other.
But illegal acts were carried out against us too. [You mean some of them fought back? But that was illegal! They should ALL be killed!]
Does anyone know or realise how many Turks were killed by Armenians at that time? [Why don't you tell us? Whatever it was certainly must have justified murdering all those innocents.]
Yes, Turkey killed some Armenians, but it was not an orchestrated act. [What did you smoke for breakfast?] That kind of an operation would have needed force which we didn't have. [So you are saying that it did not even happen? So where are all of these millions of Armenians? Are you hiding them?]
It was a consequence of war. [It was an opportunity to murder millions without having to deal with international condemnation of the crime.]
Armenians and other nations are always talking about the dead and the past. [How dare they remember their grandparents and cousins! They deserved to die!] We have lost many people too but we do not dwell on it. [Let's not dwell on unpleasant things.]
What I am trying to say is that we are not the bad ones. [Right, you are the good guys. All we have to do is ask you.]

ARMEN ASRYAN, YEREVAN, ARMENIA

As an Armenian, I feel deep respect towards the US lawmakers who passed this resolution, in spite of White House lobbying.
There is a human tragedy that has to be acknowledged, 90 years later. I salute the bravery of people who voted for it.
Three of my great-grandparents were survivors of the genocide. They fled from what is now Eastern Turkey.
Being children, they were separated from their families and placed in an orphanage founded by American missionaries in what is now Gyumri in Armenia.
I have heard the stories since I was a child, and although I don't have any negative feelings towards the current Turkish state, a bitter feeling of betrayal has remained.
There has always been a need for the world and the Turkish government to at least recognise that those killings were indeed genocide.
Now that has been achieved.

ASUMAN YILDIRIM, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Does the US Congress think Turks are stupid? [I doubt it. But I think Turks are stupid.]
They pass such a bill, then say the American government is not against the Turkish government and that good relations will be maintained with Turkey.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the vote was unacceptable They don't know the Turks. [They will kill you and everyone else in your pathetic dirty kuffar country if you don't take it all back.]
I condemn a committee which appears to have bowed to pressure from Armenian religious leaders.
I don't think the US should have the right to vote on other nations' problems or condemn a nation for what happened 90 years ago. [We should have just ignored what the Nazis did too, right? Jews and Armenians just can't take a joke. Lighten up!]
Armenians killed Turks and Kurds, and Turks and Kurds killed Armenians.
It was a war. Things like that happen in wartime. [Exactly. Genocide happens in wartime.]

AVADIS JANIACHIAN, YEREVAN, ARMENIA

The genocide is a fact that cannot be denied. [Sure it can. Just read what the Turks are saying.]
It was planned and conducted very coolly under the nose of, and probably with the approval of, Europe in 1915. [Actually, Britain protested against it, and even Germany did. Imagine that: Germans thought it was bad.]
Armenians have welcomed the decision. What is surprising now is to see that the most powerful nation in the world got scared by Turkey, after its lawmakers took this decision.
France made the same judgement with dignity and honour.
Turkey was allied initially in both world wars with Germany and played its role quite dexterously, changing sides. [Yeah, they switched just as soon as it was apparent that Germany was going to lose. Very dexterous.]
It will be interesting to see if that will happen again as a result of this ruling.

ONDER TAHINLI, ANKARA, TURKEY

The decision of the US Congress is unacceptable, unjust and unfair. [Unjust? Unfair? Rape, enslavement, starvation and murder are unjust and unfair.]
US lawmakers do not have the right to judge a historical case. [Actually, they do.]
I condemn Armenia for its attempt to blackmail Turkey and try to promote a false image of this country and what happened in the past.
Armenia is, after all, a problematic country itself in the region. [That means the genocide didn't happen.]
It has already - with the help of Russian forces - invaded 20% of Azeri land and forced millions of Azeris to leave their homeland. [So we were right to murder them all.]

ARTUR, YEREVAN, ARMENIA

The US Congress ruling could create real political tensions not only for Armenia and the wider region, but also for the US.
I think that this discussion should be halted.
It could really hurt the many thousands of Armenian people who live and work in Turkey. [They might start killing Armenians again. That will prove that they never killed Armenians.]
The US recognition of genocide may seem beneficial for Armenia, but we don't need conflict with Turkey.
The two countries would do better to leave this topic to the historians and focus on improving relations between neighbours. [Historians agree: it was Genocide.]
This kind of issue can do a lot of harm and has the potential to destroy political and economic relations.

New York Times Reveals its Disdain for Black Citizens

2007-10-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

The NY Times article, entitled "A Clinton-Obama Quandary for Many Black Women", published today, 10/13/07, features quotes from many ignorant and ill-informed black women. To me, this is a subtle form of racism, because instead of featuring educated, articulate black women, of which there are plenty, they instead choose to highlight the stereotype of black women who don't know what they are talking about.

Everyone knows that ignorant people abound, and finding one or many is as easy as walking down to your nearest barber shop, or hairdresser. Why did the NY Times reporter choose to talk to black women at the beauty parlor instead of, for example, the university, or at restaurants where lawyers and business people meet?

No, the NY Times likes to portray blacks as stupid, uneducated, ignorant, illogical, and incapable of rational, independent thought or analysis. They also never portray blacks with opinions that differ from the NY Times party line, even though there is a broad diversity of opinion among black americans. In case you never knew, there are even conservative and Republican black Americans. The propagandists at the NY Times do this while trying to think of themselves as supportive of the cause of black america.

That's enough of my rant for now. I will conclude with quotes from the article, which highlight the ignorance of the opinions solicited.

Regarding Obama, one woman said:

“I fear that they just would kill him, that he wouldn’t even have a chance...”

She suggests that one way to protect Obama would be to not vote for him.

About Hillary:

“We always love Hillary because we love her husband...”

Now that is certainly a great reason to vote for Hillary.

Spouting and embracing religious nonsense, this was reported in the article:

“A man is supposed to be the head, ... I feel like the Lord has put man first, and I believe in the Bible.”

Vanessa Gerald, 38, a stylist at Carrie’s Magic Touch, a salon around the corner from Miss Clara’s, said she was torn because Mr. Obama was “trying to help his people, which Hillary is too.” Ms. Gerald said she would “have to go with my faith” in making her final decision but was thrilled to have such a choice.
“This is history here,” she said, puckering up a client’s hair. “On both sides. Either way, it’s history. So let’s see what history going to bring in.”

Yeah, let's see what "history going to bring in".

1914 - 1918: Global Jihad Begins in Turkey

2007-10-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Armenian Genocide, carried out by the MUSLIM GOVERNMENT of the Ottoman Empire, was not just a racial genocide. Armenians were targeted because they were CHRISTIAN, not because they were Armenian.

The massacres of tens of thousands of men, women, and children at a time, the forced deportations, the brutal rape of hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and children, the confiscation of property and supplies, the forced labor, then murder of the laborers, led to the death of over 1,500,000 humans who happened to be Armenians, because they were not MUSLIMS.

Here is an interesting quote (from the article) from the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives:

And the top Republican in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Thursday that bringing the resolution up for a final vote would be "totally irresponsible."

"The fact is that Turkey is a very good ally of the United States. They are critical to our security, not only her to but our troops oversees," Boehner said. "Let the historians decide what happened 90 years ago."

LET THE HISTORIANS DECIDE! What an ass this guy is. Turkey is not a good ally. Turkey is an ally because it benefits Turkey. They are MUSLIM, and nearly all of them HATE THE UNITED STATES.

I understand the need to maintain good relations with nations that can offer assistance to us, and that should be the only reason to not pass this resolution. These other statements are ridiculous, and those who are making them should be ashamed of themselves.

I am no fan of Christianity, but at least Christians are not going around murdering everyone (in the last couple of centuries, anyway).

For a heart-rending description of the Armenian Genocide, check out this website: http://www.armenian-genocide.org/chronology.html.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

2007-10-09T09:48:00.000-07:00

From the Los Angeles Times Opinion Page

The outspoken former Dutch legislator deserves the protection her country promised before she ran for parliament.

By Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie
October 9, 2007

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world. The details of her story bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West.

Hirsi Ali first fled to the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992 after declining to submit to a forced marriage to a man she did not know. Once there, in hiding from her family, she began working as a cleaning lady. But this cleaning lady spoke Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili, English and was quickly learning Dutch, so she soon found work as a translator for other Somali refugees, many of whom, like herself, were casualties of Islam. These women had been abused, mutilated, denied medical care and proper educations and forced into lives of sexual subjection and compulsory childbearing.

