Reminder regarding upcoming immigration legislation.

Help STOP the McCain-Kennedy Mass Immigration Bill

We posted about this in Monday's Guard the Borders Blogburst, which contains all the details about McCain-Kennedy Mass Immigration bill, S. 1033. We utilized the Guard the Borders Blogburst as a call to action and sincerely hope that our readers took us up on it. If you used the resource of NumbersUSA.org, then it probably took you less than 5 minutes to accomplish.

If you haven’t taken action yet - here’s your chance. You’ve only got three more days - the bill comes up for a vote on Monday!

Here’s an update from NumbersUSA:

SEND FREE FAX Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) Senator John McCain (R-AZ)

It won’t surprise you that Ted Kennedy wants to BURDEN AMERICA with . . . . . . 30 Million more Foreign Workers and dependents!! But did you know that Sen. John McCain is working with him to pass the McCain-Kennedy Mass Immigration bill, S. 1033? The Senate may take up the McCain-Kennedy bill as early as next week! Our inside sources on Capitol Hill say if the McCain-Kennedy bill comes up for a vote, more than half of the Senators now plan to vote for it. Make sure your Senators are not among them! Click the button below to send a Free Fax asking your Senators to stop S. 1033, a massive immigration increase which will add 30 million more foreign workers and their dependents over the next decade. SEND FREE FAX Join with hundreds of thousands of citizens who make their voices heard through NumbersUSA, a non-profit, non-partisan immigration-reduction organization. NumbersUSA, 1601 N. Kent St., Arlington, VA 22209.

READERS: If you took action on this immigration bill by faxing your Senators, please post a comment to let us know. We’re curious!

Immigration that imports poverty.

Robert Samuelson observes some simple truth about immigration:

Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be importing poverty. . . . Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent. What we have now -- and would with guest workers -- is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico.

He concludes with this simple truth that seems beyond the understanding of the superbrains throughout Washington:

We've never tried a policy of real barriers and strict enforcement against companies that hire illegal immigrants. Until that's shown to be ineffective, we shouldn't adopt guest worker programs that don't solve serious social problems -- but add to them.

"We Don't Need 'Guest Workers'." By Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, 2/22/06 (emphasis added).

Albion's great sword.

Capt. Ed reports that the British have decided that military action will be necessary to deal with Iran. As a run up to that, Britain plans to seek approval of the military option from the U.N. Security Council.

This is a waste of time according to the Captain:

We have reached the point where the Western nations looking to defend themselves from Islamofascist threats need to band together instead of working through a dead process at Turtle Bay. The UN does not preserve peace; it preserves the status quo, and unfortunately that allows rogue nations like Iran the breathing room they need to make those developing threats a reality. We need to recognize that and act on it. The US and the UK are not required to commit suicide in the cause of upholding the credibility of international organizations that have already demonstrated themselves as hopelessly corrupt and demonstrably inert.

The U.N. embodies the so called WWII Allies' fantasy of coordinated action by the major powers to deal with future threats to world peace.

The U.N. should evoke the kind of intellectual interest that a Jurassic mosquito in fossilized pine pitch does. It's a laboratory experiment in massive fantasy, having as its basic operating premise the existence of a commonality of purpose between the civilized nations of the West and Stalin and his murderous henchmen. That is, a commonality of purpose extending beyond a firm commitment to a nutritious breakfast.

The time has long passed for the democratic, liberal nations to band together to support a purely Western agenda, not some goulash of peevish tribalism, obscurantism, Inca populism, Russian pursuit of the Oddball Alliance of the Year award, Chinese muscle flexing and energy source scheming, and neofascist Islamic terror and irredentism.

Did we leave anybody out?

"Britain Hardening Its Line On Iran." By Capt. Ed, Captain's Quarters, 3/22/06.

Light blogging.

We're off to assist with a family project and so blogging may be light for about a week.

Be sure to check out the terrific blogs in our honor roll to the right.

The dangerous destructiveness of the left.

These are some powerful words about the left from Mr. Vasko Kohlmayer, who defected from Communist Czechoslovakia. Note, especially, his idea that there is a death drive, a suicidal impulse, that is inherent in all great civilizations. The Left is the embodiment of that impulse:

The Left’s seemingly insatiable hunger for governmental expansion has bucked the West’s long-term trend toward the limited State. Dominated by large, all-intrusive welfare states, the condition of many European countries could be justifiably described as soft socialism. The excessive taxation and regulation which are the inevitable byproducts of this have virtually strangled their free economic enterprise and induced long-term economic malaise. Diametrically opposed to the ideals of classical liberalism, this state of affairs represents a complete subversion of western political and economic tradition.

By teaching that the masterpieces of the West’s greatest creative minds are no more intrinsically valuable than artifacts of far less advanced societies, the Left has deprived westerners’ of their justified pride in their own culture. And by lying about the West’s past, it has managed to suppress our consciousness of historical greatness.

The Left’s successes have been largely due to its takeover of the two main channels for the dissemination of knowledge and information – the media and academia. Careful to avoid positive portrayal of the West in almost any context, they abound in aspersions and criticism. In the process, the Left has devised an ingenious and effective mode of censorship to further its ends. It is called political correctness.

Death Wish: destroying the West

The West’s moral decline, the collapse of its religion, economic sluggishness, and the indifference to its own historical and cultural achievements – all this is the Left’s doing. . . .

* * * *

The West’s greatest threat is neither Islam nor any other external foe. It is its own political Left. . . .

By corroding the West’s moral, spiritual, economic and cultural foundation, the Left has wrought incalculable damage on our civilization.

"The Suicidal Left: Civilizations and their Death Drives." By Vasko Kohlmayer, The American Thinker, 2/28/06 (emphasis added).

The long-term Muslim worldview and death-dealing "clerics."

Cal Thomas reports^[1] in chilling detail the mindset of the deadly serious, if deranged, Muslim spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Masri, an imam who went on trial in London in January.^[2]

Note the clear appreciation of long-term infiltration by sleeper agents (10 years before activation) and the fact that the imam is not in the slightest doubt that Muslim doctrine requires Muslims to kill kuffar like you and me, Dear Reader.

The duty to kill apostates is clear to this joker, would that he were trying to be funny. We especially focus on his belief that he, as an imam, has the authority to declare whether someone is an "apostate." Are you perhaps waiting for "Official Islam" to rein in this guy, to stop him from making wild threats? Not to worry. You are just in a temporary dream state.

It never ceases to amaze the Colonel how single, solitary, individual imams, mufti and ayatollahs can all by they lonesome decide that someone's time on earth is finished.

Declaring someone an "apostate" is as easy for the imams to say as the Harvard faculty to chant "Bush lied." However, as we see all the time, calling some an apostate is a death sentence or, at best, a lever to effect (a) some world class groveling to seek forgiveness or (b) withdrawal of the dissenting Muslim into a cloistered existence where every snap of a twig could be the assassin in the backyard. [Is this imagery, or what?!]

No bringing of charges, no defense arguments, no court hearing, no checks on runaway imaginings, no comparison of conduct with any known standard, and no concern with the concepts of precedent or proportionality. It's stop-start, on-off, black-white, kiss my ring-death.

One braying, malevolent jackass acts as judge, jury and dispatcher of executioner. How hard the West has worked to avoid the horrible abuses of unchecked discretion on the part of political leaders and how horribly primitive are this man and the methods by which he exercise the authority conferred on him by his "religion."

Member of extremely teeny, tiny, only-seen-every-17-years Muslim minority group.

Same problem: "senior clerics" in Afghanistan say that if the government does not execute Christian convert, Mr. Abdul Rahman, and if it "caves into" Western pressure, they will "incite people to 'pull him into pieces.'"^[3] Heck, in the U.S. it's hard to get citizens to band together to pick up litter on the street but in Afghanistan you can "incite" the locals to pull some human being's arms from the sockets. Supper in the mosque rec room afterwards.

As Yakov might say, "What a religion!"

Wait, Comrades, there's more:

"Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die," said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hardline regime was ousted in 2001. ^[4]

Whew! This concept of the Islamic "moderate" is a slippery one. What would a Muslim "extremist" want? Hillary in 2008?

No need to cite any portion of the sharia for the death-for-hurting-God's-feelings proposition. Just get all riled up, lay the evil eye on your victim, and he's history.

This is just too cool. Where do we sign up to be one of them Muslim "cleric" dealie bobs? We know of some people from our high school who we're pretty certain have some pretty shaky religious beliefs that need to be "corrected." Who better than us to help out God by killing that miserable #$@%& in gym class reaffirming the primacy of His Holy Word?

Notes
^[1] "Infiltration by the book." By Cal Thomas, Washington Times, 1/18/06.
^[2] Total of 15 charges: nine counts of solicitation of murder, four counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior intended to incite racial hatred, and two counts related to the possessing offensive sound recordings and a copy of the Encyclopedia of the Afghani Jihad.

