There Is No God And We Are His Prophets!

"This is as fine an example of the incoherence at the heart of leftism that I can think of. It is incoherent because it is nihilistic to the core. It is not rooted in any intellectually or morally defensible first principles, but is entirely subjective, arbitrary, and convenient. For what is the first principle of the secular left? We have been reviewing the deep structure of their ideology in recent days, and it all goes back to there is no God and we are his prophets! But this first principle has many disturbing and dysfunctional ramifications, which include the impossibility of transcendent meaning, the absence of any vertical order in the cosmos, and the devaluation of wisdom embodied in tradition (tradition representing the extension or "prolongation" of the vertical into the horizontal).

Therefore, when a leftist tells you that truth does not exist and that various texts are simply forms of domination rooted in the will to power, believe him, for this is the nature of the dark principality he inhabits. This is why I would never argue with a leftist, because they are so deeply and fundamentally illogical. Why try to reason with someone who has rejected the possibility of objective truth a priori? He is simply going to use whatever strategy or technique at his disposal to win the debate, not to arrive at truth, which isn't possible for him anyway. "

The Hell Hole (Part 92363)

"Perhaps because no TV cameras were allowed in, and far too little information was allowed out, the North Korean famine of the 1990s remains one of the most muffled horrors of modern times. By now, however, there have been enough studies, reports, and tales from defectors to confirm that the deprivation in North Korea was catastrophic: One million or more people died, and food shortages continue to this day.

But the true causes of this famine are too often blurred by politics and propaganda. When North Korea's government finally asked for international aid, in 1996, Kim Jong Il's regime blamed what was by then a full-blown nightmare on floods that had hit the country in 1995. Even today, United Nations aid agencies tend to highlight floods, droughts, bad harvests, and such as the main reasons for food shortages. And even among those who correctly blame the regime of Kim Jong Il for the famine, the actual mechanisms are not always well understood.

It is a welcome contribution, then, that scholars Stephan Haggard of the University of California at San Diego and Marcus Noland of the Institute for International Economics have teamed up to write "Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform" ( Columbia University Press, 309 pages, $35). Packed with insights into the North Korean system, this book draws on a growing body of publications and testimony about North Korea to provide an indepth account and analysis not only of the famine, but of the ruinous nature of Kim Jong Il's regime."

Worms Wiggling Again...

"It’s worse than too clever. It’s retreat and appeasement, and the Iranians know it. It flows from denial that the mullahs are at war with us, and lapses into the belief that this war can be resolved by the tried and failed methods of traditional diplomacy. It won’t work, as our soldiers know full well. Surge or no surge, Iraq cannot have decent security unless it is protected against the Iranians and their Syrian puppets bordering the other side of the country. The Irbil 5 know a whole lot about Iranian/Syrian activities, and hence about the terror network in Iraq — in fact, they ran it — and that knowledge can help us and the Iraqis. The very idea that those intelligence officers should be sprung is a slap in the face to every coalition soldier, and Gates and Cheney were quite right to fight it."

They Will Follow

(link) "“If America pulls out of Iraq, they will fail in Afghanistan,” Mam Rostam said.

Hardly anyone in Congress seems to consider that the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan might become much more severe if similar tactics are proven effective in Iraq.

“And they will fail with Iran,” he continued. “They will fail everywhere with all Eastern countries. The war between America and the terrorists will move from Iraq and Afghanistan to America itself. Do you think America will do that? The terrorists gather their agents in Afghanistan and Iraq and fight the Americans here. If you pull back, the terrorists will follow you there. They will try, at least. Then Iran will be the power in the Middle East. Iran is the biggest supporter of terrorism. They support Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Al Islam. You know what Iran will do with those elements if America goes away.”

I seriously doubt Iran would actually nuke Israel, as many fear, if the regime acquires nuclear weapons – although I’ll admit I’m a bit less certain of that than I am of, say, Britain and France not nuking Israel. The Iranian regime, most likely, wants an insurance policy against invasion and regime change. The ayatollahs will then be able to ramp up their imperial projects in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf with impunity."

Are You Misled? By W? Really?

(link) "A LOOK AT IRAN'S ROLE IN SUPPORTING THE INSURGENCY, from Richard Miniter: "The Islamic Republic tries to hide its involvement with 'layers and layers of intermediaries,' the head of a special Kurdish counter-terrorism service told PJM’s Richard Miniter. While this might fool the CIA, the Kurds are not misled.""

"Leadership"

"What does it say about Democratic leadership that they would prefer to break bread with a murderous dictator rather than meet with an American general reporting on developments in his command?"

Only One Mentioned It

"The fact that hundreds of children die in Africa every day would be of no relevance to a committed Islamist. In the extremist mind the plight of the tiny Palestinian nation is more important than the deaths of millions of black Africans. Let them die, they’re not Muslims, would be the unspoken line of argument. As an Islamist it was only the suffering of Muslims that had moved me. Now human suffering mattered to me, regardless of religion.

Faye and I were glued to the television for hours. Watching fellow Londoners come out of Tube stations injured and mortified, but facing the world with a defiant sense of dignity, made me feel proud to be British.

We met Sultan and his wife at an Indian restaurant near the British Council. Sultan was in his early thirties and his wife in her late twenties. They had travelled widely and seemed much more liberal than most Saudis I had met. Behind a makeshift partition, the restaurant surroundings were considered private and his wife, to my amazement, removed her veil.

We discussed our travels.