After attending the University of Leiden, Hirsi Ali began speaking publicly about the repression of women under Islam, and shortly thereafter she started receiving death threats from local Muslims. Her security situation eventually became so dire that she moved to the U.S. in 2002. However, she was soon contacted by Gerrit Zalm, then deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, who urged her to run for parliament. When Hirsi Ali voiced her security concerns, Zalm assured her that she would be given diplomatic protection wherever and whenever she needed it. She returned to the Netherlands with this assurance, won a seat in parliament and became a tireless advocate for women, for civil society and for reason.

The rest of her story is well known. In 2004, Hirsi Ali collaborated with Theo van Gogh on the film "Submission," which examined the link between Islamic law and the suffering of millions of women under Islam. The reaction from the Muslim community was nothing short of psychopathic, and it confirmed the necessity of Hirsi Ali's work and the reasonableness of her fears. Van Gogh, having declined bodyguards of his own, was gunned down and nearly decapitated on an Amsterdam street, and a letter threatening Hirsi Ali was staked to his chest with a butcher knife.

Hirsi Ali was immediately forced into hiding and moved from safe house to safe house, sometimes more than once a day, for months. Eventually, her security concerns drove her from the Netherlands altogether. She returned to the U.S., and the Dutch government has been paying for her protection here -- that is, until it suddenly announced last week that it would no longer protect her outside the Netherlands, thereby advertising her vulnerability to the world.

Hirsi Ali may be the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. As such, she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

Having recapitulated the Enlightenment for herself in a few short years, Hirsi Ali has surveyed every inch of the path leading out of the moral and intellectual wasteland that is traditional Islam. She has written two luminous books describing her journey, the most recent of which, "Infidel," has been an international bestseller for months. It is difficult to exaggerate her courage. As Christopher Caldwell wrote in the New York Times, "Voltaire did not risk, with his every utterance, making a billion enemies who recognized his face and could, via the Internet, share information instantaneously with people who aspired to assassinate him."

The Dutch Parliament will be debating Hirsi Ali's case this week. As it stands, the government's decision to protect her only within the borders of the Netherlands is genuinely perverse. While the Dutch have complained about the cost of protecting Hirsi Ali in the United States, it is actually far more expensive for them to protect her in the Netherlands, as the risk to her is greatest there.

There is also the matter of broken promises: Hirsi Ali was persuaded to run for parliament and to become the world's most visible and imperiled spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women, on the understanding that she would be provided security for as long as she needed it. Zalm, in his capacity as both the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance, promised her such security without qualification. Most shamefully, Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, has recommended that Hirsi Ali simply quit the Netherlands and has refused to grant her even a week's protection outside the country, during which she might raise funds to hire security of her own. Is this a craven attempt to placate local Muslim fanatics? A warning to other Dutch dissidents not to stir up trouble by speaking too frankly about Islam? Or just pure thoughtlessness?

The Dutch government should recognize a scandal in the making and rediscover its obligation to provide Hirsi Ali with the protection she was promised.

There is not a person alive more deserving of the freedoms of speech and conscience we take for granted in the West, nor is there anyone making a more courageous effort to defend them.

Sam Harris is the author of "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." Salman Rushdie is a novelist whose works include "Midnight's Children," which won the Booker Prize, and "The Satanic Verses."

Islamic Justice - Rapists are Acquitted

2007-10-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

Because Islamic law requires four male witnesses to a rape, the brutal rapists who raped a young woman for "honor" were acquitted.

Won't the world be much nicer once we are all living under Sharia law?

New Turkish Constitution to "Protect" Women Back to Slave Status

2007-10-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Women condemn Turkey constitution
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Istanbul

Women's groups in Turkey have condemned a new draft constitution, saying it sets the country back years in terms of gender equality.

A new constitution is being prepared to replace the current one, introduced after the military coup of 1980.

The document describes women as a vulnerable group needing protection.

The proposed constitution has already sparked fierce debate with a clause to allow women to attend university wearing the Islamic headscarf.

Speaking on Tuesday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assured critics the new draft constitution will reflect the values and needs of all groups of society.

'Patriarchal society'

More than 80 women's groups have come together to voice strong opposition to the draft constitution, calling it a major step backwards for equal rights.

The current constitution in Turkey obliges the government to ensure equality for all - a clause that women's groups fought hard to include.

The new draft removes that, describing women instead as a vulnerable group in need of special protection.

Women's rights activist Selen Lermioglu calls that worrying proof that Turkey is still a highly patriarchal society.

"If the government accepts this it will show their ideology and mindset about women and men - that women are a group that needs to be protected," she said.

"No we're not, we don't need protection. We need equality and ask for that, not protection.

"If all laws and the whole constitution is prepared with this mindset, it can have a really bad impact," she added.

The group says it has not formed a common position yet on the issue of the Islamic headscarf, worn by more than 60% of Turkish woman but banned in state offices, schools and universities.

The government wants to change the constitution to ensure girls who cover their heads can attend university.

Women's activists, like the wider society here, are divided on that.

So far the new constitution has been drafted behind closed doors: now women's groups are demanding to be consulted.

They want to make this process an opportunity to push for more rights, not fewer, including a clause insisting on a temporary quota for women, to eliminate discrimination in all areas.

They argue that is the only way to lift Turkey from close to the bottom of the list in Europe on gender equality.

Islamic Asshole Tries to Blow Up US Embassy

2007-10-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

Excuse my redundancy. I suppose you don't HAVE to be an asshole to be a Muslim, but it seems to help. Notice how they don't mention his religion. As you read the story, you would think that it was just some regular guy who decided to bomb the US Embassy. The only indication of his religion is "Islamic literature" found in the backpack. I say it's time to round these people up.

The article:

Man busted trying to bring bomb into U.S. Embassy
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAILY NEWS STAFF

Monday, October 1st 2007, 4:02 PM

A Bosnian man tried to enter the U.S. Embassy in Vienna today with a backpack loaded with explosives but was stopped by security, Austrian police said.

The 42-year-old man try to flee after his backpack set off a metal detector at the embassy, officials said. He was nabbed a short time later and no one wa hurt in the incident.

Investigators said the man's backpack was filled with explosives, nails and Islamic literature.

"There were a lot of nails in that bag. Had it exploded, it would have had an enormous shrapnel effect,” said Doris Edelbacher, of Austria's federal counterterrorism office.

The suspect was identified only as a native of Bosnia-Herzegovina who had been living in Austria.

Last month, authorities arrested three people — all Austrian citizens of Arab origin — in connection with a video posted online in March that had threatened Austria and Germany with attacks if they did not withdraw their military personnel from Afghanistan.

Democrats Admit: Democrat Voters are Stupid

2007-09-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

The article referenced above (click on the headline) is about the Supreme Court hearing a case, but to me the arguments against the law are telling a very interesting story.

Lawyers say that a law requiring photo ID for voting will hurt Democratic candidates more than Republican candidates, because it is a hassle for the "elderly, poor, disabled or homeless." What they are saying is that these people who normally vote for Democrats (I suppose because Democrats promise them free stuff) are not smart enough to get a state-issued ID card. Or perhaps they are saying that this group is not capable of keeping such an ID card.

Of course, it would make voting by the dead much more difficult too, which is often a factor in Democratic victories.

Here is the text of the article, just in case the link goes bad:

Supreme Court to decide photo ID voting law
Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:22am EDT

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Tuesday it would rule on whether U.S. voters must show a government-issued photo identification at the polls, a divisive issue ahead of next year's national elections.

The justices said they would review a U.S. appeals court ruling that upheld an Indiana law considered the most restrictive in the nation requiring voters to present a photo ID issued by the state or federal government, such as a driver's license or a passport.

The 2005 law, which applies to both primary and general elections, has been challenged by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Indiana Democratic Party for imposing an unfair burden on the right to vote, especially on the elderly, poor, disabled or homeless.

Indiana was one of a number of states to enact such laws in the wake of voter fraud allegations in Florida and elsewhere during the closely fought 2000 elections.

Before 2002, few states had voter identification requirements and no state required photo identification. Now, 26 states have some form of a voter identification law, and six states require photo identification at the time of voting.

The only exception to the proof-of-identification requirement in Indiana is if the person lived in a state-licensed facility, such as a nursing home, and voted there.

MAY DETER DEMOCRATS FROM VOTING

The Indiana law was one of 17 cases the Supreme Court agreed to decide during its upcoming term that begins on October 1. The justices met on Monday to review some 2,000 appeals that piled up during its three-month summer recess and selected the 17 cases to decide.

Attorneys challenging the Indiana law urged the Supreme Court to resolve the law's constitutionality, calling it an issue of great national importance ahead of the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.