Counts 10 through 15 are stupid and raise serious free speech issues. The Brits and the Europeans are heavy into the hate speech nonsense and it's a shame to see them have to resort to this nonsense. The incitement to murder charges are just fine, though, make no mistake.

Some Muslim thinkers have urged that imams, muftis, and ayatollahs who issue fatwahs for the murder of others should be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This is an excellent idea and is a good topic for a separate post.
^[3] "Clerics Call for Christian Convert's Death Despite Western Outrage." Associated Press, 3/23/06.
^[4] Id. It's just amaaazing how many Muslim "clerics" know God's mind. They are so concerned with how sensitive God is to the opinion of goat herders and physics professors. Yes, the Creator of the Universe, the Giver of life, and the artist of splendor beyond the mind of men to understand is surely cast down by the thoughts, speech, and religious decisions of Mr. Abdul Rahman, 345 Opium Poppy Street – Apt. 2B, Kabul, Afghanistan.

Never inner naughtiness.

Dennis Prager has written an especially insightful piece on the divide between the left and the [dastardly, devilish, radical] right. The Colonel suspects he's been a bit dense in the past, immersed as he was in the swill of recriminations from the left. The stuff just washed over us in the last 45 years and when some new depredation of the underclass or the crybaby Palestinians occurred, the gushers opened up with the usual nonsense.

We think Mr. Prager's taken George Orwell's thought to heart: "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious":

If you wish to test the thesis that the Left blames those blown up for being blown up by Muslim terrorists, have your son or daughter at college ask some liberal arts professors who is to blame for 9-11 or Muslim suicide bombers in Israel, etc.

In fact, one way to describe the moral divide between conservatives and liberals is whom they blame for acts of evil committed against innocent people, especially when committed by non-whites and non-Westerners. Conservatives blame the perpetrators, and liberals blame either the victims' group or the circumstances.

Mr. Prager poses three theories for why the liberals get it wrong about moral responsibility:

• Secular humanism sees men as basically good, therefore evil must come from some outside circumstance. [E.g., handguns, assault rifles.]


• Liberals view political reality as occurring along the strong-weak spectrum. The stronger the dominant group is the more excusable the actions and reactions of the weak. (We infer the additional point that the more power the dominant group has, the more reprehensible and suspect it is, and the more worthwhile and inherently virtuous the weaker group is.)


• Liberals are afraid of the truly evil.

We don't think the last point is accurate. Liberals are hardly the only ones who are afraid of the truly evil. The Colonel has known many conservative woman who refuse to go out with him.

"Why the Left doesn't blame Muslims for Muslim violence." By Dennis Prager, Townhall.com, 2/28/06 <--- "Excusing evil ." Bookworm, 2/28/06.

Dirty business.

This is for our commenter, Anonymous, who commented on one of our posts:

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil.

George Orwell

A comparison between Iraq and Vietnam the left won't like.

Jim Simpson recalls certain undeniable realities about our noble military effort in Vietnam years ago and sees parallels with Iraq today:

For in some key aspects, OIF has become another Vietnam.

As with Vietnam, we are winning the war on the ground. But, as with Vietnam, the national Democrat Party works relentlessly to sabotage the war effort. As with Vietnam, the national news media lies, obfuscates and misinforms. As with Vietnam, failure may be the consequence.

Check out Frank Snepp's excellent book, Decent Interval, for the story on how Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam.

"Vietnam redux." Jim Simpson, Truth & Consequences, 3/20/06.

Call to action on pending immigration amnesty bills.

The scent -- or stench -- of immigration legislation is in the air again with the usual lollipops to be handed out to illegals and the pencil in the eye for those who have dutifully applied to emigrate through legal channels.

The details are complex and it is safe to assume that solons want to railroad the voters by passing some version of this legislation before any opposition can be mounted.

Here are the Colonel's objections:

• Amnesty of any kind ought not to be something that puts illegals ahead of people who have tried to come here legally.
• A short amnesty should only be a means of setting up a system to ameliorate the harshness of grabbing people out of the Piggly Wiggly check out line or dragging them off the operating table and then speeding them to an early and mandatory date with the border. There's a certain visceral appeal to that but Americans do not have the stomach for that and, probably, neither does the Colonel.
• Amnesty with a "go home" provision after the end of a five-year period allows for five more years within which to avail oneself of the economic advantages of residing in the U.S. That's a significant benefit -- and concession -- right there. By rights, the illegal is entitled only to immediate deportation, having broken the law with his first step onto U.S. soil. Getting five more years is very, very generous, not to mention not being prosecuted for the time already spent illegally in the U.S.
• Illegals who do not register for the amnesty would be subject to immediate deportation, having by their failure elected not to avail themselves of the generous five-year period. No heart need bleed for those who choose to reaffirm their (a) illegal status and (b) determination to live outside the law in a country to which they were not been invited.
• Any kind of a "guest worker" provision risks setting up a class of people who will be neither fish nor fowl. Germany tried hard to keep its Turkish guest workers as "guests" but, lo, they remained, settled, and had or brought families. "Guest" became "unremovable other of indeterminate status who know's he's not wanted." One should either be a citizen of the country of one's residence or be a tourist or short-term student there. Anything else is a formula for long-term resentment.
• If -- that is, IF -- there is any kind of an amnesty, it should be for skilled workers only.
• Ditto for new quotas made available to legal would be emigrants in their home countries.
• Sealing the border and fiddling with amnesty provisions are INDEPENDENT problems. The most important thing to have happen in Congress is to GUARD THE BORDERS! Without delay, there should be separate legislation that effects a vastly improved Border Patrol operation and ONLY when there is an effective sealing of the border do we need to turn our attention to the remaining problem, that is, illegals who remain. We think it is an attempt at deliberate obfuscation that the control of the border and amnesty issues are being considered together. They must be kept separate. To heck with la la Yale and Harvard summer intern experiments with amnesty and privileged status for law breakers. First stop the hemorrhage of new illegals.
• Finally, we note the bizarre concept devised by Rep. Jon Kyl, who does not want to "strand" anyone outside the U.S. For crying out loud, the world is not divided into (a) people in the U.S. and (b) everyone else "stranded" outside the U.S. Anyone ejected from the U.S. is not ipso facto stranded, he or she goes back to his or her home country, which in most cases, will be Mexico, the country into which they have been ejected.

End of Colonel Bunny diatribe. Please read this week's Guard the Borders blogburst post and ACT as suggested.

CALL TO ACTION!
On Thursday, March 16, the Senate Judiciary Committee told their staff to meet behind closed doors to construct an immigration bill that would include provisions from the Kennedy-McCain bill. Known as S. 1033, the McCain-Kennedy bill includes an amnesty for illegal aliens, a massive "guest" worker program that leads to citizenship, and an estimated one million additional permanent immigrants each year.

Millions of illegals to become citizens?

[The] Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill [is] likely to pass Senate committee after recess:

A bill that would give millions of illegal aliens in the United States the opportunity to earn citizenship is closer to becoming law today as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled likely passage of a proposal by Sens. Edward Kenney, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz.

Though a committee vote will not be held until after a week-long congressional recess, likely March 27, committee members appeared ready to back the Kennedy-McCain bill.

"The votes are there," said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Congress is working to pass a reform bill that includes enforcement, a policy on dealing with illegals already in the country and a guest-worker program pushed by President Bush.

Under the legislation, illegal aliens in the United States would obtain six-year nonimmigrant visas under which they could work in the country and travel outside the country. The aliens would have to pay a $1,000 fine and undergo background checks.

After six years, the aliens would be able to meet certain requirements and then apply for a green card, or permanent residency.

Besides voting on the bill after the recess, committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said the panel also would vote on a bill by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that would give illegal aliens up to five years to leave the U.S. After returning home, they could then apply to return, either as temporary workers or for permanent residency.

"Our intention is not to strand anyone outside the country," Kyl said, according to an AP report. But he asserted the McCain-Kennedy plan would give an illegal alien allowed to stay and work in the country a "huge advantage" over a person having to wait for years in his or her own country for a green card.

The McCain-Kennedy bill would start off with offering 400,000 of the new visas.

To compare the various bills please click here to view a .pdf chart created by NumbersUSA.org. You will be able to see for yourself that what the spin-meisters are telling us about the various bills clearly does NOT match the actual provisions of the bills themselves.

Although Sens. McCain and Kennedy adamantly deny that S. 1033 is an amnesty for illegal aliens, it clearly spells out a path to jobs and residency for illegal aliens. Among the significant immigration-increase provisions of the bill are: a new visa category (H-5A) for 400,000 low-skill foreign workers (this cap can be adjusted upwards); a new temporary 6-year visa category (H-5B) for illegal aliens (and their spouses and children) already in the country; an amnesty for illegal aliens who apply for an H-5B visa and pay a $2,000 fine; a provision for the H-5A temporary workers to apply for permanent resident status after four years; and an exemption of immediate relatives (spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens) from the annual level of 480,000 family-sponsored immigrant visas thereby providing additional visas to the family preference categories.