Sultan spoke fondly of his time in London, particularly his placement at Coutts as a trainee banker. We then moved on to the subject uppermost in my mind, the terrorist attacks on London. My host did not really seem to care. He expressed no real sympathy or shock, despite speaking so warmly of his time in London.

“I suppose they will say Bin Laden was behind the attacks. They blamed us for 9/11,” he said.

Keen to take him up on his comment, I asked him: “Based on your education in Saudi Arabian schools, do you think there is a connection between the form of Islam children are taught here and the action of 15 Saudi men on September 11?”

Without thinking, his immediate response was, ‘No. No, because Saudis were not behind 9/11. The plane hijackers were not Saudi men. One thousand two hundred and forty-six Jews were absent from work on that day and there is the proof that they, the Jews, were behind the killings. Not Saudis.”

It was the first time I heard so precise a number of Jewish absentees. I sat there pondering on the pan-Arab denial of the truth, a refusal to accept that the Wahhabi jihadi terrorism festering in their midst had inflicted calamities on the entire world.

In my class the following Sunday, the beginning of the Saudi working week, were nearly 60 Saudis. Only one mentioned the London bombings." [ Read. The. Whole. Thing. -ed. ]

Down The MSMemory Hole: Armed Resistance

"It took place at a university in Virginia. A student with a grudge, an immigrant, pulled a gun and went on a shooting spree. It wasn’t Virginia Tech at all. It was the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, not far away. You can easily drive from the one school to the other, just take a trip down Route 460 through Tazewell.

It was January 16, 2002 when Peter Odighizuwa came to campus. He had been suspended due to failing grades. Odighizuwa was angry and waving a gun calling on students to “come get me”. The students, seeing the gun, ran. A shooting spree started almost immediately. In seconds Odighizuwa had killed the school dean, a professor and one student. Three other students were shot as well, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the throat.

Many students heard the shots. Two who did were Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges. Mikael was outside the school having just returned to campus from lunch when he heard the shots. Tracy was inside attending class. Both immediately ran to their cars. Each had a handgun locked in the vehicle.

Bridges pulled a .357 Magnum pistol and he later said he was prepared to shoot to kill if necessary. He and Gross both approached Odighizuwa at the same time from different directions. Both were pointing their weapons at him. Bridges yelled for Odighizuwa to drop his weapon. When the shooter realized they had the drop on him he threw his weapon down. A third student, unarmed, Ted Besen, approached the killer and was physically attacked.

But Odighizuwa was now disarmed. The three students were able to restrain him and held him for the police. Odighizuwa is now in prison for the murders he committed. His killing spree ended when he faced two students with weapons. There would be no further victims that day, thanks to armed resistance.

You wouldn’t know much about that though. Do you wonder why? The media, though it widely reported the attack left out the fact that Bridges and Gross were armed. Most simply reported that the gunman was jumped and subdued by other students. That two of those students were now armed didn’t get a mention.

James Eaves-Johnson wrote about this fact one week later in The Daily Iowan. He wrote: “A Lexus-Nexis search revealed 88 stories on the topic, of which only two mentioned that either Bridges or Gross was armed.” This 2002 article noted “This was a very public shooting with a lot of media coverage.” But the media left out information showing how two students with firearms ended the killing spree."

Paglia On The (Unconsciously Gothic) Cult Of Acedia

"Can you have a vibrant culture without cult? Traditionalist conservatives say no. Dr. Paglia is inclined to agree – and says that our lazy secularism and superficial religiosity puts America at risk of succumbing to acedia, the Greek term for spiritual slothfulness. She is shocked to discover how few of her college students grasp basic biblical concepts, characters and motifs that were commonly understood one or two generations ago. This stunning loss of cultural memory renders most Western art, poetry and literature opaque.

"The only people I'm getting at my school who recognize the Bible are African-Americans," she said. "And the lower the social class of the white person, the more likely they recognize the Bible. Most of these white kids, if they go to church at all, they get feel-good social activism."

What are they left with? "Video games, the Web, cellphones, iPods – that's what's left," Dr. Paglia laments. "And that's what's going to make us vulnerable to people coming from any side, including the Muslim side, where there's fervor. Fervor will conquer apathy. I don't see how the generation trained by the Ivy League is going to have the knowledge or the resolution to defend the West."

Our cultural crisis is precisely that serious, says Dr. Paglia, who believes – as does Pope Benedict, one of the most cultured men on the planet – that we could well be reliving the last days of the Roman Empire." [ Kind of gives new meaning to the kids walking around dressed like Goths, doesn't it? -ed. ]

What Occupation?

"I have been screaming for years about the arab occupation of the berbers, coptics, kurds & yes JEWISH lands of the moab...

it's time to turn the scream "occupation sucks" back on the arabs, where it should be...

as we speak, israel is 1/650th of the middle east, and has 20% arabs

the arab occupied middle east (not counting turkey or iran, since turks and perisans are not arabs) is 649/650 of it's land mass..

how much is stolen?

where did the arabs COME FROM when they invaded in 640 ce?" [ And don't forget Ethiopia... -ed. ]

What War?

"As the rubble of the Twin Towers smoldered in 2001, no one could have imagined a day when America's leaders would be criticized for being tough in protecting Americans from further acts of war.

Now, less than six years later, that day has arrived.

Since Sept. 11, a conspiracy-minded fringe has claimed that American officials plotted the destruction. But when scholars such as Zbigniew Brzezinski accuse our leaders of falsely depicting or hyping a "war on terror" to promote a "culture of fear," it's clear that historical revisionism has gone mainstream."