The appeals court upheld the law, even though it acknowledged it would deter some people from voting, and that those deterred are more likely to vote for Democratic rather than Republican candidates.

The lawyers challenging the law said the appeals court's decision undermined the fundamental right of individuals to vote.

Indiana officials opposed the appeal.

State Solicitor General Thomas Fisher said granting Supreme Court review of the issue now would likely prompt a spate of lawsuits across the nation that would disrupt the 2008 presidential primaries and create new uncertainty over the validity of all voter identification requirements.

He said the justices should wait for another case after the 2008 elections.

But the Supreme Court rejected that recommendation. It is expected to hear arguments in the case early next year, with a decision due by the end of June.

© Reuters2007All rights reserved

Who values the truth?

2007-09-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

By Dennis Prager

There are conservatives who lie and there are liberals who lie. Neither blue nor red has a monopoly on truth-tellers.

However, unless one denies that there are distinctive values on the right and on the left - a proposition that no serious liberal or conservative would deny - how much truth is valued may be different for the right and the left.

In the hierarchy of leftist (as opposed to traditional liberal) values, truth is below other values, such as equality, opposition to war, the promotion of secularism and a number of other highly regarded values on the left.

This does not mean that the number of truth-tellers among individuals on the left is necessarily smaller than the number of individual truth-tellers on the right. It means that truth-telling is not high on the left's list of values.

Since this is, obviously, a generalization, and a negative one at that, anyone who makes this generalization is obligated to provide arguments and examples.

The first example is what is known as political correctness. Leftist denial of what is true is so widespread that we have a term for it, political correctness. There is no comparable right-wing political correctness, i.e., denying truths so as not to offend right-wing values or certain groups.

For example, among many on the left, especially academics, it has been almost impossible for decades to tell the truth about the innate differences between men and women because of the leftist dogma of innate similarities between the sexes. So deep is the left's hostility to truth regarding the sexes that a president of Harvard University was forced from office after suggesting that men's and women's brains process math and some science differently.

Similarly, many leftist professors at Duke University used the false rape charges against three white lacrosse players to reinforce the left-wing belief (itself not true) that America is racist. The truth was not nearly as important to them as proving how racist whites are.

Textbooks. A prime example of the left's view of truth is its changing the goal of high school American history textbooks from telling truth to promoting self-esteem among minority and female students by depicting more women and more non-whites in American history textbooks.

"Bush is a liar." Currently, the most widely repeated lie of the left is that President George W. Bush lied about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. It is repeated so often ("Bush lied, people died") that many Americans now believe this. But it is not true. There were valid reasons for anyone to believe that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Saddam had used them in the past; he refused to allow unfettered inspections; he was the major foreign sponsor of Palestinian terror; and most important, virtually all Western intelligence agencies believed Saddam had WMD.

Nor did President Bush lie, as the left frequently charges, about Saddam seeking uranium in the African nation of Niger. The president said in his 2003 State of the Union address that "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." That was exactly what British intelligence reported, and the British intelligence is now widely believed to have been accurate. It is a left-wing lie that President Bush lied when he spoke those now famous 16 words.

Callling liberals "unpatriotic." Another lie of the left is that Republicans and conservatives regularly label opponents of the war in Iraq "unpatriotic." Thus, during the CNN/YouTube debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton claimed that "I asked the Pentagon a simple question: 'Have you prepared for withdrawing our troops?' In response, I got a letter accusing me of being unpatriotic." That is - and this is not said easily - a lie. Anyone who reads the Defense Department response to Sen. Clinton will see that what she claims is entirely untrue. Her patriotism, or lack of it, was not even hinted at. Moreover, it is rare almost to the point of nonexistent for mainstream Republicans or conservatives to call any liberal critic of the Bush administration "unpatriotic."

The homeless, heterosexual AIDS and rape. For years, mainstream liberal news media purveyed false information supplied by Mitch Snyder, the major liberal activist on behalf of the homeless. Likewise, we were told by gay and AIDS activist groups that AIDS "doesn't discriminate," meaning that heterosexuals in America were as likely to contract the HIV virus as homosexuals. It was never true in America (Africa may be another story for other reasons). Feminist groups have offered statistics on rape and sexual violence that are patently false.

Few liberal activist groups tell the truth. Not because their members are liars - in private life they may well be as honest as anyone else - but because whatever the left advocates it deems more important than truth.

This does not mean the right is always honest. For example, conservatives who say that "pornography causes rape" are doing what the left does - putting their agenda, in this case a loathing of pornography, above truth-telling. I have seen no credible statistics linking the proliferation of pornography with increased rape.

But when the left ceaselessly repeats the mantra "Bush lied," it may simply be projecting onto George W. Bush what comes quite naturally to the left - when it offers false Iraqi death statistics, false homeless data, false rape statistics, false secondhand smoke statistics, false claims about the percentage of gays in the population, and false claims of just about everything else the left cares about.

George Soros

2007-09-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

George Soros: The Man, The Mind And The Money Behind MoveOn

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 9/20/2007

The Left: The smear ad published against Gen. Petraeus has drawn attention to its sponsor, MoveOn.org. But the fingerprints of the group's chief financial backer, George Soros, were all over it. Who is this man and what is he up to?

To read Soros' own spun story, he's a Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Hungary who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, studied economics in England, became a U.S. citizen in 1961 and made a multibillion-dollar fortune as a financier who pioneered hedge funds.

Over the years, Soros has written books giving his philosophical take on global affairs and acquired a reputation as something of a "stateless statesman." He calls himself a philanthropist and has given away $5 billion of his now $8.5 billion fortune through his principal vehicle, the Open Society Institute. The institute, in turn, has passed cash on to far more radical groups, such as MoveOn.org.

But Soros is no hands-off donor. According to the Open Society Institute's Web site: "Despite the breadth of his endeavors, Soros is personally involved in planning and implementing many of the foundation network's projects."

Soros says he gives away about $400 million annually.

It's an admirable picture, but "philanthropy" may be the wrong word. Unlike, say, Bill Gates, who really does put the bulk of his charity into helping the world's poor through medical services, Soros tends to fund pressure groups and foundations he misleadingly characterizes as promoting "civil society" and "democracy."

The image gives him moral cover to manipulate democracies whose voter verdicts he opposes.

Tearing Down America

The first groups Soros supported back in the 1980s did play a role in undercutting the rickety communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But his motives seemed less than idealistic. All Soros groups tend to tear down tyrannies rather than build up democracies.

And since 2003, tearing down what he views as the "fascist" tyranny of the United States, as he has put it, is "the central focus of my life."

Through networks of nongovernmental organizations, Soros intends to ruin the presidency of George W. Bush "by any legal means necessary" and knock America off its global pedestal. "His view of America is so negative," says Sen. Joe Lieberman, who, like Gen. David Petraeus, has been a target of Soros' electoral "philanthropy." "The places he's put his money are . . . so destructive that it unsettles me." Soros' aim seems to be to make the U.S. just another client state easily controlled by the United Nations and other one-world groups where he has lots of friends.

Best known among these groups is MoveOn.org, a previously small fringe-left group to which Soros has given $5 million since 2004. Bulked up by cash, the group now uses professional public relations tactics to undercut the Iraq War effort, with its latest a full-page New York Times ad that branded Gen. Petraeus "General Betray Us."

It ran Sept. 10 in the New York Times, the same day Petraeus delivered his progress report on the surge in Iraq.

MoveOn.org previously put out ads depicting Bush as a Nazi, something that certainly echoes Soros' sentiment.

"We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process," he told this year's Davos conference in Switzerland.

Moving On To The Far Left

MoveOn.org was also pivotal in getting Howard Dean elected chairman of the Democratic Party in a bid to push the party to the far left.

Soros acolyte Arianna Huffington is on record as advocating that outcome. Berating Democrats for their electoral losses in 2004, she wrote: "Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give - from 'the center' - before they realize it's not a very fruitful place?"

Soros also has financed spin outfits such as Media Matters that specialize in providing distorted conservative political statements as grist for leftist politicians and media.

Media Matters (and MoveOn.org) succeeded last year in denying incumbent Lieberman the Democratic nomination for Senate in Connecticut and effectively drove the moderate out of his own party. Net result: Fewer Democrats, including today's crop running for office, are willing to challenge any Soros-financed pressure group.

Money & Elections

Soros' efforts go beyond spin. He has also bankrolled groups involved in the manipulation of elections, an activity that has increased since his money came into the picture. Two groups - Americans Coming Together and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - were sanctioned recently by the Federal Election Commission for fraud.

Soros pledged $10 million to ACT, which has since been fined $775,000 for illegally funneling $70 million set aside for voter registrations to Democratic candidates.