Supporters claim S. 1033 contains measures to increase border security, yet it contains virtually no such provisions. Aside from creating a Border Security Committee and requiring a few reports, the main "enforcement" provisions are aimed at helping Mexico control its borders!! S. 1033 does, however, require machine-readable immigration documents, and create a new electronic work authorization system that would eventually replace the current "I-9" system. S. 1033 would require the federal government to reimburse states for the cost of providing emergency health care to H-5A and H-5B workers.

Aside from the fact that any guest worker plan would be nothing more than a disastrous amnesty deal tied with a big red bow for lawbreakers, there is another reason to reject it: Our government can't handle it!

Our government is not capable of handling roughly 13-20 million temporary worker applications when our illegal alien population suddenly becomes eligible through guest worker legislation - USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service) simply cannot handle the administration overload it already has. The only solution would be to massively increase the government. The link above outlines a report from the GAO that shows how the USCIS is already irrevocably buried under a backlog of immigration adjudication. It's a whole other perspective on the various administrative amnesties proposed by the Senate. Mundane? Perhaps. Crucial to the overall scope and size of our bloated and sprawling federal government? Absolutely.

This Guard the Borders Blogburst is a CALL TO ACTION!

1. If you care about the careless increases in immigration as proposed by our Senate, please send a fax - today. It's fast, it's easy - and it's free. NumbersUSA has an amazing way to help us stay involved, and helps us get our voices heard. Their basic faxes are pre-written, and will take less than one minute to send. But, even better, once you register, the faxes are fully customizable to say what you specifically find important to say, if you so choose. The site is an incredible free resource for immigration issues. You can also opt-in for timely updates on issues coming before Congress, and take action on every single on, if you desire.

2. Email the permalink from this article to others you know who care about the impact of illegal immigration. Together, we can all have a voice. The more Americans that respond - the bigger the impact.

Please take a moment, and send a fax today. The Senate Judiciary committee is behind closed doors as we speak. The McCain-Kennedy bill will come to a vote by next Monday. They and their staffs are smugly confident that they have the votes - let's convince our Senators otherwise.

Take action! We can still be heard!

__________________________________________
This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It is syndicated by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we're going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration in our country, join the Blogburst! Send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.

Clinton movie titles.

This is a flash from the past we found on our hard drive doing some maintenance.

The Washington Times solicited possible movie titles from readers for the movie that would be made about the Clinton Administration?

Some of the responses:

Truth and Consequences
Citizen Stain
Prince of Ties
The Bad News Bares
Dumb and Dumber
Lady and the Tramp
Apackolies
The Big Lewinsky
Dial M for Monica
Willy Wonka and the Cigar Factory
Saving Private Lyin´
Easy Liar
The Lying King
Free Willy
Animal Spouse
Terms of Impeachment
The Wizard of Odds
Hip, Hip, Beret
Romancing the Phone
Tiepanic
Sex, Lies on Videotape
Sex, Ties and Audiotape
Waiting to Inhale
The Eight Commandments
Neither an Officer nor a Gentleman
Honey, I Shrunk the Presidency
The Me Lie Massacre
Bedtime for Bubba
The Full Monica

Muslim moderates not crazy for staying silent.

Mark Steyn makes a good point when he says we shouldn't expect "moderate" Muslims to speak out [if] they live in amongst the killers and thugs OR they see CNN and the BBC [and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal] knuckle under and refuse to publish the "Danish cartoons."

He has these excellent thoughts about the West's response to the Muslim outrages perpetrated in the wake of the publication of the cartoons:

The Danish cartoons story was a test, and the civilized world failed it. . . . .

Many parties have behaved wretchedly in these last few weeks--European commissioners, the British foreign secretary, the U.S. State Department, significant chunks of the incoming Canadian cabinet, the dead-again Christians who lead the United Church of Canada--but the western media have managed to produce a uniquely creepy synthesis of craven capitulation and self-serving pomposity. . . .

. . . But it seems it's one thing to "speak truth to power" when the power's George Bush or John Ashcroft, quite another when it's an Islamist mob coming to burn your building down. . . .

* * * *

. . . In our multicultural society, the best way to get "respect" from others is to despise them; the surest way to have your views boundlessly "tolerated" is to be utterly intolerant of anybody else's. Those who think Islam will apply these lessons only to op-ed cartoons or representations of Mohammed are very foolish.

"Why expect "moderate Muslims" to stand up to the Islamist radicals when our own newspaper editors won't?" By Mark Steyn, Weekly Standard, 3/13/06.

A revealing look at Arab intellectual achievement.

There is no more telling evidence of the retarding effect of Islam on Arab intellectuals than what you will read at this site:

"Intellectual Output From The [Arab] Muslim World." The Ultimate Insult, 3/15/06.

UPDATE: Also see this from Mark Steyn:

Anyone who's spent any time in the Muslim world cannot help but be struck by its profound ignorance. The famous United Nations statistic from a 2002 report--more books are translated into Spanish in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last thousand--suggests at the very minimum an extraordinarily closed society, which in turn explains its stunted political development. For example, the editor of the Yemen Observer, Mohammed al-Asadi, wrote a strong editorial denouncing the Danish cartoons, but, like this magazine's editor, decided to show its readers what they looked like. As a result, he's now in jail. The point about Islam is that it's beyond discussion. No corner of the earth would benefit more from the ability to debate ideas openly.

"Why expect "moderate Muslims" to stand up to the Islamist radicals when our own newspaper editors won't?." By Mark Steyn, Weekly Standard, 3/13/06.

Official Saudi opinion: Rome to be controlled by Islam.

Imagine the uproar that would result from the Pope's saying that Christians will control the Kabah and introduce Christianity to Saudi Arabia.

Here's the flip side of that and don't hold your breath waiting for the MSM to jump on this. Such threats are just fine so long as they come from the mouth of a Saudi:

Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-‘Arifi, Imam of the King Fahd Defense Academy, who declared recently: “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims…will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…”

“The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy,” By Steven Stalinsky, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 14, 2005, quoted in "Muslim Target." By Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine.com, 6/14/05 (emphasis added).

Islamic spirituality.

As I have seen countless times in my own life, there is no spirituality in the day-to-day practices of Islam. But when it comes to the (not so well) hidden agenda of Islam, a spirituality of sorts creeps in. In the creepiest forms and shapes, it takes over this religion of death. All of a sudden, such spirituality carries a new meaning. This spirituality is no longer about the peace of mind or giving others comfort, but it is about winning the war against the infidels no matter what.

"A Special Guest at Apostate’s House--The Fortuneteller." By Avenging Apostate, The Pedestrian Infidel, 3/19/06 (emphasis added).

Something for Solnondey.

There was a young fellow named Cholmondeley,
Whose bride was so mellow and colmondeley
That the best man, Colquhoun,
An inane young bolqufoun,
Could only stand still and stare dolmondeley.

Source.

Clear-eyed evangelicals.

The Rev. Franklin Graham gets it exactly right about Islam:

[In his Wall Street Journal article he] said "the persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islamic conquests and rule for centuries." Graham said the Quran "provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to win converts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world."

So did the Rev. Pat Robertson:

These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with.

The goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, is world domination.

The Rev. Robertson has taken some flak for things he's said. However, he called it right about Islam and we remember him talking about the threat of the Soviet Union years ago when it was unfashionable to do so.

We say both these gentlemen make a lot more sense than the types who sneer at the Christian rubes and fall over themselves to serve donuts and coffee at meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Christian evangelist Franklin Graham reaffirms criticism of Islam." Associated Press, 2/15/06.

Dealing with the Islamic fifth column.

Deciding what to do about people in your midst who are intent on destroying your way of life and either killing or subjugating you is an important question to which we will return in this blog in the future.

For now, here is an approach advocated by someone who understands what it is to fight for what we are and what we have:

The key question is what our democracy “ought” to do with the fifth columnist in our midst. The answer is that they must be identified, prosecuted under conspiracy and other applicable criminal statutes, and they must be neutralized in federal prisons for a very long time. They should not merely be deported, only to show up here plying their terrorist trade yet again. Unlike the Australians who make suggestions, we must be ruthless about eliminating these people.

As to those not yet identified as fifth columnists, they must be watched (yes, with domestic wiretaps, and every other tool available to us), and when they cross the line put away until they pose no further danger to us. Undercover agents in mosques, surveillance, subpoenas, search warrants, grand jury investigations, use of the IRS—whatever it takes. Once we defeat the terrorists, things will get back to normal—as they did after the Civil War, WWI, and WW II. (Ask Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR how they would handle today’s problem).