The Line In Eurabia's Sands?

"When the outcome of a tragedy is known in advance, it finds ways of occurring earlier than expected. In this case, the fate of 100,000 Serbian Christians who remain in Kosovo may pre-empt the debate over Europe's eventual absorption into the Muslim world. ... If Serbia and Russia draw a line in the sand over the independence of Kosovo, we may observe the second occasion in history when a Muslim advance on Europe halted on Serbian soil."

You Can Google It

"Yes, I know. Tens of thousands of ordinary college students are lonely, full of rage, lost and frustrated. A few percent are psychotically disturbed, and some of them can kill. Our big factory colleges are alienating. Take millions of adolescents, and at any time there are bound to be quite a few confused and seething souls walking loose. Just visit downtown in any American or European city, and you can see all the lost and disturbed living in their private hells. And no, that doesn't excuse executing thirty-two innocents.

Still, I wonder --- was Cho taught to hate? Whatever he learned in his classes --- did it enable him to rage at his host country, to hate the students he envied so murderously? Was he subtly encouraged to aggrandize himself by destroying others? Was his pathology enabled by the PC university? Or to ask the question differently --- was Cho ever taught to respect others, to admire the good things about his host country, and to discipline himself to build a positive life?

And that answer is readily available on the websites of Cho's English Department at Virginia Tech. This is a wonder world of PC weirdness. English studies at VT are a post-modern Disney World in which nihilism, moral and sexual boundary breaking, and fantasies of Marxist revolutionary violence are celebrated. They show up in a lot of faculty writing. Not by all the faculty, but probably by more than half.

Just check out their websites. "

Thompson Watch

"When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.

Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago."

Admiral Stockdale, R.I.P.

"The recent episode of the British hostages in Iran brought to mind the late Adm. James Stockdale. He spent seven years in Hoa Lo Prison, a.k.a. the Hanoi Hilton. For his valor and leadership while captive he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Though tortured 15 times, though kept in leg irons for two years, though held in solitary confinement for four, he would not aid his captors. Refusing to be paraded in front of foreign journalists, he slashed his scalp with a razor blade and beat his face with a wooden stool, rendering impossible that disgrace. Few are capable of such feats of will — Admiral Stockdale was a student of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus — and we could probably not have expected such bravery from the British sailors and marines. Yet we must remember the standards our greatest warriors have set if we are to prevail in this and coming wars." [ Our new dependent rulers insist we must stop fighting and return to bondage. They lack historical knowledge, judgment and courage. -ed. ]

In Search Of The Built In Sabbath

"In order to understand this commandment, we must go back to the very beginning of Genesis, where God eternally “creates the heavens and the earth.” In the esoteric view, this refers to the continuous separation of the vertical (heaven, eternity, the Absolute) and horizontal (earth, time, the relative world). So long as we are in the horizontal -- the horizontal alone -- we are indeed “strangers in this world.” In the absence of the vertical, life is a sort of absurd hell, or at best, a meaningless pleasure palace in which we should mindlessly pursue our lusts and desires until crying time. “A raging animal inside of a dying carcass,” as I believe I once heard Alan Watts put it.

But “remembering the sabbath” has to do with vertical recollection, and cultivating the leisure necessary to achieve it. It is literally re-membering, for it involves rejoining our ground of being before things get too out of hand. It is possible to get so lost in the horizontal -- one’s life can become so complex and convoluted -- that it is difficult to find one’s way back to that OMnipresent hole in creation known as the sabbath.

For the sabbath ultimately represents a shorthand way of discussing those little springs that dot the landscape of being, through which vertical energies bubble forth from the ground. Every night, before going to sleep, I make it a point to remember how and where I drank from one of these springs during the day. No matter how difficult my day, I can almost always remember some point at which I was “given my daily bread,” so to speak -- some point at which the vertical energies shone through and nourished me. Come to think of it, it often happens while making one of these little morning raids on the wild godhead. It’s a big reason I write them. I wake up looking for one of those little springs bubbling up around my computer. As always, the challenge is to make sure I bring a big enough crock.

In any event, it is specifically because the sabbath is “built in” to the cosmos that vertical energies can enter and leave the “kingdom of man.” In other words, we aren’t trapped here below deck in the dark hull of the horizontal, merely sailing toward our doom. It is the reason why prayer, meditation, contemplation, and lectio divina, and Petey's tin cup all work. These are all activities that make the vertical presence present, because they allow us to step outside the relentless stream of time and stand on the shore for a bit, "watching the river flow.” Through these inactivities, we may turn toward what is “behind” or “above” the external world and its nihilocracy of urgent nonsense."

Of Cucumbers And Tomatoes

"Benedict started a brouhaha when he argued that faith in the end had to be reconciled with beauty and truth. He recalled the debate between the Byzantine Paleologus and his Muslim interlocutor. 'God will not demand what is rejected by reason,' argued Paleologus. God or Allah was not such that he would arbitrarily require us to torture children.

The Islamic fundamentalists have a book in which cucumbers and tomatoes must be separated; the Jew hunted down, the Infidel dispatched. It is a faith without doubt, when in fact faith requires doubt in order to exist.

And because we are sometimes unsure what God wants of us, we listen to reason. We use our freedom not to consort with the demons but to listen to our angels. The smiles of our children, the counsel of the truly holy, the message of the sunrise.

We are men because we can think; just as we are angels or devils because we are free. Never settle for being half a man, but choose the kind you will be."