He also gave at least $150,000 to ACORN, the left-wing group best known for pushing minimum-wage hikes, marching for illegal-immigrant amnesty and harassing Wal-Mart. ACORN has been accused of voter fraud in 13 states since 2004 and was convicted of falsifying signatures in a voter registration drive last July, drawing a fine of $25,000 in Washington state.

Soros says he has ended funding to voter-drive organizations, but he still heads a secretive rich-man's club called "Democracy Alliance" that has doled out $20 million to activist groups like ACORN.

It's also noteworthy that the Soros-funded MoveOn.org advocates "paper-trail" electronic voting in the U.S., the same kind used in Venezuela, where allegations of electronic fraud and ballot secrecy violations have ended confidence in the system and sealed Chavez's dictatorship.

Terrorist-Friendly Groups

Soros additionally finances groups best described as helpful to terrorists. Since 1998, he has given the American Civil Liberties Union $5 million to empower criminals, including lawsuits on behalf of terrorists' "civil rights."

Soros' Open Society Institute gave $20,000 for the legal defense of radical attorney Lynne Stewart. She was convicted in 2002 of abetting jailed terrorists after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Soros is also involved in the financing of a 9/11 memorial at ground zero, the World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex - which critics say blames the U.S. for 9/11.

"Bush says (the terrorists) hate us for what we are, not what we do, and I think that's false," Soros told an audience at UC Berkeley last year.

He has handed $3.1 million to the left-wing Tides Foundation, which funds organizations, such as the Sea Shepherds, Earth First! and the Ruckus Society, that have condoned or engaged in eco-terrorism.

On the international front, Soros-backed groups have undercut important U.S. allies, including Israel and Colombia, which have aligned with the U.S. rather than the U.N.

Both see their sovereignty as non-negotiable, view victory over their enemies as an absolute good and refuse to become failed states - all anathema to the thinking of Soros. His Human Rights Watch repeatedly attempts to portray both nations as pariah states.

One World Government

Soros additionally finances groups supporting the interests of one-world government. While he has criticized the United Nations occasionally, he favors U.N. dominance in world affairs, sees the European Union as a model for "open society" and has called for a global central bank.

Anyone who doesn't agree with this vision, or who doesn't fit cozily into his multilateral model, gets a visit from Soros-backed groups.

MoveOn.org, for example, led the charge to keep John Bolton out of a permanent seat in the U.N., and Bankwatch piled on to topple Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.

In fact, pick any cause that seeks to weaken the U.S. and it's hard not to find Soros' name on its list of financial backers. Most of these causes are financed by relatively small amounts, but that's all that's needed to make trouble.

And without the cash, countless bad ideas would have no presence in American political debate at all.

What keeps these groups on cue, and Democrats in line, is the prospect that any funding from Soros can be stepped up to massive levels. It's probably no coincidence that Soros was a big backer of campaign finance reforms that have allowed nominally nonpartisan groups like MoveOn.org to strike with the kinds of tactics they are using.

Soros usually doesn't offer up or endorse specific candidates for office. His chief aim seems to be tearing down Bush, driving the Democrats to the far left and enforcing party discipline through fear. In fact, he seems to like keeping Democrats guessing whether or not he's offended.

The strategy seems to be working. No Democrat had the courage to cross MoveOn.org after its libelous Petraeus ad. On Thursday, a symbolic vote in Congress censuring MoveOn.org for the Petraeus ad passed, but with the notable absence of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Election looming, neither wants to cross Soros' MoveOn.org.

Soros himself does not believe in victory in Iraq and wants to keep America from achieving it.

"The war on terror cannot be won," he has said.

More on NY Times Re: Moveon.org Ad

2007-09-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

Subsidizing Sedition

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Media: The New York Times gives moveon.org a discount on a full-page ad smearing Gen. David Petraeus.

Does anyone think for a minute that the Times would grant a similar discount for a group backing Petraeus?

This being a nation where speech is - or should be - absolutely free, moveon.org has every right to express its opinions. And the New York Times has just as much right to publish any opinion it wishes.

That said, there's an ugliness about this moveon.org advertisement that many Americans recognize immediately. And they no doubt agree with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch who, in unusually blunt language on the Senate floor this week, said of its sponsors:

"These people are nuts."

The screed below the photograph of Petraeus isn't the work of a rational person or group making a cogent argument. It reads like the unhinged scrawling of someone suffering acutely from Bush Derangement Syndrome - the condition that has rendered much of the Democratic Party and most on the left incoherent.

Whatever President Bush supports, they oppose. To them, the man Americans trusted enough to elect twice is nothing but an imperialist monster who stomps on civil rights.

The Sulzberger family that owns the Times should be ashamed for allowing the ad to run at all. No one would have faulted them for turning it down for reasons of taste and/or an unwillingness to be associated with such an extreme, hate-filled group.

But they not only took the ad, they subsidized moveon.org's vitriol by cutting its usual price for a full page from $181,692 to $65,000.

But then, what else should we expect? The ad, which was timed to coincide with Petraeus' congressional testimony on the progress of the war in Iraq, fits nicely with the Times' own view of the war.

To paraphrase moveon.org, the Times has been at war with the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism for years, and it seems to be intent on undermining U.S. efforts to win both. At least three times in 2005 and 2006, America's newspaper of record published reports revealing details of secret security programs designed to foil terrorists. How much damage that did to our war effort we may never know.

The Times is not alone, however, in fighting its war. Others in the mainstream media have also done their part - even to the point of refusing to run ads in support of the war effort, as was the case with CNBC and MSNBC last month. NBC tried to explain away the rejection by citing network policy to reject ads from groups that touch on controversial issues of public importance.

Never mind that organizations such as the conservative Move America Forward, the political American Medical Association and the nonprofit Save Darfur Coalition have aired their commercials on the NBC network.

With its supposedly clever wording, moveon.org's ad suggests that General Petraeus - or General "Betray Us," as the headline says, is a traitor to his nation. But it's moveon.org - not the man who's trying to protect our safety - that's flirting with treason here.

This is an organization, after all, that in 2004 allowed a video comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler to appear on its Web site.

That's not sedition, but it clearly illustrates the sort of twisted thinking that animates the group and its followers. No one should be surprised to find elements within moveon.org who might think toppling the U.S. government - at least one headed by George W. Bush - is not such a bad thing.

Iranian Slaves Forced to Protest Against France and USA

2007-09-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

Just click the title for the story. The picture says it all, though, really.

I'm sure the women of Iran are really happy that the Shah was deposed and they were restored to their rightful place in society according to Islamic law... slaves in clown suits, without the right to even think on their own.

France Finally Grows a Backbone

2007-09-16T20:54:00.001-07:00

France warning of war with Iran

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner says the world should prepare for war over Iran's nuclear programme.

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio.

Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue "right to the end", but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose "a real danger for the whole world".

Iran has consistently denied it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons but intends to carry on enriching uranium.

Mr Kouchner also said a number of large French companies had been asked not to tender for business in Iran.

EU sanctions

"We are not banning French companies from submitting. We have advised them not to. These are private companies."

"But I think that it has been heard and we are not the only ones to have done this."

He said France wanted the European Union to prepare sanctions against Iran.

"We have decided that while negotiations are continuing to prepare eventual sanctions outside the ambit of UN sanctions. Our good friends, the Germans, suggested that," he said.

Until now the Security Council of the United Nations has imposed economic sanctions on Iran, but did not allow for military action.