If accomplishing this requires focusing on every Muslim in the United States (“profiling” is the pejorative term of art used by the left), so be it—and no apologies, thank you. As has oft been said, while most Muslims are not terrorists, most terrorists have been Muslims.

But the “ought” is not the “is.”

The “is,” I fear, is quite different. Those of us who understand today’s threat face a terrible confluence of factors:—the ideologically corrupt mainstream media, the ascendancy and resources of the hate-America crowd, the softness of many politicians, the short attention span of most Americans, the shallowness of the values, the lack of education, the aversion to the sight of blood, the absence of an historical sense, the mostly partisan left-democrats There is abroad in the land an anti-intellectual, anti-patriotic, anti-democratic, anti-security, and, yes, anti-freedom cancer that seems to metastasize every day.

Henry Mark Holzer, quoted in "Symposium: Banning Sharia?" By Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com, 2/10/06 (emphasis added) <--- All Things Beautiful.

The Muslim invasion of Europe.

Read this post in all its depressing detail.

We agree that effective resistance to the inundation planned by Islam will only come from below. The intellectual class is useless in this fight to preserve the West.

The literati have long held the West in contempt, as evidenced by their willing embrace of communism or their utter failure to appreciate the murderous nature of communism. It is no surprise that they are just as blind to this third world invasion.

It is one thing to throw open the doors of one's country to people of another culture but what caused Europeans and Americans to open the doors to people from another time and from a culture so backward, so violent, and so opposed to all the core values of the West?

Invite Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Chinese, Namibians, Chileans, Hmong, Vietnamese, or Copts into your country. Result: diversity, order, contribution, adaptation, enrichment.

Invite Muslims. Result: challenge, hate, conspiracy, crime, riot, terror, refusal to assimilate, recruitment of criminals and malcontents, hijackings, vehicular assaults, explosives in automobile trunks, "honor" killings.

No one wastes a minute of his or her time wondering if there are moderate Hmong, Vietnamese or Hindus or whether it is fair to condemn some Sikhs but not others. It's unnecessary. They are trustworthy and plan no substitution of the present legal and social order with a backward creed.

But with Muslims, one has no choice but to plunge into this thicket of introspection and overly self conscious examination of one's biases and assumptions. Is one generalizing unfairly? Oh my!

If Muslims had been kept in their own countries, it would be a matter of indifference to Westerners and others whether moderate Muslims can prevail in the battle with extremists, whether Islam has been hijacked, or whether Islam is compatible with modern science and liberalism.

But now that Official Islam is in our midst we are forced to familiarize ourselves with the execrable doctrines of the Koran and to return to the realities of the seventh century. This is a massive diversion of energy and brain power and the Colonel has many more interesting things to do than ponder the ridiculous and hateful blather of multiple commentators and imams concerning a third rate ideology.

"How Did Europe Become Home To 20 Million Muslims In A Mere Three Decades ." All Things Beautiful, 3/18/06.

An 1888 take on Islam.

The Koran, nevertheless, has a firm hold on millions of souls. Islam. although politically dead, is religiously alive. From Gibraltar to China, the religion of Mohammed is that of the masses. It spreads rapidly in Africa, not through the preaching of isolated missionaries, but by the influence of the Arab colonies scattered throughout the continent.

The only possibility of progress rests on the diffusion of education. The influence of Christian colonies may become more effective, and stimulate a desire for something better. Islam, however, best suits the national character. The people must have some religion, but no other form is likely to be adopted. A purification of Islam from within is the only hope.

"The Future Prospects of the Muslim World: In 1888." Unwilling Self-Negation, 3/17/06.

Fjordman on Scandinavian capitulation to Islam.

In 2005 Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, passed a new Discrimination Act. The act says in pretty clear words that in cases of suspected direct or indirect discrimination based on religion or ethnicity, native Norwegians are guilty until proven otherwise. . . .

Unidentified assailants fired shots at an Oslo restaurant owned by the family of a Pakistani-born female comedienne who has achieved prominence for lampooning conservative Islam. . . . Samira Munir, a Norwegian politician of Pakistani origin, was found dead under suspicious circumstances at a train station outside Oslo in November 2005. She had received death threats many times from the Pakistani community in Norway because of her courageous fight for the rights of Muslim immigrant women, and for banning hijab, the Islamic veil.

"When Danes Pay Danegeld – Dealing with Islam in Scandinavia." By Fjordman, The Brussels Journal, 3/17/06.

Missing foreign policy element: cost imposition.

The invasion of Afghanistan was the second tiny step taken by the West to educate Official Islam that the long holiday it has enjoyed from retribution for terror was over. The first being President Reagan's attack on Libya, which was wondrously educational to Mr. Gaddafi. Think of it not as peace "keeping" but as peace "disturbing." The false peace of dhimmitude and cowardice, that is.

Time and time again the world witnessed ghastly terrorist incidents and did nothing, other than cut and run that is. This was true even though the role of states like the Soviet Union, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and North Korea in sponsoring or carrying out terror was well known. No external costs were imposed, no revenge was exacted.

Western leaders in the latter half of the 20th century were criminally culpable for failure to act. Iran presents again as an unrepentant terrorist state, as before, but now it is one angling for the capability to inflict nuclear-scale murder and destruction. The jury is still out on whether Mr. Bush and the rest of the West have the stones to act decisively rather than suck their thumbs and twist their hair.

Unaha-closp writes clearly on the desirability of putting a price tag on animal behavior (with apologies to animals everywhere):

At the moment we treat their attacks as annoyances. As if they are deficient people in need of counseling and support - that if they just have all the options put before them they will choose the best one (the choice of peace & profits). Unfortunately they are backed by people you have found a nirvana of profitability that relies upon them crushing rebellion and making war. These people profit from Islam - from the Saudi sheikh & Iranian mullah who use a false ummah to protect them from their subjects to every husband who treats his wife as a possession. They gain nothing from acting to choose peace and so will not choose it willingly.

To make the counseling work and produce a peaceful society requires closing off certain options. Kick out the profitability of their position by imposing costs for their unhelpful actions. Islam can be a "religion of peace" it just needs clear external cost imposed on those who do profit in diverting it from peace.

We leave out the invasion of Iraq as step 3, by the way, because it has more of the look and feel of a personal mission on the part of President Bush than an attempt to teach an object lesson to terrorists everywhere.

It has had many salutary effects that we applaud but there's no getting around the fact that the initial goals of the invasion lacked coherence. "Axis of Evil" was a meaningless phrase from the start, given that Mr. Bush had no intention ever of doing anything about North Korea.

Need for Serious Action." By Unaha-closp, War is for Winning, 12/28/06 (emphasis added).

Clinging to perfection.

Any form of government, secular or religious, that relies on its perfection to back up its policies greatly fears the loss of that perfection. Look at communism under Stalin. Two major famines occurred, one in the 1920s and one in the 1930s. During the '20s the USSR asked for and received help. In the 2nd famine Stalin refused any and all help and allowed roughly 20 million to die in order to maintain the myth that there were no problems in the "perfect" communist paradise.

Radical Islam is much the same. It relies on a version of reality that is based on the assumption of the perfection of Islam. If that perfection is marred, Islam itself becomes like any other religion; that can't be allowed.

Comment by BeckyJ on "Reform is alive and well within Islam, but it will only happen by those from within Islam..." By Althouse, 3/13/06.

Islamic inventions.

Our post title is a clever pun. Read the following to find out why we are so devilishly clever:

"How Islamic inventors changed the world - A rebuttal." By "Rafadello," Mukto Mona, 3/19/06.

China's ambition –- world economic and military power.

Step 1 – Wal Mart goes to China. Step 2 – China comes to Wal Mart? Frederick Kempe discusses China and some of our current economic realities:

What most Americans are only beginning to realize is how addicted their country has become particularly to Asian investments to fund its record debts and keep interest rates low. The U.S. will need a trillion dollars of foreign capital in 2006, a year when China's foreign-reserve surplus will coincidentally cross the same threshold.

"China Inc.'s Ambitions." By Frederick Kempe, Wall Street Journal, 3/14/06 (subscribers only).

Yepper.

Daniel Henninger decries the "generalized weakening of the codes used at least since Moses to keep societies intact":

Meanwhile the only values taught now in public schools are diversity, tolerance and respect for the environment.

"Barry Bonds, Please Meet Andrew Fastow." By Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 3/17/06 (subscribers only).

Suspicions confirmed: Losing it for Allah.

Clearly the ayatollah in this clip is suffering from a mental illness. The sound track is nonetheless funny, and his two acolytes slapping their own noggins add a dash of absurdity.

Still, we are not inclined to handwringing over the man's predicament considering what we strongly suspect about his policies when he was at the top of his game. We'd love to know his identity so we could go back a year or two to read what he was saying.

