With or without the yellow star, they're just debating the details of what is indisputably a totalitarian death cult. And given our own insane fecklessness, it's once again become the late 30's. Only the death toll will be much higher this time...

LEWIS REMEMBERS WELL: "The most vividly remembered year of my life was the year 1940. And more recently I have been thinking of 1938 rather than of 1940. We seem to be in the mode of Chamberlain and Munich rather than of Churchill."

Something Hojjatieh comes this way...

Did I Forget To Mention My Favorite Hojjatieh?

Well, Robert Ferrigno has my back covered:

Our present predicament with Iran revolves around the Twelfth Imam, or Hidden Imam, believed by Shiite Muslims to be the last in the line of spiritual/political rulers. The Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, ascended to his position upon the death of his father, the Eleventh Imam, in 874 AD. Al-Madha at that time was five years old. Shortly after the funeral of his father, al-Mahdi disappeared, believed by Shiites to have been hidden by Allah until his return at some future point. The easiest way for westerners to think of the Hidden Imam is as the Islamic Messiah, Except the Islamic Messiah is to come at the hour of greatest peril for Muslims, come to battle the forces of evil and unite the entire world in an Islamic Caliphate.

Okay, let’s call it a difference of opinion. Armageddon under any other name… However, Ahmadinejad belongs to a small sect of Shiites, called Hojjatieh, who believe that they can hasten the arrival of the Hidden Imam.. Even more threatening for the west, the Hojjatieh believe that it is chaos that will induce the Hidden Imam to reveal himself. They have a spiritual investment in destruction. The worse things get — the worse believers can make things get — the more likely it is for the Hidden Imam to return. None of which would matter much except that Ahmadinejad is adamant about the right of Iran to develop its own nuclear program.

When Khomeini took power after the revolution in 1979, he banned the group, since they opposed the creation of an Islamic state, believing that the peace and tranquility of the new Iran would delay the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. Hardliners among the Hojjatieh actually consider that Khomeini and the mullahs hijacked the Islamic revolution by limiting it to Iran. The emergence of Ahmadinejad to a position of power under the auspices of these very mullahs suggests to me that they think they can control him, use him as a figurehead to maintain the support of the people. The mullahs too may have underestimated Ahmadinejad.

We have to ask ourselves, how does Ahmadinejad see himself? Shiites believe that there will be no doubt as to the identity of the hidden imam when he returns. it will clearly be him. Some Shiites believe that the Twelfth Imam will rule through a deputy. Or that this deputy will precede his reappearance and actually hasten the arrival. Get the picture?

As to the letter, I think we have to consider it having several functions. Yes, it’s addressed to Bush and was supposed to be “private”, but it was clearly meant for a large audience. The thrust of it is ostensibly a call to Islam and a recitation of the hypocrisies and wounds the west has inflicted on the world. Some have noted that this is in the tradition of Khomeini and bin Laden in following the Koranic teaching of offering ones enemy a final chance to convert before waging war. This may be one of its functions, but I think the main function is to present Ahmadinejad as the deputy of the Hidden Imam.

The unemployment rate myth.

"Ask the dead how funny these men are."

Being There at the infallible BBC...

"Liberal hypocrisy--there is really nothing quite like it!"

Who knew? Chutch the sock puppet wizard!

Outrage Of The Day

"Well, obviously, this is a complete outrage. Next thing you know, the government will require me to tell it: what I do for a living; exactly how much I make; where I live; what stocks I buy and sell, and for how much; what I pay in property taxes; and how much profit I make on my investments. If we just sit still like sheep, we’ll end up having to disclose our birthdates — and, God help us, even our Social Security numbers. If that ever comes to pass, you’ll know that we are truly living in the reincarnation of Nazi Germany.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go do my taxes."

Robert Godwin on envy, paranoia and United 93.

Did I forget to mention that Gramscian Damage?

Gelernter on the lies of Vietnam ... and how to apply them to Iraq.

The Left on Dots: Collectionless Connections Required

LILEKS: "They want us to connect the dots, but they do not want us to collect the dots. The dots should apparently just walk up and volunteer, here I am. I'm a dot. And that's the extent of the War On Terror."

But don't you worry, they're not on the other side of course...

UPDATE and BUMP: Steyn's take on Leahy: "No. But next time he's flying from D.C. to Burlington, Vt., on a Friday afternoon he might look at the security line: Tens of millions of Americans are having to take their coats and shoes off! Are you telling me that tens of millions of ordinary shoe-wearing Americans are involved with al-Qaida?"

STEYN: "I've noticed in the last few years that, if you pull any old minor 19th-century memoir off the shelf, the en passant observations about Islam seem more informed than most of the allegedly expert commentary that appeared in the year after 9/11."

And Ethanol less so?

Hydrogen may be more interesting than I previously thought thanks to Honda...

NYeT! Don't Diss My Man Z!

NYeT explains why you have lyin' eyes about the Zarkman. All I can say to this gobsmacker is that the left has moved the goalposts completely off the field while we weren't looking. There is absolutely nothing that can be done by an American anymore that they could be convicted of treason. The press is part of the "international" and therefore exempt from quaint American laws anyway.

Oh. Except I forgot that I will probably be thrown in the clink soon for calling leftists "Un-American". That will be the "new" treason.

As I've noted before, Orwell has been sucked down his own memory hole. For instance, I'll bet you've never read this have you?

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If
you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other.
Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In
practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security.

Yes, that would be Eric Blair speaking. Sounds a lot like W doesn't it?

Memory hole? What memory hole?

Allies

Did I forget to mention that the Muslims have been Nazi allies from the git-go?

“Most important for the sympathies which Arabs now feel
towards Germany is their admiration for our Fuhrer, especially
during the unrests, I often had an opportunity to see how far these sympathies
extend. When faced with a dangerous behaviour of an Arab mass, when one
said that one was German, this was already generally a free
pass.”

It's no accident that "Mein Kampf" is to this day a best seller in the Islamic Middle East...

The Zombie Sorel

Lee Harris provides a useful companion piece to "The Mystery of Fascism" (in the classics links) titled "Why Isn't Socialism Dead?". How about that zombie ghost of George Sorel? Read it and weep.

The Project. You won't hear about it in the EneMedia...

"Years ago, while with Mangyan tribesmen I concluded that these hill people could read an alphabet unknown to me. The foliage, sounds, the shift in airs, scents -- all of these -- spoke to them as directly as words in a book, though I scarcely imagined how. Later I discovered that psychologist Julian Jaynes had advanced the theory of the bicameral mind, which helped explain what I'd seen."

"The passengers, then, could take care of feeding the dog. They could feed him the carcass of the frightened and disoriented terrorist once he runs from the cockpit shouting, "Allahu Akbar min kulli shay! Can anybody fly this thing?""

Ruthlessness Deferred

“At least understand that such decency goes away quickly when you are burying your children and your grandchildren,” rasped the Time Traveler. “Or watching them suffer in slavery. Ruthlessness deferred against totalitarian aggression only makes the later need for ruthlessness more terrible. Thousands of years of history and war should have taught you that. Did you fools learn nothing from living through the charnel house that was the 20th Century?”