The United States has not ruled out a military attack against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Blogger gets 4 years for insulting Islam

2007-09-14T16:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday, February 22, 2007 • Last updated 9:28 a.m. PT
By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown.
Abdel Kareem Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Egypt's Al-Azhar University, an Islamic institution, was a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. He also lashed out often at Al-Azhar - the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam - calling it "the university of terrorism" and accusing it of encouraging extremism.
His conviction brought a flood of condemnations from Amnesty International and other international and Egyptian rights group and stunned fellow bloggers.
"I am shocked," said Wael Abbas, a blogger who writes frequently about police abuses and other human rights violations in Egypt. "This is a terrible message to anyone who intends to express his opinion and to bloggers in particular."
Judge Ayman al-Akazi issued the verdict in a brief, five-minute session in a court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. He sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the prophet and inciting sectarian strife and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.
Nabil, wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in the defendants pen, gave no reaction and his face remained still as the verdict was read. He made no comment to reporters as he was immediate led outside to a prison truck.
Seconds after he was loaded into the truck and the door closed, an Associated Press reporter heard the sound of a slap from inside the vehicle and a shriek of pain from Nabil.
His lawyer, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, said he would appeal the verdict, saying the ruling will "terrify other bloggers and will negative impact on the freedom of expression in Egypt." Nabil had faced a possible maximum sentence of up to nine years in prison.
Egypt arrested a number of bloggers last year, most of them for connections to Egypt's pro-democracy reform movement. Nabil was arrested in November, and while other bloggers were freed, Nabil was put on trial - a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a pro-reform blogger who was detained for six weeks last year, said the conviction for insulting Mubarak will "have a chilling effect on the rest of the bloggers."
"We (the Egyptian people) are enduring oppression, poverty and torture, so the least we can do is insult the president," he said.
Amnesty International, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the France-based press rights group Reporters Without Borders - along with a string of Egyptian rights group - warned that the ruling would hurt freedom of expression in Egypt, a top U.S. ally in the Mideast. Amnesty said it considered Nabil a "prisoner of conscience."
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims - and his frequent attacks on Al-Azhar, where he was a law student, led to the university expelling him in March. Al-Azhar then pushed for prosecutors to bring him to trial. His writings also appeared on a Arabic Web magazine called "Modern Discussion."
The judge said Nabil insulted Islam's Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in late 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.
Egypt arrested a number of bloggers last year, most of them for connections to Egypt's pro-democracy reform movement. Nabil was arrested in November, and while other bloggers were freed, Nabil was put on trial - a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a pro-reform blogger who was detained for six weeks last year, said the conviction for insulting Mubarak will "have a chilling effect on the rest of the bloggers."
"We (the Egyptian people) are enduring oppression, poverty and torture, so the least we can do is insult the president," he said.
Amnesty International, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the France-based press rights group Reporters Without Borders - along with a string of Egyptian rights group - warned that the ruling would hurt freedom of expression in Egypt, a top U.S. ally in the Mideast. Amnesty said it considered Nabil a "prisoner of conscience."
Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims - and his frequent attacks on Al-Azhar, where he was a law student, led to the university expelling him in March. Al-Azhar then pushed for prosecutors to bring him to trial. His writings also appeared on a Arabic Web magazine called "Modern Discussion."
The judge said Nabil insulted Islam's Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in late 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.
-----
Abdel-Kareem Nabil's blog, in Arabic:
http://karam903.blogspot.com/
Nabil's writings on the Modern Discussion site, in Arabic:
http://www.rezgar.com/m.asp?i432
-----
AP correspondent Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.

Wild CIA tale scams 22 out of almost $1 million

2007-09-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

La. woman faces prison for making claims involving satellites and spies

Updated: 7:59 a.m. PT Jan 22, 2007

SHREVEPORT, La. - She claimed to be a CIA agent who could have satellites scan people’s bodies for disease, then have CIA agents administer secret medicines to them while they slept.
As far-fetched as her story was, Stacey Finley convinced 22 neighbors, in-laws and friends in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi to pay her nearly $1 million over the past six years.
The 34-year-old Farmerville resident will be sentenced May 7 on one charge of wire fraud. Until then, she is under house arrest, U.S. Attorney Donald Washington said.
She pleaded guilty Tuesday and could get up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000. As part of her guilty plea, she acknowledged that the judge must order her to repay the money, and that she defrauded her victims of $989,898.
She is “a predator who preyed on basic human fears,” and deserves the maximum, Washington said. However, the guilty plea calls for some consideration that her guilty plea allowed the government to avoid the cost of preparing for trial.
Prosecutors described the victims as “solid, middle-class, educated citizens” who ranged from young adults to elderly. Most were friends and relatives of Finley’s husband, authorities said.
“She can be best be thought of as a cult-like, charismatic personality who could convince the victims this scam was real,” Washington said.
Husband not charged
According to investigators, Finley claimed she could arrange a satellite scan of her victims’ bodies, detecting hidden medical problems, and that CIA agents would then enter their homes while they slept and administer secret medicines that would prevent serious health problems and hereditary diseases
Some of the victims depleted their savings, pensions and life insurance to pay her, authorities said.
Authorities said Finley used the money for living expenses, mortgage payments and clothes — although she and her husband had five vehicles. Most things were paid for with cash.
The husband has not been charged. Washington would not say if he is being investigated.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Sam Harris on Morality

2007-09-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

"religion remains the only mode of discourse that encourages grown men and women to pretend to know things they manifestly do not (and cannot) know"

In his essay, "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, "Jonathan Haidt worries that the "new atheists"-Dawkins, Dennett, and I-may be "polluting the scientific study of religion with moralistic dogma and damaging the prestige of science in the process." According to Haidt, Dawkins becomes the Grand Inquisitor whenever the topic of group selection is politely raised; Dennett has misinterpreted the literature on religion and morality for reasons inscrutable; and for my part, I am merely waging war with straw men. As luck would have it, Haidt comes to this debate in the guise an increasingly familiar "straw man"-that of the liberal, atheist scientist who would deliver us to the threshold of moral relativism, if not across it, with the best of intentions.

Haidt concludes his essay with this happy blandishment: "every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing." Surely we can all agree about this. Our bets have been properly hedged (the ideology must be "longstanding" and need only have "some" wisdom). Even a "new atheist" must get off his high horse and drink from such pristine waters. Well, okay...

Anyone feeling nostalgic for the "wisdom" of the Aztecs? Rest assured, there's nothing like the superstitious murder of innocent men, women, and children to "suppress selfishness" and convey a shared sense of purpose. Of course, the Aztecs weren't the only culture to have discovered "human flourishing" at its most sanguinary and psychotic. The Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Canaanites, Maya, Inca, Olmecs, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Teutons, Celts, Druids, Vikings, Gauls, Hindus, Thais, Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians, Maoris, Melanesias, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Balinese, Australian aborigines, Iroquois, Huron, Cherokee, and numerous other societies ritually murdered their fellow human beings because they believed that invisible gods and goddesses, having an appetite for human flesh, could be so propitiated. Many of their victims were of the same opinion, in fact, and went willingly to slaughter, fully convinced that their deaths would transform the weather, or cure the king of his venereal disease, or in some other way spare their fellows the wrath of the Unseen.

What would Haidt have us think about these venerable traditions of pious ignorance and senseless butchery? Is there some wisdom in these cults of human sacrifice that we should now honor? Must we take care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater? Or might we want to eat that baby instead? Indeed, many of these societies regularly terminated their rituals of sacred murder with a cannibal feast. Is my own revulsion at these practices a sign that I view these distant cultures with the blinkered gaze of a colonialist? Shall we just reserve judgment until more of the facts are in? When does scientific detachment become perverse? When might it be suicidal?

Despite Haidt's suggestion to the contrary, it actually matters what people believe. Most religious practices are the direct consequence of what people think is actually going on in the world. In fact, most religious practices only become intelligible once we understand the beliefs that first gave rise to them. The fact that some people have begun to doubt these doctrines in the meantime, while still mouthing the liturgy and aping the rituals, is beside the point. What religion, after all, is best exemplified by those who are in the process of losing it?

Haidt draws comfort from the fact that even biblical literalists occasionally yield to common sense and ignore their holy books. Of course they do: their holy books are not only bursting with ancient ignorance-they are actually self-contradictory. Is Haidt suggesting that there are no real religious fundamentalists out there at all, or that their numbers are negligible? According to a recent poll, thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) think apostates should be put to death for their unbelief. Just how much exculpatory sociology is Haidt inclined to do in this area so as to get Islam entirely off the hook? When is a belief system not only false, but so encouraging of falsity and needless suffering as to be worthy, not merely of our understanding, but of our contempt?

Haidt offers us a choice between "contractual" and "beehive" approaches to morality-the first is said to be the province of liberals like myself, who care only about harm/care and fairness/reciprocity; the second represents the social order imposed by conservative religion, which incorporates further concerns about ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The opposition between these two conceptions of the good life may be useful to talk about, and the data Haidt presents about the differences between liberals and conservatives is interesting, but is his interpretive scheme correct? I have my doubts. It seems possible, for instance, that these five foundations of morality are simply facets of a more general concern for harm/care.

What, after all, is the problem with desecrating a copy of the Qur'an or taking the Lord's name in vain? Well, if a person really believes that the Qur'an is a sacred text or that God is listening, he almost surely believes that some harm could come to him or to his tribe as a result of these actions-if not in this world, then in the next. Examples of this sort of thinking should come so readily to the reader's mind as to make any examples I provide superfluous (AIDS as a punishment for the sin of homosexuality? The Asian tsunami as repayment for idolatry? September 11th as the result of too little faith and too much tolerance for abortion and gay shenanigans?). A more esoteric reading might be that any person who blasphemes or desecrates will have harmed himself directly thereby: a lack of reverence might be its own punishment, dimming the eyes of faith. Whatever interpretation we favor, sacredness and authority have collapsed to the harm/care axis just the same. Perhaps Haidt's thinking on this subject has been powerfully distorted by his own atheism, as he seems incapable of seeing the world as the faithful see it. We might well wonder, at this juncture, just which of us atheists are in danger of "misunderstanding religion." At least Dennett, Dawkins, and I have made some attempt to understand what it might be like to actually believe what people of faith say they believe.