We wonder . . . . Was this breakdown the very first clue that his admirers had that something was amiss?

"All Islam needed was some MDMA." Arjan Dasselaar, Zacht Ei, 3/12/06.

Living in the dead past and the mandate of heaven.

We hate to acknowlege Democrats when they espouse sound policy positions but the Colonel did not come by his reputation for fairmindedness and integrity entirely by accident. Ok, it was mostly by accident, but be that as it may, we must celebrate the recognition by Sen. Nancy Pelosi that all is not well with the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, which law was enacted to "hold publicly held companies and their executives more accountable."

Normally, there's no upper limit to the ambition of Congresspersons when it comes to grandstanding after some revelation of human cupidity or treachery that occasionally manifests itself in our public life. "Legislation" and grandstanding are, after all, Congress's "product" and the former is invariably served up with the latter to dispel greed from all hearts, deflect the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune™, banish risk from the face of the earth, and hasten the return -- or arrival -- of the Messiah (depending on your particular take on this issue).

We have already adverted to the wonderful Yiddish proverb, "Send a fool to close a window and she will close all the windows in town." This pretty much summarizes the Aktiongrundregel™ of Congress, sad to say, for its members lust at all times to signal to the voters that they are "doing something." Paradoxically, where screwing with the laws of the Republic is concerned, this is precisely the wrong thing to do, whereas the opposite is true in vile infantry contests where the maxim, dear to infantry leaders everywhere, holds sway, namely, "When in deep [trouble], do something, even if it is the wrong thing."

In the case of Sarbanes-Oxley the original "federal" estimate of the compliance costs was $1.2 billion. The legislative crystal ball was cloudy about then, apparently, because the American Electronic Association recently came up with estimates that the compliance costs of U.S. companies are actually in the neighborhood of $35 billion a year. Actual costs were thus 3,400% higher than estimated. Close enough for government work.

Ms. [Nancy] Pelosi and other Democrats have been quicker to recognize what many traditional champions of free enterprise have been slow to see: the Sarbanes-Oxley's disastrous consequences for our nation's ability to compete.

* * * *

Beyond the direct cost of compliance to individual companies, a recent University of Rochester study concluded that the total effect of the law has reduced the stock value of American companies by $1.4 trillion. . . .

The true beneficiaries of Sarbox are the nation's large auditing firms . . . . Surely this law was not intended by its authors to become a full employment act for the same auditing industry which was implicated in the original malfeasance of four or five years ago.

. . . [T]hose in the corporate world who break the law should be punished. They are: Over 700 prosecutions have been launched since 2002 to address corporate crimes. Nevertheless, not one conviction was a result of Sarbox. Meanwhile, Sarbox clearly failed to prevent the massive accounting scandal at Fannie Mae.

So, in short, apart from the cluelessness of Congress about the compliance costs, the indifference of Congress to American industry's international competitiveness, and the fact that Sarbanes-Oxley was not necessary for effective enforcement action, it was really a terrific piece of legislation.

Some fool many decades ago said that the ability of America's rivers to absorb pollution was one of the nation's great natural resources, or words to the effect.

Modern legislators seem to have the same view of other aspects of the American reality:

• the ability of American business to absorb compliance costs without loss of international competitiveness -- infinite;
• the ability of America to shift manufacturing jobs to foreign nations without compromising national security -- infinite;
• the ability of America to absorb masses of illegal immigrants of unknown allegiance, unknown criminal background, and unknown health status without burdening American citizens financially and without compromising national security -- infinite;
• the tolerance of American voters for businesses that thrive by hiring illegal immigrants and that depress American wage levels -- infinite;
• the ability of America to sustain current international trade imbalances -- infinite;
• the willingness of Americans to tolerate Syrian, Iranian, Saudi, and Palestinian insults and sponsorship of state terror -- infinite; and, among others,
• the willingness of Americans to tolerate the corruption of American officials by drug money and the transfer of gigantic amounts of money to foreign drug growers, drug manufacturers, and terrorists -- infinte.

This viewpoint might profitably be termed Politics As Usual™, founded on an antiquated perception of America's immense relative strength and invulnerability. This perception had its roots in the justifiable pride in the miracles of WWII military production and many feats of American arms, ignorance of the huge debt owed to Soviet infantry, and our extraordinary luck at having two oceans on either flank that preserved our industrial base from the wartime destruction suffered by most of the rest of the world.

Current American anxieties stem from the realization that Politics As Usual™ is not quite gettin' 'er done and that the days of bayonets and street fighting have not been banished from our national experience.

The Chinese have historically considered the concept of "The Mandate of Heaven," which became of interest from time to time during periods of dynastic decline. Such periods arrived when the rustle of skirts in the imperial palace became too loud and the manly vigor of the dynasty was supplanted by something akin to finger painting and an elegant aestheticism. Most recently, the Qin Dynasty failed to appreciate and counter the threat posed by foreigners showing up in large ships with disciplined and well armed infantry. The elite of China just couldn't grasp that not only was China no longer the center of the world but that the barbarians from the new center of the world could overcome any and all of the armies that China could put into the field.

In short, the center weakened imperceptibly and the cumulation of unsettling signs of decay and rule by girlie men gradually intruded in the perceptions of the illiterate masses of China. Earthquakes, floods, and flights of animals irrationally began to be seen as the withdrawal of Heaven's mandate, and a new time of chaos and renewal was ushered in.

Bipartisan cluelessness on something as basic as Sarbanes-Oxley suggests that there is a failure of national leadership, evidencing as it does the fervent commitment to Business As Usual™. Furthermore, the hysteria of the Democrat leadership about matters clearly relating to appropriate national self defense on the one hand, and the inability of the Republicans to grasp the lessons taught by Ronald Reagan and to perform basic tasks such as the simple, uncomplicated sealing of the nation's borders, on the other, do not augur well. Other instances of national cluelessness suggest the same lesson. E.g., President Bush's failure to grasp the precise nature of the threat from "Official Islam" (our current favorite term for Islamofascism or Islamism, etc.)

We may fail to appreciate the true resilience of America's politics, and we hope that is the case. One more 9/11-scale event may focus national thinking in a way that numerous smaller events did not. (E.g., the attacks on the USS Cole and the USS Stark, the bombings of our military barracks in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.)

Again, we hope something far short of that will happen to guide elite thinking to a new consensus less founded in illusion.

Personally, we doubt there will be much of a change in the near term and it will be "Steady as she goes" until we do a national imitation of the Exxon Valdez. Things did get cleaned up after a while. But it was expensive and quite avoidable.

"Two Cheers for Nancy Pelosi." By Mallory Factor, Wall Street journal, 3/18/06 (subscription required).

Skewed focus on Serbia.

Alexander Brendan Zecevic writes about the peculiar focus on Serbia in the NATO intervention in the Balkans when Bill Clinton was in full stride, doing his best to help establish an Islamic toehold in Europe:

As a half-Serb living in Edinburgh, I can't help but share their sense of injustice. I have travelled throughout the former Yugoslavia and have seen lines of Serb refugees that stretched for miles. Yet I didn't read about those refugees in the Western newspapers or see them on the TV.

I have read about the crimes of Serbs, of the criminals being captured and tried. Yet the crimes against them seem not to matter, at least not to the international media, Nato or the UN.

I'm not denying the horrors perpetrated by Milosevic, Karadzic or Mladic. But in Bosnia, in Croatia, in Kosovo, as in any conflict in history, there is always more than one side. There were parallel, almost mirror-image upsurges of fervent patriotism among Croats and Bosnians, and they had opportunistic leaders in Franjo Tudjman and Izetbegovic.

Like Milosevic, they took advantage of this reawakening of national identities that had been suppressed during communism. All three exploited it and were greatly rewarded. Most importantly, they were all guilty of war crimes. Yet while Tudjman's Croatia and Izetbegovic's Bosnia were welcomed into the international fold, Serbia and Milosevic stood outside as pariahs.

Despite the fact that around a quarter of the 100,000 people ethnically cleansed in Bosnia were Serbs, Serbia alone was punished by a UN embargo, and those pursued by The Hague's war crime tribunal were predominantly Serb.

"Two sides to Serbia's story." By Alexander Brendan Zecevic, Scotsman.com, 3/18/06.

ACLU advancement of the Islamic agenda.

Steve Emerson reports on the cluelessness of the ACLU. At least we'd like to think it's cluelessness:

The Florida branch of the ACLU recently elected Parvez Ahmed, Chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to serve as a board member.

ACLU’s Islamist Trend Continues." By Steven Emerson, 3/15/06.

What is the ACLU thinking when it associates itself with CAIR, an organization led by people who sympathize with terrorist groups and are committed to the supremacy of Islam in the U.S.? (See the web site Anti-CAIR for more details.)