Waning Reserves

""The media used up its reserve of good will when it refused to show all of the 9/11 images and when it went to court to show the most offensive Katrina images. The rest of the nation has figured out that all of their claims of journalistic integrity and ethics are simply nonsense. Journalism is about protecting media organization profits and advancing a political point of view, period.""

I Am Sam Of Horrible Ham

"Indeed. In fact, this malignant positioning of a ham steak can’t help but escalate into something like, say, the firebombing of mosques, or the videotaped beheadings of Muslim students filmed in the AV room of the Junior high.

Of course, Kosher-keeping Jews who’ve assimilated into public schools have been subjected to sightings of the unholy alliance of meat and cheese, the arrogant parading (by unclean Goyim) of ham sandwiches—even, in some cases, the presence of breakfast sausages!—for what seems like decades.

But then, they control the world. So a bit of religious inconvenience is a small price to pay in exchange for ownership of world’s banks, the western media, the Hollywood and New York entertainment industries, and having practically cornered the market on orthodontics.

Whereas Muslims? They must be treated like exotic plants. And sometimes you have to squash a few bugs if your goal is to keep the soil around the protected plant “pure.”

Think of it as horticultural dhimmitude—helped along, of course, by PC puppets and a multicultural ethos in which bureaucrats have become increasingly risk averse, and are willing to criminalize anything that could possibly give offense, provided the offense is against certain protected groups.

Let’s just hope criminal prosecution follows. Because I relish the image of a 14-year old doing federal time alongside hardcore white supremacists for “illegally positioning a ham steak.”"

The New Open Door

"But then flooding schools with people with mental problems and then arming professors seems like a hell of a way to run a railroad. Somewhere we have stumbled over a contradiction in our attitudes to modern life: that in pursuing our most altruistic instincts we have also opened the door to dangers against which we must defend ourselves. When we come forward with an open hand we are at our most vulnerable. Open societies are places of great possibility, for both good and evil."

The (Crazed) Sopranos With A Burqa

"The group, which used to claim a younger Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a member, killed its victims by either stoning them to death or drowning them in a pond while they sat on their chests. They selected their victims themselves, never referring them to any law-enforcement agency or court system. The Basijis literally made themselves judge, jury, and executioner in these cases.

That should present a problem to any rational court system. Essentially, the Iranian Supreme Court just made itself superfluous. They ruled that the fair-haired boys of the mullahcracy (so to speak) need not bother with courts or judges at all. They can freely operate outside the law. The families of the victims have been pressured into accepting blood money in exchange for justice in some cases, which adds another dimension to the issue: the rich can kill whomever they want, as long as they have good political connections.

Even for a regime as closely tied to the 14th century as the Iranian mullahcracy, that kind of endorsement takes one's breath away. It serves as a declaration that Iran has officially become a gangster government, and that the populace has no rights whatsoever in their Islamist mob-family system. It's the Sopranos with a burqa, only with less stable capos and bosses." [ These lunatics are what the MSM keeps telling us are devoutly "religious" "victims" of western "oppression". -ed. ]

Flight 93 On The Ground

"To be more specific, if something doesn't look right, it probably isn't and you should report your concerns to the authorities. If someone seems irrational, delusional or just plain weird, let someone know. If someone seems to believe you have a romantic relationship and you don't - be alert and report stalking or obsessive behavior as soon as you encounter it. Sometimes, if these situations are caught early, the subject can be helped with medical intervention. Do not put embarrassment above safety.

Most importantly, if you find yourself in an active shooter situation and you can access real shelter or cover, waste no time running full speed in that direction. If you are trapped, in a room with an assailant who is picking off victims as he/she finds them, FIGHT. Throw things, big things if you can grab them. Use that as a distraction to assault the shooter. Go down fighting if you must, but do not let yourself be immobilized by fear. Unless you can hide among the bodies and successfully play dead (a risky tactic if the assailant decides on a 'coup de grace' shot), you may as well go down fighting. If you cower in a corner or under a desk, as soon as he sees you he will kill you. Take the initiative away. You have nothing to lose in this situation. Remember the lesson of 9/11, submission to an adversary bent on killing plays into his expectations and will likely result in your death."

UPDATE: "It is a poor reflection on us that, in those first critical seconds where one has to make a decision, only an elderly Holocaust survivor, Professor Librescu, understood instinctively the obligation to act."

Danger: Hydraulics Required

"Congress takes up many silly, superfluous, but essentially harmless bills every session. Usually these consist of naming post offices or proclaiming National Caesar Salad Month, which allows constituents back home to believe that their Representative or Senator actually does something valuable. As we have seen lately, it keeps people from asking what the hell Congress has done in its first 100 days.

However, sometimes they adopt resolutions so laughable that one has to bring hydraulic jacks to place one's jaw back in place. This week, Congress plans to dedicate a coming month to -- are you ready for this? -- financial literacy! HR 273 promises to highlight all the failings of the American people, in the biggest case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Perhaps Congress might want to consider leading by example, rather than dedicating a month of the year to scolding its constituents. They refer to the fact that "consumer debt totaled $2,400,000,000,000 in 2006, of which credit card debt alone exceeded $825,000,000,000," but fail to note that Congress once again spent hundreds of billions more than it received. They note that personal savings dropped last year for the first time since the Great Depression, but they fail to note that Congress still passes supplemental spending bills that go directly towards the nation's debt without any accountability in the budget. Rep. Hinojosa and his colleagues decry the fact that only 42% of the nation's workers have calculated how much they will need for retirement, while successive Congresses have done everything possible to avoid reforming the coming insolvencies of Social Security and Medicare."