The same point can be made in the other direction: even a liberal like myself, enamored as I am of my two-footed morality, can readily see that my version of the good life must be safeguarded from the aggressive tribalism of others. When I search my heart, I discover that I want to keep the barbarians beyond the city walls as much as my conservative neighbors do, and I recognize that sacrifices of my own freedom may be warranted for this purpose. I even expect that conservative epiphanies of this sort could well multiply in the coming years-just imagine how we liberals will be disposed to think about Islam after an incident of nuclear terrorism. Liberal hankering for happiness and freedom might one day yield some very strident calls for stricter laws and tribal loyalty. Will this mean that liberals have become religious conservatives pining for the beehive? Or is the liberal notion of reducing harm flexible enough to encompass the need for order and differences between in-group and out-group?

Even if we accept Haidt's "new synthesis" without caveat, we can ask whether any given culture is raising its children to have "bad" moral intuitions and to be incapable of the sort of moral reasoning that might lead to a more enlightened outlook. Are certain conceptions of morality especially good at binding a community together, but incompatible with modernity? What if certain cultures are found to be relying upon moral codes that look terrible no matter how we squint our eyes or jigger Haidt's five variables and four principles? What if we find a culture that is neither especially sensitive to harm and reciprocity, nor especially cognizant of the sacred, nor especially conducive to human flourishing, nor especially astute in any other way? Would Haidt's conception of morality allow us to then demand that these benighted people to stop abusing their children? Or would that be unscientific?

Finally, I should mention that Haidt fails to acknowledge the central point of "new atheist" criticism. The point is not that we atheists can prove religion to be the cause of more harm than good (though I think this can be argued, and the balance seems to me to be swinging further toward harm each day). The point is that religion remains the only mode of discourse that encourages grown men and women to pretend to know things they manifestly do not (and cannot) know. If ever there were an attitude at odds with science, this is it. And the faithful are encouraged to keep shouldering this unwieldy burden of falsehood and self-deception by everyone they meet-by their coreligionists, of course, and by people of differing faith, and now, with startling frequency, by scientists who claim to have no faith. Even if Haidt's reading of the literature on morality were correct, and all this manufactured bewilderment proves to be useful in getting certain people to donate time, money, and blood to their neighbors-so what? Is science now in the business of nurturing useful delusions? Surely we can grow in altruism, and refine our ethical intuitions, and even explore the furthest reaches of human happiness, without lying to ourselves about the nature of the universe. It is time that atheist scientists, above all people on this infatuated planet, acted as if this were so.

NY Times Shows its Extreme Liberal Bias

2007-09-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

From the New York Post:

TIMES GIVES LEFTIES A HEFTY DISCOUNT FOR 'BETRAY US' AD

By CHARLES HURT Bureau Chief

September 13, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Headlined "Cooking the Books for the White House," the ad which ran in Monday's Times says Petraeus is "a military man constantly at war with the facts" and concluded - even before he testified before Congress - that "General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us."

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."

A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

A Post reporter who called the Times advertising department yesterday without identifying himself was quoted a price of $167,000 for a full-page black-and-white ad on a Monday.

Serphos declined to confirm the price and refused to offer any inkling for why the paper would give MoveOn.org such a discounted price.

Citing the shared liberal bent of the group and the Times, one Republican aide on Capitol Hill speculated that it was the "family discount."

"I'm surprised they had to pay anything at all for the ad," the GOP staffer said. "They could have just asked the editorial page to run it and it wouldn't have cost them a cent."

churt@nypost.com

Concerned Citizen Seeks to End LOL Abuse

2007-09-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

In response to my friend's email, in which he used the phrase "LOL" (which means Laughing Out Loud for the web-illiterate), my friend received this:

I have to start off by asking you if you actually LOL’d there, or if you are just typing that for the sake of typing it? Too many times in life people type LOL when they didn’t really LOL. Those three letters are losing all of their meaning because people just throw them around with no thought to the damage they could be causing. People type LOL for things that aren’t funny. Then you have a bunch of people going through life thinking they are funny, when in reality they aren’t funny. Someday when they actually meet face to face with a person who has been typing LOL to them in emails and text messages, they will say something that they think is funny, but the person won’t LOL. So the person will try harder to get that LOL, but lets be honest, when you try for the LOL all you get is worse jokes. So he doesn’t get the LOL, and he goes home wondering if maybe just maybe he isn’t as funny as he thought he was. If he isn’t as funny as he thought he was, are there other things in his life that aren’t what they seem? Suddenly he is questioning everything in his life. Maybe the receptionist didn’t really like his tie? Maybe his boss didn’t really like his idea? Maybe his girlfriend wasn’t “just out with the girls” last night? Suddenly he is drinking, loses his job, and winds up selling oranges on the corner of a freeway off ramp in downtown LA. All because someone carelessly threw around three letters. LOL indeed!

I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not accusing you of doing anything wrong. It is entirely possible that you actually LOL’d there and that’s perfectly acceptable. If you LOL by all means feel free to type that LOL there. Who am I to try and stop a man from LOL’ing if they are actually LOL’ing? That wouldn’t be right… However I hope that if you didn’t LOL, that at the very least, the next time you go to type those three letters, you think about how much of an impact those three letters can have on a person’s life. If you are going to LOL, at least LOL.
...

(Used with permission)

The Russians Are Coming

2007-09-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

Britney Spears Fan Doesn't Like Critics

2007-09-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

(Apparently) Britney's biggest fan:

Here's Britney's latest performance:

Muslim Thugs Continue Rampage of Destruction

2007-09-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

BBC News
September 12, 2007

Attack on giant Pakistan Buddha

The Buddha at Swat was only slightly damaged
Suspected pro-Taleban militants have tried to blow up an ancient carving of Buddha in north-west Pakistan.
The statue, thought to date from the second century BC, sustained only minimal damage in the attack near Manglore in remote Swat district.

The area has seen a rise in attacks on "un-Islamic" targets in recent months.

This is the first such attack in Pakistan and is reminiscent of the Taleban's 2001 destruction of the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan.

Dynamite

Officials and witnesses in Swat said armed men arrived in the area on Monday night.

"Militants drilled holes in the rock and filled them with dynamite and blew it up," provincial archaeology department official Aqleem Khan told Reuters news agency.

"The explosion damaged the upper part of the rock but there was no damage to the image itself."

An eyewitness, Shahid Khan, told the BBC that because of its location on a steep ridge the statue had been only slightly damaged. It is carved into a 40m (130-foot) high rock.

Local archaeology expert Professor Pervaiz Shaheen told the BBC that the Buddha statue in Swat valley was considered the largest in Asia, after the two Bamiyan Buddhas.

He said it was 2,200 years old. Swat valley is a centre of the ancient Gandhara civilization.

"They constructed similar smaller statues and figurines, dozens of which are still present in the area," Prof Shaheen said.

Swat has seen increased pro-Taleban activity in recent months, with the re-emergence of militant group Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) under new leader, Maulana Fazlullah.

Last week, militants blew up about 60 music, video and cosmetics stalls at a market in the valley after stall owners ignored warnings to close businesses deemed un-Islamic.

The world watched in shock in March 2001 as Afghanistan's then rulers destroyed the 6th-Century Bamiyan Buddhas. The Taleban said they were offensive to Islam.

Kathy Griffin Wins Emmy, Gets Censored for Jesus Remark

2007-09-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

The TV Academy and E! announced today that they would not air remarks made by comedian Kathy Griffin upon her acceptance of an Emmy for Best Reality Program.
Griffin's remarks were classic Griffin:
"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus...Suck it, Jesus. This award is my God now."
Following the remark, Catholic League President Bill Donohue called on the TV academy to "denounce Griffin's obscene and blasphemous comment" which he then thanked them for doing.
He still demands Griffin apologize: "The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences reacted responsibly to our criticism of Kathy Griffin’s verbal assault on 85 percent of the U.S. population. The ball is now in Griffin’s court. The self-described ‘complete militant atheist’ needs to make a swift and unequivocal apology to Christians. If she does, she will get this issue behind her. If she does not, she will be remembered as a foul-mouthed bigot for the rest of her life."