Mr. Ahmed advocates anti-blasphemy laws which one would think would be a red flag to the ACLU, an organization that appears to think Amendments 2 through 10 of the Bill of Rights were written in invisible ink.

But, no, how could a little prior restrain harm anything when it's Islam that needs special protection? The ACLU expects Christians to have the sensibilities of titanium but where the delicate sensibilities of Muslims are concerned it's Katie bar the door in passing legislation to silence the critics.

Is this not hypocrisy raised to an art form?

An end to self deception.

Robert Spencer recounts a conversation during a recent visit to The Hague, Netherlands:

I urged [a young woman from the Dutch Ministry of Integration tasked with some kind of a liaison with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders] to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.

She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane . . . .

* * * *

Where do we go from here? We go to reality. We stop deceiving ourselves and allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. . . . The young lady in the Dutch Ministry of Integration, despite her best efforts to ignore or deny this reality, kept coming up against it: she found that only a small minority of Muslim leaders in Holland were at all interested in working toward integration.

Eventually the Dutch Ministry of Integration and other administrative bodies in the Western world are going to have to come to grips with the implications of that fact, and with the implications of other facts about Islamic jihad that so far they have preferred to pretend did not exist. What would I suggest that the President do about this reality? I would suggest that he acknowledge it as a reality. That he address the nation and the world, and tell them that the United States is going to lead the resistance to jihad and Sharia supremacism in the name of equality of rights and dignity of all peoples. That any state that oppresses non-Muslims or denies them equality of rights in any way will receive no American aid whatsoever. That any state that allows the idea that Muslims must make war against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit to the Islamic social order will be no friend of the United States. That the idea that the U.S. Constitution should one day be replaced by Islamic Sharia, whether by violent or non-violent means, will be understood within the United States as seditious.

"Fantasies About Jihad." By Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine.com, 3/15/06 (emphasis added).

Dog in the manger politics.

Rebecca West was a remarkable Englishwoman with a keen eye and penetrating mind. In 1937 she took a trip through Yugoslavia and the result was a 1,158-page book from which the following excerpt is taken.

History always has its winners and losers. The Finns fought heroically and with great skill against a Soviet invasion intent on improving the defenses of Leningrad and, natch, taking over all the rest of Finland and turning it into a dirty little Soviet colony with the obligatory extermination of the educated, the capable, and the decent. In the face of overwhelming Soviet military force, the Finns suffered terrible casualties and were forced to cede large areas of their country, which are under Russian control today.

The Finns do not, however, thereafter go around beheading Russians who had no part in the attacks on Finland and present-day Finnish politics are not dominated by ignorant men deformed by hatred of Russians. The Finns, in short, made the best of a bad situation, adapted to unchangeable reality, and effected the best revenge of all by living well.

The Irish made destructive internecine politics into an art form but at least had no desire to create "the rubble of hate and prejudice and malice" around the world. Other borders have shifted and deaths been endured as a result of "unfair" imbalances in technology, material wealth, or population, or as a result of simple dumb luck. But those borders are for the most part quiet and stable.

Except where Islam is a factor. E.g., Israel, Kashmir, Lebanon. Is there ANY border that Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria respect?

The Muslim fanatics -- and large numbers of sympathizers -- make clear their desire to trash whatever they have to around the entire world in order to bend infidels to their will and draw them into the black hole of seventh-century ignorance.

This passage from Ms. West's book is an apt description of modern Arab and Persian politics, from which all sweetness and light have been extirpated.

Where in the Muslim world is there tranquility, pleasure, generosity, art, and abstract thought? Anyone who engages in the latter risks his or her life. The stunningly brave and insightful Wafa Sultan has thrown down the gauntlet before the Muslim creepgentsia and now will surely garner a multitude of calls for her extermination. It follows as the night the day that her security will now be in question.

Head-to-head debate, unacceptable; assassination and intimidation, Solution Numero 1.

Modern Islam brings to mind the old joke about Irish alzheimers -- you forget everything except your enemies. Modern Islamic politics are mired in hatred and revanchism and they are driven by men fascinated to have discovered somewhere in the Koran a resonant truth of some kind that validates every other Koranic jot and tittle, every Mohammedan call for the subjugation or extermination of infidels, every support for unchallengeable male privilege.

The rage smolders on, whether based on the memory of long-defeated caliphs, knowledge of the world's indifference to Muslim thinking, or the unavoidable recognition of the military and social superiority of people whose education does not require the memorization of even one verse of the Koran:

. . . [B]ut there had sounded [in that exchange at the dinner table], for an instant, the authentic wail of poverty, in its dire extreme, that is caused by a certain kind of politics. Such politics we know very well in Ireland. They grow on the basis of past injustice. A proud people acquire a habit of resistance to foreign oppression, and by the time they have driven out their oppressors they have forgotten that agreement is a pleasure and that a society which has attained tranquillity will be able to will be able to pursue many delightful ends. There they continue to wrangle, finding abundant material in the odds and ends of injustice that are left over from the period of tyranny and need to be tidied up in one way or another. Such politics are a leak in the community. Generous passion, pure art, abstract thought, run through it and are lost. There remain only the obstinate solids which cannot be dissolved by argument or love, the rubble of hate and prejudice and malice, which are of no price. The process is never absolute, since in some lands some people are born with the inherent sweetness which closes that leak, but it can exist to a degree that alarms by the threat of privation affecting all the most essential goods of life . . . .

An afterthought: Ms. West speaks of "some people [who] are born with the inherent sweetness which closes that leak." It is the absurd claim of treasonous multiculturalists that ALL persons in any culture have that inherent sweetness. We know from simple observation that even in our own culture this is an absurd claim. Yet it is the inherent demand of multiculturalists that there be no raising of a defense to the yellow-eyed curs of this world. One generous, enlightened person in the bunch and he is Everyman.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. A Journey Through Yugoslavia. By Rebecca West, Penguin Books, 1984, p. 81-82.

Like mosquitoes.

How many more unequivocal warnings do you need? At what point will you, that's you, begin to fight for what is your country, your culture, your political system, and your life and the life of your children?

This is from an interview with Fuligo septica jihadi barbatus specimen, Mullah Krekar, currently a resident of Norway:

You haven’t managed to change us. We are the ones who will change you.”

“How?”

“Look at the development of the populations in Europe where Moslems are breeding like Mosquitoes. Every western woman produces on average 1.4 children. Every Moslem woman in the same countries produce 3.5 children. In the year 2050, 30 percent of the population of Europe will be Moslems.”

* * * *

“The majority of Moslems in the West have made their adopted countries their home. What is your message to them?”

“Moslems in the West and in Norway understand that this is not their country. It’s the Moslem state that will be their home, no matter where it may be. Moslems of the West are like the Jews before them. We are homeless and weak and will be so till we create our own country. Life here has no value for Moslems.”

“What do you say to Moslems in the West who participate fully in both their communities and in the political debate?”

“They are free to participate in elections and elect Carl I. Hagen or Kristin Halvorsen, but they aren’t innately valuable to the society at large. When we get our own country as the Shi’ites of Iran have, then the Moslems will be in full political and economic control.”

“What role do you see for the Moslems of Europe?”

“We have no role right now. Our position is to defend our numbers. But you’re seeing us as the accused. It’s you and the West who should be telling us what you can do for us. The West should protect Islam, not the opposite.”

These people want to rule over you. People like THIS demon you see in the above picture. We say "demon," appropriately, because he and his ilk want to unwind completely every advance that has been made in the West over the course of centuries and replace them with the incoherent, killer ideology of a megalomaniac seventh century tribal warlord.

Nothing to worry about. Just a different path to the same woods.

Right?

"Mullah Krekar: Islam will be Victorious against the West." Agora, 3/13/06 <--- LGF <--- Jihad Watch.

The foresight of statesmen -- I.

Said the prime minister of Finland [A.K. Cajander] less than three months away from a shooting war with 180 million people: " We are proud of the fact that we don't have a lot of weapons and rifles rusting away in the warehouses and we don't have a lot of uniforms rotting and mildewing in the storehouses. But we do have a high standard of living in Finland and an educational system we can be proud of. . . .

The Winter War. By Eloise Engle and Lauri Paananen. Stackpole Books, 1973, p. 31.

This book is highly entertaining and recounts one of the most magnificent feats of arms in history. Just about anything written about the Winter War of November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940 between Finland the the Soviet Union will amaze you. (See here, here, here, and here.)

The lack of foresight of the prime minister -- just days before a terrible punishing war with a huge country like the Soviet Union, ruled as it was by the psychopath Stalin -- is beyond tragic.

Had the Finns had more fighters, artillery and antitank weapons, not to mention other simple military equipment, they would have been able to mount an even more fearsome defense of their country than they did and perhaps even to have withstood the Soviet onslaught. But the politicians would not spend the necessary money.