Bye, Bye Brown

"In other words, what we will get from this process of multiculturalism is precisely the kind of "separate but equal" facilities struck down by the Supreme Court in Brown v Board of Education in 1954. These Muslim activists want to create a separate society within the United States for Muslims, and they want the US to provide them the facilities with which to create it. Separate dorms, separate cafeterias, Muslim-only physical-education classes -- they want a separate Muslim college at MCTC and everywhere else. It's self-initiated apartheid.

Forty years ago and more, we had segregationists insisting that different peoples could not live within the same area without dividing lines. They used the same excuses as multiculturalists do today, too; each culture feels more secure when they can exclude others. We heard it from white supremacists and from black separatists -- and we proved them wrong. We made sure that people knew America stood for peaceful integration and not for Balkanization, even for what seemed to be good reasons to some.

Now we have Muslims who want to reopen the argument in order to create a closed society for themselves within the US. We have no problem with Muslims who integrate into our society and become Americans in deed as well as in name. If Muslims want to open their own universities to ensure the proper exercise of their religion, well, that works too. But if Muslims want us to recreate the French banlieus and an homage to Jim Crow so they can get even more insular than they already are here in the US, then we need to put our foot down -- washed or unwashed -- and say, "Enough!""

Heggy On The Koreas

"In addition to the previously mentioned comparisons between the two countries, the amount of the total economic production in South Korea is equivalent to $1200 billion while the economic production in North Korea does not exceed $40 billion, which means that the local production of South Korea is 30 times what it is in North Korea. The per capita real income in South Korea has reached $24,000 per year, while in North Korea it is less than $1,800 per year. It could be useful and even funny for readers to know that the average height of males in South Korea has increased to 1.74 m, while it remains 1.58 m among North Korean males. Finally, life expectancy in South Korea is approaching 80 years, while it remains ten years less than that in North Korea.

I think that readers will agree that these comparative statistics are extremely significant indicators that need no explanation. One country chose poverty, backwardness, and suffering, while the other chose progress, prosperity, health, and production. Talking about the pride of a nation, one side chose to receive donations and financial aid, while the other chose development and wealth and has subsequently obtained excess funds so that it can offer aid to others." [ As I have pointed out, a virtual laboratory experiment that leftists keep very, very quiet about... -ed. ]

Pravda Truthers Onion Heh

"“In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically ‘connected’, and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country.” (Pravda) You know, the Onion couldn’t have said it better." [ You know, these are the kind of people that the left says we need to ally with. I guess Media Matters *could* be a Rove front organization. Or not... -ed. ]

Visualize Whirled Myths

(HT Pajamas)

The Implicit Assumption Revealed: The Dark Nuts(hell) X-Rayed Once Again...

"Implicit in the enemy use of these tactics is the presumption that its political target has a moral sensibility -- that it somehow cares about the threat to kill innocents unless it bends to their evil will. Otherwise it would not be affected. Blackmail is useless against those who don't care for the victims because there can be no assault on the sensibility of the insensible. Pity and virtue are treated as weakness -- but only by evil -- by those who hate pity, and hate it from pride.

But still more evil than terrorists are those who help them in projecting a moral inversion. For terrorists are themselves fully cognizant of the difference between innocence and guilt. It is this fine sensibility that allows terrorists to design one outrage greater than the other; that teaches it to seek out the child that they might mutilate it. Lucifer would have been a poor devil had he not the memory of an angel. But their apologists have no sense of evil; and are in some way morally inferior to the terrorists themselves. They have no memory of Paradise Lost. Darkness and light are all the same to them; or rather darkness is light and night their shade of preference. For the apologists of terror, the victims themselves are "little Eichmanns" and those who try to defend the victims blamed instead of the murderers. And not only do they believe this but will try to persuade anyone who will listen of its truth. The phrase "lost soul" is not just a metaphor but a diagnosis.

How can anyone leave the field to such evil? Or think that we could, by giving it victory, escape it ourselves?" [ To which a wise commenter leaves the following: -ed. ]

"How many times have you heard a critic of the US discuss Middle Eastern Radical Islamic terrorism without pitching it as a reaction to the West, rather than discuss it as a pathology of the societies from which they spring? A pathology which, if Israel or the West didn't exist, would simply be setting a different target, rather than not existing itself?

Choosing to treat terrorism as the response to Western actions, rather than the cause of them, is an act of whistling by the graveyard: It's an act of superstition, not logic, attributing to the West a level of control over other societies that it doesn't even have over its own. But it is comforting to apologists, as it does allow them the moral inversions you describe." [ I would remind the terror apologists once more to take a long hard look at the "oppression" laboratory experiment of North and South Korea. Has North Korea been oppressed by the West? Really? How did we forget to oppress the South then? -ed. ]

The Daily MSMemory Hole

[ Glad to know that this doesn't exist in Carl Levin's mind. What? I guess I'm in a generous mood this morning, huh? -ed. ]:

"Forgetting all of these circumstances, among others, Tom also recalls, as Steve Hayes, myself, and others have for some time, that in 1998, "Ayman al-Zawahiri was in Baghdad ... and collected a check for $300,000 from the Iraqi regime." I would add, for context, that this was in the same time frame as bin Laden and Zawahiri's infamous fatwa calling for the murder of Americans — which, if you read it, argues that American actions against Iraq are a big part of the justification. It also came just a few months before al Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in east Africa, the Clinton administration bombed a Sudanese phramaceutical factory because intel indicated it was a joint Iraqi/Qaeda chemical weapons venture, and Clinton counter-terror honcho Richard Clarke fretted that "wily old Osama would boogie to Baghdad" — of all places — if the U.S. made things too hot for Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Sure, maybe all this is just a big coincidence. But, given that al Qaeda is a 24/7 terror operation whose main target is the U.S., I've always wondered for what earthly purpose Senator Levin and other connection naysayers figure Saddam Hussein gave Ayman Zawahiri 300K?"