U.S. Troops Stealing Iraqi Babies Out of Trash Piles

2007-09-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

(humor)

You can now add kidnapping to the list of heinous crimes our troops have committed against the peaceloving Muslim peoples. Just when I thought I'd heard it all, a group of American G.I.'s confessed last week to snatching an Iraqi baby right out of a pile of garbage.

I don't know what compelled them to do it, or why they even thought they could get away with it, but steps must be taken to insure that they don't bring their newly acquired bad habits home with them. After all, we have a thing in this country known as a Woman's Right to Choose. That baby was placed in the dumpster by a woman who made a conscious choice to put it there. It probably wasn't an easy choice, but it was her choice just the same and she doesn't need a bunch of neanderthal pro-lifers rooting around in her garbage and invading her privacy. Steal some credit card statements out of somebody's trash can, and they'll throw the book at you. Pluck a baby out of a dumpster, and they'll hail you as a hero. That's a huge legal loophole that must be closed and quick. Federal funding must also be increased for Iraqi reproductive health centers, such as Planned Parenthood of Bagdhad. More abortions means less babies for G.I.'s to abduct.

I feel for our troops. I really do. They're overextended, overdeployed, overworked, and all that rigamaroo. It's no wonder they're starting to act a little loopy. But that by no means gives them the right to launch a shock & awe assault on Roe v. Wade.

I like toast

2007-09-10T16:33:00.001-07:00

An Atheist Responds

2007-09-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

By Christopher Hitchens
Saturday, July 14, 2007; Page A17

It's uncommonly generous of Michael Gerson[" What Atheists Can't Answer," op-ed, July 13] to refer to me as "intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind," since (a) this might be taken as proof that he hardly knows me and (b) it was he who was so kind when I once rang him to check a scurrilous peacenik rumor that he was a secret convert from Judaism to Christian fundamentalism.

However, it is his own supposedly kindly religion that prevents him from seeing how insulting is the latent suggestion of his position: the appalling insinuation that I would not know right from wrong if I was not supernaturally guided by a celestial dictatorship, which could read and condemn my thoughts and which could also consign me to eternal worshipful bliss (a somewhat hellish idea) or to an actual hell.

Implicit in this ancient chestnut of an argument is the further -- and equally disagreeable -- self-satisfaction that simply assumes, whether or not religion is metaphysically "true," that at least it stands for morality. Those of us who disbelieve in the heavenly dictatorship also reject many of its immoral teachings, which have at different times included the slaughter of other "tribes," the enslavement of the survivors, the mutilation of the genitalia of children, the burning of witches, the condemnation of sexual "deviants" and the eating of certain foods, the opposition to innovations in science and medicine, the mad doctrine of predestination, the deranged accusation against all Jews of the crime of "deicide," the absurdity of "Limbo," the horror of suicide-bombing and jihad, and the ethically dubious notion of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice.

Of course Gerson will -- and must -- cherry-pick this list (which is by no means exhaustive) and patter on about how one mustn't be too literal. But in doing this, he makes a huge concession to the ethical humanism to which he so loftily condescends. The game is given away by his own use of G.K. Chesterton's invocation of Thor. We laugh at this dead god, but were not Norse children told that without Valhalla there would be no courage and no moral example? Isn't it true that Louis Farrakhan's crackpot racist group gets young people off drugs? Doesn't Hamas claim to provide social services to the downtrodden? If you credit any one religion with motivating good deeds, how (without declaring yourself to be sectarian) can you avoid crediting them all? And is not endless warfare between the faiths to be added to the list of horrors I just mentioned? Just look at how the "faith-based" are behaving in today's Iraq.

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time -- awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

Essentially conceding that philosophy and secularism do not condemn their adherents to lives of unbridled selfishness, and that (say) the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay, and also that we could not have evolved unless human solidarity was in some way innate, Gerson ends weakly by posing what is a rather moving problem.

"In a world without God," he writes, "this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment." Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of "God Is Not Great."

What Atheists Can't Answer

2007-09-10T12:17:00.000-07:00

By Michael Gerson
Friday, July 13, 2007; Page A17

British author G.K. Chesterton argued that every act of blasphemy is a kind of tribute to God, because it is based on belief. "If anyone doubts this," he wrote, "let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor."

By the evidence of the New York Times bestseller list, God has recently been bathed in such tributes. An irreverent trinity -- Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- has sold a lot of books accusing theism of fostering hatred, repressing sexuality and mutilating children (Hitchens doesn't approve of male circumcision). Every miracle is a fraud. Every mystic is a madman. And this atheism is presented as a war of liberation against centuries of spiritual tyranny.

Proving God's existence in 750 words or fewer would daunt even Thomas Aquinas. And I suspect that a certain kind of skeptic would remain skeptical even after a squadron of angels landed on his front lawn. So I merely want to pose a question: If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?

If God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth, it would not, of course, mean that everyone joins the Crips or reports to the Playboy mansion. On evidence found in every culture, human beings can be good without God. And Hitchens is himself part of the proof. I know him to be intellectually courageous and unfailingly kind, when not ruthlessly flaying opponents for taking minor exception to his arguments. There is something innate about morality that is distinct from theological conviction. This instinct may result from evolutionary biology, early childhood socialization or the chemistry of the brain, but human nature is somehow constructed for sympathy and cooperative purpose.

But there is a problem. Human nature, in other circumstances, is also clearly constructed for cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage, icy selfishness and a range of other less desirable traits.

So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.

Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: "Obey your evolutionary instincts" because those instincts are conflicted. "Respect your brain chemistry" or "follow your mental wiring" don't seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone to respond: "To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I'm going to do whatever I please." C.S. Lewis put the argument this way: "When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains."

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests -- a fear of bad consequences -- will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature. In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

The death of God has greater consequences than expanded golf time on Sunday mornings. And it is not simply religious fundamentalists who have recognized it. America's Founders embraced public neutrality on matters of religion, but they were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith. George Washington warned against the "supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." The Founders generally believed that the virtues necessary for self-government -- self-sacrifice, honesty, public spirit -- were strengthened by religious beliefs and institutions.

None of this amounts to proof of God's existence. But it clarifies a point of agreement -- which reveals an even deeper division. Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.

This form of "liberation" is like liberating a plant from the soil or a whale from the ocean. In this kind of freedom, something dies.

Christopher Hitchens on Michael Moore

2007-09-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 3:26 PM ET

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something-I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now-has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all-the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002-or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar-an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building-is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left-like the parties of the Iraqi secular left-are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that-as you might expect-Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say-that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then-wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this-his pro-American moment-was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled-Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more-the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported-and the David Kay report had established-that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings-not exactly an original point-the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So-he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again-simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft-the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think-as he seems to suggest-that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes-we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers-get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (...), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States ...

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

* Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports.

Britney's Comeback

2007-09-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

By DAN AQUILANTE, [New York] Post Music Critic

(Excerpt)

"Spears was stuffed into a spangled bra and hot pants and jiggled like Jell-O as she sleepwalked through the song.

She didn't seem to care that she danced like she had a pantload, that her lips weren't synched with the song, and that the tune isn't all that great.

At the start, Britney vamped, "If you're looking for trouble you've come to the right place." She's never been more right in her life."

Etc.

Judge for yourself:

The Sacrifice of Reason

2007-09-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris

Best-selling author of Letter to a Christian Nation

The Sacrifice of Reason
Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible (and almost certainly fictional) God.

In many ancient cultures whenever a nobleman died, other men and women allowed themselves to be buried alive so as to serve as his retainers in the next world. In ancient Rome, children were sometimes slaughtered so that the future could be read in their entrails. The Dyak women of Borneo would not even look at a suitor unless he came bearing a net full of human heads as a love offering. Some Fijian prodigy devised a powerful sacrament called “Vakatoga” which required that a victim’s limbs be cut off and eaten while he watched. Among the Iroquois, captives from other tribes were often permitted to live for many years, and even to marry, all the while being doomed to be flayed alive as an oblation to the God of War; whatever children they produced while in captivity were disposed of in the same ritual. African tribes too numerous to name have a long history of murdering people to send as couriers in a one-way dialogue with their ancestors or to convert their body parts into magical charms. Ritual murders of this sort continue in many African societies to this day.

It is essential to realize that such impossibly stupid misuses of human life have always been explicitly religious. They are the product of what certain human beings think they know about invisible gods and goddesses, and of what they manifestly do not know about biology, meteorology, medicine, physics, and a dozen other specific sciences that have more than a little to say about the events in the world that concern them.