The voices raised against the war against Islamic literalists (a huge proportion of the Islamic world, as we all know) sound eerily similar to that of Mr. Cajander 66 years ago. It is a powerful dream that men love to dream when they do not wish to make the sacrifices necessary to confront an implacable enemy. Decent people have difficulty understanding pure malevolence and that one day it could knock at their back door.

The responsibility to see clearly, understand, and act as reality demands is a heavy one. Yet there are those in our country who will not see that it is necessary even to take elementary precautions, let alone to inflict pain and death on our enemies before they can do the same to us.

Guard the Border blogburst - March of the Illegals.

Illegal Aliens March On Chicago by The Freedom Folks:

"Si, se puede!" was the cry of the crowd in Chicago today -- "Yes, we can!" Thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters gathered in Union Park, then marched down Jackson Street to The Loop. Jamming the plaza, as well as the surrounding streets and sidewalks, they rallied to cheer on those who had come to speak.

They demanded legalization for all immigrants. They patted each other on the back for working hard and having dreams. They lauded politicians who devote themselves to representing "the people," which evidently, in their minds, includes "the people" who have come here illegally and don't get to vote. They demanded justice. They jeered HR4437, the House bill passed last December that would make coming here illegally a criminal offense, rather than a civil one, that calls for a fence on the border, and that would penalize anyone who hires and/or helps someone to come or stay here illegally.

Mayor Daley even got up to add his support, which made no sense:

"Don't let anyone tell you you're an immigrant," he shouted. "We're all immigrants!"

???

"Si, se puede!" Yes we can WHAT, one wonders?

Yes we can...make demands of the government, even though we're here illegally? Yes we can...break your laws then demand to not only not be penalized, but to be rewarded for it? Yes we can...take taxpayer-funded services like education and healthcare, and in exchange we'll drive down wages and refuse to assimilate? Yes we can...shout loud enough about our civil rights that the politicians will forget that civil rights are, by definition, for citizens?

Watching these people flood the streets of Chicago today, shouting angrily for what is not theirs to ask, let alone demand, I listened. Amid the shouts of "Si, se puede!" and among the signs and banners calling for legalization and guest worker programs, I listened.

I listened for an answer from within myself and found that, walking along with these thousands of people cheering and yelling and demanding, my answer hadn't changed.

No, you can't.

Vignettes From The Reconquista

I noticed this lady was crying so I asked permission to snap a photo and then asked why she was crying. She informed me that she had been working with "these folks" for a number of years and she wanted them to feel at home here.

Let me start by saying this was a very nice lady, she truly was. I'm sure those who know her would say she has an enormous heart.

But she's an idiot and indicative of a phenomena I noticed along the marches path. Upper crust white women lined the path and had a look on their faces I can only describe as a mother watching her child. It was a species of pride that galled my soul.

It was almost unbelievably arrogant, but arrogance cloaked in compassion. And this type of empty headed compassion is killing this country. We can't allow every person on the planet to enter so where do we draw the line?

While attending the illegal immigrant reconquista march today I made a point of stopping every so often and chatting with observers.

Which leads us inexorably to our second vignette. I came upon a bank where most of employees had gathered on a raised brick planter to watch the march pass by. A gentleman in his mid-thirties stood nearest the end where I hopped up to join him.

I asked him his thoughts on the march. He replied that he thought it was great, that these people definitely deserved to hold a march like this. He was waxing quite eloquent when he uttered an oopsie. He went on to say that we should welcome everybody.

I queried, somewhat astonished, everyone on the planet? It was fascinating to me to watch his facial expressions cycle through surprise to astonishment. I honestly don't think he'd ever thought it through before, that we can't welcome every person on the planet no matter how much the president might want to. My interviewee had just bumped nose first into a hard reality. I noticed over and over how many people merely recited cant whenever you asked them questions about immigration, nation of immigrants, immigration has always been good, etc., etc., etc.

Yet if you followed up and began asking hard questions such as "well, should we just allow a couple of billion people to move here then?" Their eyes would get big and they'd stammer for a bit before saying no. I'd ask, so where do you draw the line? They never had a cogent answer.

I think that really sums up the public debate on immigration in America today. We want to be a nation of immigrants, yet realize this may no longer be possible as it was in the past.

A young black gentlemen provided a slightly different take. When I asked him his thoughts on the march he at first tried to avoid answering but I kept at it and finally he allowed that he thought it was a good thing. Again, that they should be allowed to march, then he uttered his own oopsie. He said he thought they should be allowed to march because they came from a poor country. When I pointed out that in terms of the whole world Mexico was actually a fairly rich country with a decent standard of living compared to many countries he was literally dumbstruck.

If today's march taught me anything it was just this. In terms of the average Jane and Joe American, the two biggest enemies proponents of sane immigration policies face are rank ignorance and romantic notions.

Immigration: An Ending And A Beginning.

We've been posting about the march and rally supporting ILLEGAL immigration in Chicago today. I've really been thinking about a feeling I had as we were fighting our way out of the crowd of 100,000+. We spent about 40 minutes pushing through half a city block of the throng to make our way to public transportation.

As we finally made it through the shouting, chanting horde, we turned the corner to walk past Berghoff, which sadly shut its doors at the end of last month. For those not familiar with Chicago, Berghoff was a traditional, family-run German restaurant, an institution famous for holding the first liquor license issued by the city after Prohibition ended.

Gazing into the darkened windows of the restaurant, I felt a real sense of something ending and something beginning. Many who disagree with me on the need to fight ILLEGAL immigration often bring up our country's history of immigration and diversity, as if I am somehow maligning them by speaking out against ILLEGAL immigration.

One of the things I love most about Chicago, my favorite city and current home, is the great diversity of its residents and neighborhoods. Berghoff embodied how immigration is supposed to work in my mind. It honored the traditions of its owners' cultural history while celebrating the opportunities and freedoms of America.

That is what I did not see much of in the crowd today, and certainly did not hear from the speakers who egged them on to demand legalization and denounce HR4437. As I listened to Gutierrez and Daley and Blagojevich, I did not hear an enticement to become Americans in any real sense.

What I heard was a call to demand rights and opportunities that have to be earned. These are precious gifts bestowed upon those who are born here, and those who come here legally. They are most certainly not something to be unrightfully demanded or stolen by those who would disrespect this country and its citizens by those who choose to come, stay, and work here ILLEGALLY.

What I saw today was a defiant mission to impose a mass of people, their culture, and their language on another country. There were many claims of loving America, but talk is cheap. It is your actions that truly speak. If anyone loves this country, they will show it by their efforts to make it a better place. Since when do lawlessness, a constant breech of national security, and economic and cultural destruction make this a better place?

I love this country. I embrace and appreciate our melting pot of cultures and traditions. But our country only works when our country and its citizens come first. I would never ask another nation to put the interests of America before their own -- it's ridiculous!

It makes me angry and sad when people come here ILLEGALLY and demand that of America.
__________________________________________
This has been a production of the Guard the Borders Blogburst. It is syndicated by Euphoric Reality, and serves to keep immigration issues in the forefront of our minds as we're going about our daily lives and continuing to fight the war on terror. If you are concerned with the trend of illegal immigration in our country, join the Blogburst! Send an email with your blog name and url to euphoricrealitynet at gmail dot com.

Radical islam: the usual despicable tactics.

Yet another instance of the despicable tactics and scurrilous accusations of radical Islam:

Up to 21 prosecution lawyers called for the death penalty against Mohammed Al-Asadi, the Editor-in-Chief of the Yemen Observer, . . . . They [the newspaper?] recounted a story in which a lady was killed during the Prophet’s lifetime after she insulted him, and that the Prophet then praised the killer.

Twenty-one prosecutors! Guiness Book of Records anyone?

Twelve of the "prosecutors" ("clients" not known) "also demanded personal financial compensation for the psychological trauma they claimed they suffered by the actions of the newspaper" in publishing heavily blacked out copies of the Danish cartoons.

Such tender psyches these creeps have.

The paper had also published two accompanying articles that "made it clear that the newspaper had condemned the cartoons, had defended Islam and the Prophet (PBUH), and had reported the different reactions from all across the Arab and Islamic world." But only the publication of the cartoons mattered in the eyes of the "prosecutors," who jostled each other in the court room. "Trial" is postponed until March 22. Amnesty International is observing (no report on AA web site as of 1544 3/9/06).

What is it with these swine? If their cable TV service is interrupted, is the life of the cable guy in danger?

More to the point, we'd like to know if what Mr. Al-Asadi said is even true. That would be a start. Then it would be interesting to see if what he reported is in fact TRUE. Then we could have a discussion about whether anything published that accurately recounts what is in the Koran, sunnah and ahadith is grounds for a sentence of death.