Alaa On The Core Of The Gap

"The U.S. army maintains about 150,000 troops in Iraq, the numbers on the enemy side, most certainly, are not less than this figure if not much higher. If we estimate that the cost of the upkeep of the average terrorist is only one tenth of his American counterpart including the cost of weapons, operations, logistics etc., which is surely an underestimate, we conclude that the budget of the “insurgency” is consequently 10% of the American budget of the war. And we all know that this budget is almost $ 100 billions annually. It follows that the “insurgency” requires at least $ 10 billion annually. That is almost a quarter of the annual budget of the Iraqi State that has been recently announced with much fanfare as being one of the biggest in our history. This kind of financing is orders of magnitude beyond the means of any local Iraqi group. No amount of kidnap money, extortions, thefts; or even the amounts looted previously by the Baathists can provide such finance.

It follows from the previous point by elementary reasoning (my dear Watson), that there must be a powerful source of external financing for this sustained terrorist campaign that has been going on and escalating for the past four years. Iran and Syria, you might say. Well perhaps, to some extent, but considering the finances of these particular two, the full burden is well beyond their capabilities. Who else can do it? It is not difficult to discover that, if you really look around in the neighborhood. If we, poor ordinary people can easily answer this question, it is difficult to imagine that the financial wizards of the greatest World economic power can fail to solve this “mystery”. It should be clear even to an idiot that without the financial backing the insurgency cannot possibly continue and thrive, at least not on the present scale. But how little do we hear about this aspect of the “War on Terror”?! It makes you really wonder. Perhaps the matter is deeper than we think, and is way beyond our poor ordinary-man comprehension.

I shall not elaborate any further and leave it to the imagination and wits of my friends to ponder upon this issue; an issue which is at the very core of the problem." [ Yes. Alaa has placed his finger on the very lungs of the Tinfoil Apocalypse. -ed. ]

The Dream Creed

"In this dream, I heard our ex-presidents add to this chorus of war-time solidarity. Jimmy Carter reminded Americans that radical Islam had started in earnest on his watch, out of an endemic hatred of all things Western. I imagined him explaining that America began being called the “Great Satan” during the presidential tenure of a liberal pacifist, not a Texan conservative.

Bill Clinton would likewise add that he bombed Iraq, and Afghanistan, and East Africa without congressional or U.N. approval because of the need for unilateral action against serial terrorism and the efforts of radicals to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

George Bush Sr. would in turn lecture the media that it was once as furious at him for not removing Saddam as it is now furious at his son for doing so; that it was once as critical of him for sending too many troops to the Middle East as it is now critical of his son for sending too few; that it was once as hostile to the dictates of his excessively large coalition as it is now disparaging of his son’s intolerably small alliance; that it was once as dismissive of his old concern about Iranian influence in Iraq as it is now aghast at his son’s naiveté about Tehran’s interest in absorbing southern Iraq; and that it was once as repulsed by his own cynical realism as it is now repulsed by his son’s blinkered idealism.

I also dreamed that the British government only laughed at calls to curtail studies of the Holocaust in deference to radical Muslims, and instead repeatedly aired a documentary on its sole Victoria Cross winner in Iraq. The British, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish foreign ministers would collectively warn the radical Islamic world that there would be no more concessions to the pre-rational primeval mind, no more backpeddling and equivocating on rioting and threats over cartoons or operas or papal statements. There would be no more apologies about how the West need make amends for a hallowed tradition that started 2,500 years ago with classical Athens, led to the Italian Republics of the Renaissance, and inspired the liberal democracies that defeated fascism, Japanese militarism, Nazism, and Communist totalitarianism, and now are likewise poised to end radical Islamic fascism.

Europeans would advise their own Muslim immigrants, from London to Berlin, that the West, founded on principles of the Hellenic and European Enlightenments, and enriched by the Sermon on the Mount, had nothing to apologize for, now or in the future. Newcomers would either accept this revered culture of tolerance, assimilation, and equality of religions and the sexes — or return home to live under its antithesis of seventh-century Sharia law.

Media critics of the ongoing war might deplore our tactics, take issue with the strategy, and lament the failure to articulate our goals and values. But they would not stoop to the lies of “no blood for oil” — not when Iraqi petroleum is now at last under transparent auspices and bid on by non-American companies, even as the price skyrockets and American ships protect the vulnerable sea-lanes, ensuring life-saving commerce for all importing nations.

I also dreamed that no columnist, no talking head, no pundit would level the charge of “We took our eye off bin Laden in Afghanistan” when they themselves had no answer on how to reach al Qaedists inside nuclear Pakistan, a country ruled by a triangulating dictator and just one bullet away from an Islamic theocracy.

…

And then I woke up, remembering that the West of old lives only in dreams. Yes, the new religion of the post-Westerner is neither the Enlightenment nor Christianity, but the gospel of the Path of Least Resistance — one that must lead inevitably to gratification rather than sacrifice.