And it is astride this contemptible history of religious atrocity and scientific ignorance that Christianity now stands as an absurdly unselfconscious apotheosis. As John the Baptist is rumored to have said upon seeing Jesus for the first time, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). For most Christians, this bizarre opinion still stands, and it remains the core of their faith. Christianity amounts to the claim that we must love and be loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man—his son, incidentally—in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others.

Let the good news go forth: we live in a cosmos, the vastness of which we can scarcely even indicate in our thoughts, on a planet teeming with creatures we have only begun to understand, but the whole project was actually brought to a glorious fulfillment over twenty centuries ago, after one species of primate (our own) climbed down out of the trees, invented agriculture and iron tools, glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food, and then singled out one among its number to be viciously flogged and nailed to a cross.

The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a “loving” God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the scapegoating barbarism that has plagued bewildered people throughout history. Viewed in a modern context, it is an idea at once so depraved and fantastical that it is hard to know where to begin to criticize it. Add to the abject mythology surrounding one man’s death by torture—Christ’s passion—the symbolic cannibalism of the Eucharist. Did I say “symbolic”? Sorry, according to the Vatican it is most assuredly not symbolic. In fact, the opinion of the Council of Trent still stands:

I likewise profess that in the Mass a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice is offered to God on behalf of the living and the dead, and that the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, and that there is a change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into blood; and this change the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. I also profess that the whole and entire Christ and a true sacrament is received under each separate species.

Of course, Catholics have done some very strenuous and unconvincing theology in this area, in an effort to make sense of how they can really eat the body of Jesus, not mere crackers enrobed in metaphor, and really drink his blood without, in fact, being a cult of crazy cannibals. Suffice it to say, however, that a world view in which “propitiatory sacrifices on behalf of the living and the dead” figure prominently is rather difficult to defend in the year 2007. But this has not stopped otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people from defending it.

And now we learn that even Mother Teresa, the most celebrated exponent of this dogmatism in a century, had her doubts about the whole story—the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the existence of heaven, and even the existence of God:

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone ... Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

Teresa’s recently published letters reveal a mind riven by doubt (as it should have been). They also reveal a woman who was surely suffering from run-of-the-mill depression, though even secular commentators have begun to politely dress this fact in the colors of the saints and martyrs. Teresa’s response to her own bewilderment and hypocrisy (her term) reveals just how like quicksand religious faith can be. Her doubts about God’s existence were interpreted by her confessor as a sign that she was sharing Christ’s torment upon the cross; this exaltation of her wavering faith allowed Teresa “to love the darkness” she experienced in God’s apparent absence. Such is the genius of the unfalsifiable. We can see the same principle at work among her fellow Catholics: Teresa’s doubts have only enhanced her stature in the eyes of the Church, having been interpreted as a further evidence of God’s grace.

Ask yourself, when even the doubts of experts are thought to confirm a doctrine, what could possibly disconfirm it?

www.samharris.org

Talk like Jack Bauer day - January 15

2007-09-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

(humor)

How to act on Talk Like Jack Bauer Day

-Make sure to yell very simple requests.
-Take a helicopter to work.
-Issue threats that involve family members and/or body parts.
-Always mention that you're running out of time.
-Carry a manpurse. Wear aviators. Don't do drugs.
-Carry around zip ties and a pair of pliers (because you never know).
-Keep a car battery and some jumper cables on your desk.
-Use your cell phone as much as possible. If the battery dies, just pretend it's still working.
-Use at least 5 exclamation points in every email!!!!
-Ask "Who are you working for!?" to as many people as possible.
-Throw out a "Dammit" during the day, just for the hell of it.
-Drink each time you hear a co-worker say "Dammit".
-Make a mistake at work? Blame Nina Myers.
-Request everything be sent to your PDA (works best if you don't have one).
-Accuse co-workers and/or children of being moles.
-Make sure to let your co-workers catch you looking at Google Earth maps of their houses. When they ask why, tell them that you've tracked a terrorist cell to that location.

Samples
Co-worker: How was your weekend?
You: damnit Bob, we don't have time for simple questions.
Co-worker: I just asked about your weekend.
You: Dammit. Who are you working for?
Co-worker: Never mind, forget I asked.

Co-worker: Hey man. Did you already get breakfast?
You: I've killed 3 people today and no I've yet to eat breakfast. Dammit!
Co-worker: Is that a threat?
You: That's not a threat, that's a fact.

Boss: Hey, where are the reports I asked for?
(pull out stapler, move towards boss)
You: I think the question you should be asking is how are you going to read the reports after I staple your eyelids to your desk!

(If a co-worker tries to talk to you while you're using the urinal, finish up, flush, walk over to the sink, wash your hands, and remove a paper towel from the dispenser.)
You: You probably don't think that I can force this towel down your throat. But trust me, I can. All the way. Except I'd hold onto this one little bit at the end. When your stomach starts to digest it, I pull it out. Taking your stomach lining with it. For most people it would take about a week to die. It's very painful. (Reference)

Co-worker: Hey, can you cover for me? I need to run an errand.
You: Let's get one thing straight: the only reason you're still conscious is that I don't want to do your work for you.

Finally, remember that for the whole 24 hours of Talk Like Jack Bauer Day, you cannot go to the bathroom or charge a cell phone. Also, it should only take you a maximum of 3 minutes to get anywhere you are going.

More at http://blogs4bauer.blogspot.com/2007/01/talk-like-jack-bauer-day.html

The Blog That Nobody Read

Congress's Monstrous Legal Legacy - WSJ

SOTUS

Understanding Taqiyya

Understanding Taqiyya - Islamic Principle of Lying for the Sake of Allah

"We are at war"

Islam allows marriage to One-Year old girl

Dead Yemeni bride, 13, ‘a victim of childhood abuse’

Comments on Islam from an article at forbes.com

If You Put Your Mind To It You Can Believe Anything

Ex-Palestinian Spy Talks About Evils of Islam, Hamas' Brutalities

To the graduating class of ...

The New Fascists - by James Hudnall (BigGovernment.com)

MLK's neice on Racism and Abortion

MLK's Neice on Abortion

Deja Vu?

Dennis Miller: The other side of 'but'

An Open Letter to the President

Nationalized Health Care

Hard-Learned Lessons

Vasquez Rocks

McDonald's

Winston Churchill on Islam

Hey Poor People - Listen Up!

Rich People

When did Doctors become the Bad Guys?

Taxation is Killing the American Dream

Global Whining

Health Care Reform

St. Augustine on Curiosity

Articles worth looking at today

Great financial advice

The Democrat War on Morality

Andrew McCarthy's Letter to Attorney General Holder

Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld

Americans with No Abilities Act

'Cause I'm the Tax Man

The New Politics of Fear

Juan Williams Agrees With Me

Happiness and Euphoria

Muslims and Socialists Unite to Urge Killing of Jews

Eurabian Muslims Plan New Holocaust

Religion of Peace Enforces its Rules

Freedom of Speech Dead in France

Witch Hunts Alive and Well in The Religion of Peace

Tobacco - the Cure for Global Warming

Archbishop of Canterbury Mentally Ill

Peaceful Hindu Religion Inspires Yet Another Murder

Season's Greetings

McCain Ignores Supporter while Lieberman Laughs

Muslims Enforce Slave Status of Women in Rape Case

Lieberman Agrees: Democrat Politicians are Paranoid Assholes

Pious Muslims Murder School Children

Americans at War

Muslims Still Murdering Their Daughters and Sisters

Monument to Gullibility Completed

Turks: Stupider Than Ever

New York Times Reveals its Disdain for Black Citizens

1914 - 1918: Global Jihad Begins in Turkey

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

Islamic Justice - Rapists are Acquitted

New Turkish Constitution to "Protect" Women Back to Slave Status

Islamic Asshole Tries to Blow Up US Embassy

Democrats Admit: Democrat Voters are Stupid

Who values the truth?

George Soros

More on NY Times Re: Moveon.org Ad

Iranian Slaves Forced to Protest Against France and USA

France Finally Grows a Backbone

Blogger gets 4 years for insulting Islam

Wild CIA tale scams 22 out of almost $1 million

Sam Harris on Morality

NY Times Shows its Extreme Liberal Bias

Concerned Citizen Seeks to End LOL Abuse

The Russians Are Coming

Britney Spears Fan Doesn't Like Critics

Muslim Thugs Continue Rampage of Destruction

Kathy Griffin Wins Emmy, Gets Censored for Jesus Remark

U.S. Troops Stealing Iraqi Babies Out of Trash Piles

I like toast

Understanding Taqiyya - Islamic
Principle of Lying for the Sake of Allah