Is there ANY other penalty for correcting wayward people in Islam besides stoning, beheading, or surgical removal of their appendages?

Crimanentlies! Don't ever double park in Yemen.

In fact, don't ever go to Yemen. Unless you're fascinated by time travel . . . or meeting with spittle lickers who run in packs. The scene from "Jurassic Park" comes to mind.

"Demands for Capital Penalty for Al-Asadi." Pia Causa, 3/9/06 <--- "Campaign to save a life." Infidel Bloggers Alliance, 3/9/06.

Great moments in politics - Jay Rockefeller

But Congress is by definition a committee with diffuse responsibility and a penchant for running for cover in a storm. That's what happened when the NSA wiretap story first leaked, and Senate Democrat Jay Rockefeller immediately joined the blame game even though he'd been briefed on the program for years as Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

"President Gulliver. Congress is acting like the 'imperial' branch." Wall Street Journal, 3/9/06.

Who ya gonna call when Europe's feckless and pathetic?

Leon De Winter describes how Europe has lost any sense of itself as having anything worth fighting for. Europe today considers its greatest achievement the creation of the welfare state with its attendant "postmodern cultural relativism," tolerance, liberalism, pacifism, and secularism. After WWII, Europe turned to "radical pacifism and post-nationalism." Today it participates, if at all, only symbolically in Iraq.

"An Iranian bomb threatens the very existence of Western civilization," says Mr. De Winter. Yet, Europe's "philosophy holds that 'soft power' alone can be brought to bear in any conflict between power blocs or ideologies or civilizations." Europe won't sacrifice its sons in any conflict, least of all one involving Iran.

Europe, being enmired in political and historical illusion, thus leaves the Free World with two options in Iran -- "disaster or catastrophe":

Europe could have suppressed the Iranian threat if it had convinced the mullahs two years ago that it was willing to contemplate military options. Only[,] Europe lacks core values that it holds sacrosanct and that it's willing to defend at the highest cost. It will continue to operate on the diplomatic field and cling to soft power even though this is the path of certain defeat when confronted with power players burning with geopolitical and religious ambitions.

American will, alas, yet again step up to clean up the mess that Europe has helped to create by its failure to act decisively and with vision. George Bush did both in his decision to take out Iraq.

Unfortunately, the hardest battles lie just ahead of the West the United States, Israel, Britain, and Australia.

"Soft Europe. Is the Continent willing to fight for anything, besides a welfare check?." By Leon De Winter, Wall Street Journal, 3/7/06.

Demagoguery and hypocrisy.

The demagoguery and hypocrisy in the statements of the extremist Islamic intellectuals in this source is simply contemptible.

"Accusing Muslim Intellectuals of Apostasy." By Aluma Dankowitz, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 208, MEMRI, 2/18/06.

Freedom from ancient texts.

In response to our post "Peace in Muslim lives," a reader referred us to a Muslim site called The True Call. This particular link is to the site's post on the Islamic belief that Jesus was not crucified.

We had not realized that Muslims disputed the fact of crucifixion itself.

While theology is not one of our strengths or interests, the site got us to thinking about ancient texts.

Bear in mind that the Colonel is not a card carrying Christian. Faith in anything that can't land on the Colonel's toe and cause pain or be swallowed and cause intoxication is difficult for the Colonel. We are decidedly literal in most matters, preferring, for example, more down to earth litanies of belief like Crash Davis's in the wonderful movie "Bull Durham."

We sure as heck do not accept ANY document as the perfect expression of Truth. The Koran isn't the word of Allah and the Bible isn't the word of God.

Everyone get OVER it!

Both works are the products of mortal men with varying degrees of intellectual ability and willingness to tell the truth. What the Koran says is just as debatable as what the Bible says.^[1]

What the Koran records of supposed revelations of Allah are, in fact, merely convenient "revelations" to justify Mohammed's personal wishes, especially those stemming from the post-Medina stage of the his life.^[2]

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Koran is "a book so deficient in context and chronology, it can only be understood when seen through the eyes of the Sunnah writers."^[3]

See also the same source for the information that a certain Muslim gentleman summoned to record the hitherto oral Koran resisted because:

1. it would be easier to move a mountain than record the Koran,


2. it would not be proper to do something that the Prophet himself had not done (citing Bukhari:V6B60N201), and


3. it would, in fact, be impossible because he would have "to rely upon carvings on the leg or thigh bones of dead animals, as well as palm leaves, skins, mats, stones, and bark" and "the fleeting memories of the prophet’s Companions, many of whom were dead or dying," to wit, hearsay.^[4]

The source also notes that there are at least seven different Korans (citing Bukhari:V6B61N513).^[5]

Who can doubt that the Koran is an imperfect human document and who has any doubt that the Bible is less than a coherent, logical document?

Whether or not specific parts of these authorities can be subjected to various kinds of analysis is another story. Certain events appearing therein may indeed be accurately recorded. On the specific issue of Christ's crucifixion, Pastor John Piper has written this refutation of the Muslim claim.^[6] We think he makes a more convincing case than Dr. Hilali.

Which is not to say that Dr. Hilali did not land some good licks.

In our opinion, he makes a good point when he quotes Jesus as saying, "O God, if it is possible for You to let his cup pass from me, then let it pass." Why would Jesus say this if his crucifixion was to be the atonement for all of man's sins and this was the purpose of his life, the very essence of God's Plan of Salvation? His words make it seem like Jesus wanted to cancel the plan once it was set in motion.

The same is true of his question, "why have Thou forsaken me?" Why cry out about being forsaken? Jesus wasn’t being forsaken. This was hardly some cruel and arbitrary punishment at the hands of humans with which God had inexplicably decided not to interfere. This was the Master Plan of all Master Plans -- the Plan of Salvation for Man -- that Jesus should be crucified for man's sins. Didn't Jesus want this as much as God?^[7]

We may be all wrong in what we said and maybe our fate is shortly to be (rhetorically) torn limb from limb by the Christians lions. As we have said, theology is something in which we invest very little of our time and intellectual energy. We don't plan to be drawn into further debate on these points by either Christians or Muslims, though anyone is free to comment all they want below.

The most important thing is for mankind to distance itself forever from the notion of inerrant texts.

It's fine for there to be sacred works. We should all honor beauty, truth, finesse, concision, clarity, eloquence, insight, character, heroism, courage, decency, compassion, or understanding when any human has been blessed with the gift to express it. These expressions are philosophical and literary treasures belonging to all mankind. The more these expressions can be found in a particular text, the more deserving it is of being considered sacred by man.

However, reality, the human condition, and the soul are mysteries that no one man can know and should not claim to know.

The really destructive people in this vale of tears are those through history who have claimed to know The Truth and, worse, claimed that God had chosen them, THEM, of all people, to reveal it to the world.

Is it logical to assume that -- every once in a while -- someone who makes such an outlandish claim actually is the messenger of God, a divinely inspired seer, a prophet of God, or the Son of God? Or is it logical to regard all such testimonies as symptoms of a serious mental disease or of a conniving, selfish mind bent on pleasure and power? Obviously, the latter choice is the better way to go.^[8]

It would be better for the entire world if Muslims could take an honest look at the circumstances surrounding the writing of the Koran and lose the murderous belief that the Koran is perfect and the literal word of Allah and that kuffar need to be killed until they accept Islam or submit to it.

Islam is not stuck with its contradictory, rigid, and evil doctrines. Christianity had its share of these and has risen above them. If has not, no Christian church in the West has the power to force obedience to its commands.

Now it is time for Islam to change.

Both Christian and Islam can rise above a deficient past and create a spiritual experience that is in fact free of compulsion and a helpful guide to imperfect men. Slavish devotion to antiquated doctrines and texts is not the way to achieve this.

Notes
^[1] We thought we'd take this additional opportunity to point out that Christians endlessly dispute the meaning of the Bible -- without fear of being beheaded by other Christians. Why does a Muslim have to risk death as a blasphemer if he or she does the same vis-à-vis the Koran? Heck, even cur dog infidels are subject to death threats and vile abuse from Muslims if they dare to analyze Muslim belief and doctrine.
^[2] See our post on this here and "The Quest of the Historical Muhammad" by Arthur Jeffery.
^[3] "Islam's Dark Past." By Craig Winn, Prophet of Doom.)
^[4] Id.
^[5] Id.
^[6] The Great Offense—Was Jesus Christ Really Crucified?." By John Piper, desiringGod, undated.
^[7] Dr. Hilali is incorrect when he cites this as Matthew's saying the statement is proof of Jesus' disbelief. It clearly shows Jesus addressing someone he believed existed, namely, His Father.
^[8] That said, we're not convinced that Jesus fits into either of these categories. He did not seek worldly rewards and his message was positive in every aspect. He appears to have caused a sensation in his time by his mere physical presence and we assume there was a reason for this other than mere eloquence and intelligence.