Once one understands this new creed, then all the surreal present at last makes sense: life in the contemporary West is so good, so free, so undemanding, that we will pay, say, and suffer almost anything to enjoy its uninterrupted continuance — and accordingly avoid almost any principled act that might endanger it." [ For those who actually pay attention to history, this is rather hard to differentiate from the serial appeasement that got us into WWII. For instance, most folks don't realize that Britain nearly tried to make yet another agreement with Hitler after Munich: ]

"Chamberlain still wielded power within government as the head of the main home affairs committees, most notably the Lord President's Committee. He served loyally under Churchill, offering much constructive advice. Despite preconceived notions, many Labour ministers found him to be a helpful source of information and support. In late May 1940, the War Cabinet had a rapid series of meetings over proposals for peace from Germany which threatened to split the government. Churchill, supported by the Labour members Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, was against the proposals, which were favoured by Lord Halifax. Chamberlain was initially inclined to accept the terms, but this division threatened to bring down the government. Over the course of three days, Churchill, aided by Greenwood and the Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, gradually persuaded Chamberlain to oppose the terms, and Britain remained in the war.

At this stage, Chamberlain still retained the support of most Conservative MPs. This was most visible in the House of Commons, where Conservatives would cheer Chamberlain, while Churchill only received the applause of Labour and Liberal members. Realising that this created the impression of a weak government, Chamberlain and the Chief Whip, David Margesson, took steps to encourage the formation of a Conservative power base that would support Churchill. [ But of course, nothing like this would be imaginable with the Islamists? Would it? As they say, history repeats itself the second time as a farce... -ed. ]

Speech As Weapon

"What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.

If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don't let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don't let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don't let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality - which is the same goal as affirmative action. A striking consequence of this analysis is that the toleration of "anything goes" in speech becomes censorship. The postmodern argument implies that if anything goes, then that gives permission to the dominant groups to keep on saying the things that keep the subordinate groups in their place. Liberalism thus means helping to silence the subordinate groups and letting only the dominant groups have effective speech. Postmodern speech codes, therefore, are not censorship but a form of liberation - they liberate the subordinated groups from the punishing and silencing effects of the powerful groups' speech, and they provide an atmosphere in which the previously subordinated groups can express themselves. Speech codes equalize the playing field." [ Antonio Gramsci must be very, very proud ... -ed. ]

"Screw Iraq, Invade Darfur"

"Tell Joe Biden to ask the Europeans. . . 'Why don't they have 2,500 troops to send to Darfur?' If an area w/300 million people can't raise that many troops, then perhaps it's time we have a discussion about 'free riding' with them." [ Let it never be said the Eurabians are free riders. Well, OK, I'll say it. -ed. ]

McCain Gets The War

"What struck me upon my return from Baghdad is the enormous gulf between the harsh but hopeful realities in Iraq, where politics is for many a matter of life and death, and the fanciful and self-interested debates about Iraq that substitute for statesmanship in Washington. In Iraq, American and Iraqi soldiers risk everything to hold the country together, to prevent it from becoming a terrorist sanctuary and the region from descending into the dangerous chaos of a widening war. In Washington, where political calculation seems to trump all other considerations, Democrats in Congress and their leading candidates for President, heedless of the terrible consequences of our failure, unanimously confirmed our new commander, and then insisted he be prevented from taking the action he believes necessary to safeguard our country's interests. In Iraq, hope is a fragile thing, but all the more admirable for the courage and sacrifice necessary to nurture it. In Washington, cynicism appears to be the quality most prized by those who accept defeat but not the responsibility for its consequences.

Before I left for Iraq, I watched with regret as the House of Representatives voted to deny our troops the support necessary to carry out their new mission. Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the last votes were counted. What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender? In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering."

The Nuts(hell) Rages On

"No more tedious individuals exist on our national landscape, although they are in a certain sense exemplary. They represent the triumph of narcissism over intelligent discourse in close to its purest form. No idea or thought exists free of how it affects them - their fame, their glory and, ultimately, their cash. Every second we spend thinking or talking about these two is a second completely lost from our lives. And I'm stopping now."

Democrat Holocaust Victim: Back To The Future Ovens!

"Objectionable, unfair and inaccurate???? It's hard to believe a Holocaust victim of Lantos' stature is applying those banal euphemisms to a man who is not only a Holocaust denier but most probably the most powerful Holocaust denier since the event itself? How about "Homicidal lunatic liar"? Ahmadinejad, as I assume Lantos must know, is the man who ordered the state-sponsored Holocaust denial cartoon contest in Tehran last year, the one with the seemingly-endless collection of vicious anti-Semitic cartoons out of the pages of Der Sturmer.

What does the Congressman hope to accomplish by "having a dialogue" with such a person. What does Lantos expect Mad Amadinejad to say? "I see your point, Tom. Maybe all those Jew were incinerated in those ovens, after all." Not bloody likely. In fact, it is Ahmadinejad who has everything to gain by such a meeting and Lantos nothing.

Back in the interview I did with the Congressman (link above at "overly-cozy"), Lantos said an interesting thing vis-a-vis Google, Yahoo and the Chinese: "I would hope than they would change China, but China changed them." He should think about that when he next considers venturing forth to "dialogue" with a Middle Eastern potentate." [ I wonder if this one might not be enough to have even Chamberlain rolling in his grave? People forget that Chamberlain died during the early part of the war of stomach cancer not knowing whether his beloved England would survive the Nazi onslaught. I have to question whether Lantos has really learned the *real lesson* of the Jew who survived the Holocaust and finally paid attention. -ed. ]

Pakistan In A Nutshell...

"So there's the Pakistani problem with Islamic terrorists. The Islamic conservatives, who tend to be pro, or at least neutral, towards Islamic terrorists, are needed to keep the generals in power (and safe from prosecution during those years when elected officials are allowed to run, and plunder, the country). But the madrasses continue to turn out new Islamic terrorists, who want to turn the country into a religious dictatorship. Until this contradiction is cleared up, Pakistan will remain unstable, and a haven for Islamic terrorists." [ Don't count on it anytime soon... -ed. ]

Plagiarism, MSM Style

"So Katie didn't plagiarize, because the piece that appeared under her name was actually written by someone else, not her! "Genelius said it is 'very common' for the first-person commentaries to be put together by staffers without Couric's being involved in the writing, but that she does participate in topic selection.""

Belated Happy Easter...

I had such a nice one with the family yesterday that I forgot to mention it. That's probably as it should be...

The Chamberlain Way

"People who think Britain won anything in this standoff need to re-read Winston Churchill's first volume of The Second World War and the first half of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. The West has given the hardliners in Teheran a tremendous boost in their reaction to this hostaging, and they can expect more of it in the future."

Michael Has Another Must Read Update From The 51st State

"“You should know that Kurds are the main friends of the Americans in the Middle East,” he said. “In the past we had only God and the mountains as friends. But now we want Americans to support us in all matters, to be another mountain. Our Minister of Peshmerga has great relations with the American forces. We are in the same trench and we are fighting the terrorists just like Americans are. It will be in the future this way, also. Not one American person has been wounded in this area. We have a real alliance with America. We are proud of this relationship. We want the American nation to know we are real friends.” ***

“I want you, as a reporter, as a journalist,” the general said to me, “to get our Kurdish voice to the American people so they know about Kurdish suffering in Iraq. We don’t want the American army to leave this area. The terrorists are excited about what is going on in the Congress.” ***

“What do you think will happen,” I said, “if the United States withdraws from Iraq next year?”“It will be easier for terrorists to attack us,” the general said. “We are surrounded by enemies. They will attack Kurdistan from everywhere. We believe, as Kurds, it is not honorable for Americans to withdraw. It will be bad for Americans, too. They will be killing themselves. If Americans leave us we expect terrorists will reach the American country very soon.” " [ Luckily, they have apparently never been exposed to the American left or I suspect the friendliness might undergo some modification. Also luckily, Nancy Pelosi isn't bright enough to even know they exist much less pay a visit. Please go hit Michael's tip jar. -ed. ]

Chemicals For The Untermenschen

[Nobody cares] "...about chemical weapons, do they? For the ninth time in recent weeks WMDs are used by the terrorists in Iraq:

BAGHDAD - A suspected al-Qaida in Iraq suicide bomber smashed a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas into a police checkpoint in Ramadi on Friday, killing at least 27 people — the ninth such attack since the group's first known use of a chemical weapon in January.

But, just like women stoned to death in Iran, or the mass starvation of the people of Zimbabwe, these horrors are greeted with the silence that racists reserve for the less-than-humans who behave in an uncivilized way. Their unspoken attitude is, well, what can you expect of these untermenschen?

And anyway, it's all Bush's fault."

MSMemory Hole Today: The Top Crank

"There you have it. Dr. Gray is a fuddy-duddy who "has long railed" and is outside the "mainstream." He has "dug his heels in" and is so out of date that he tries to dispute the obvious fact that the world is currently getting warmer! The AP is telling us that, however distinguished Gray may be, he can safely be disregarded on this issue.

But wait! Does Dr. Gray really deny the "ample evidence that the world is getting hotter"? Maybe the AP reporter just took Emanuel's word for it. Maybe he was too lazy to do any research. Maybe he deliberately misled his readers. Through the miracle of Google--do AP reporters know about Google?--it took me approximately 30 seconds to find this interview of Dr. Gray, in which he talked about whether the earth is "getting hotter":

Q: ... is global warming behind this increase in hurricanes?

Gray: I am very confident that it’s not. I mean we have had global
warming. That’s not a question. The globe has warmed the last 30 years, and the last 10 years in particular.

The AP is resorting here to the media's constant trick of misrepresenting the position of those who oppose the global warming theorists. The issue is not whether the earth has recently warmed; it has, by around 7/10 of a degree in the last century. The questions are, 1) to what extent, if any, is that warming (or the cooling that also occurs periodically) caused by human activity, 2) how much warming (or cooling) is there likely to be in the future, 3) what will the net effects, good and bad, of such warming or cooling be, and 4) are the benefits, if any, of reducing CO2 emissions by a given amount worth the costs?

The Associated Press, like nearly all mainstream media outlets, runs interference for the global warming hysterics by misrepresenting the nature of the debate, misrepresenting the positions of those who oppose the hysteria, and subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) suggesting that all who question the anthropogenic global warming theorists can safely be dismissed as cranks." [ And trust me, they'd all fall dead of heart attacks if you were ever allowed to read THIS. -ed. ]

What Went Wrong -- The Insider's View

"Not many years ago the brilliant Orientalist, Bernard Lewis, published a short history of the Islamic world's decline, entitled "What Went Wrong?" Astonishingly, there was, among many Western "progressives," a vocal dislike for the title. It is a false premise, these critics protested. They ignored Mr. Lewis's implicit statement that things have been, or could be, right.

But indeed, there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.

These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong." [ It just got added to the classics... -ed. ]

Off To The Solomons

"I like the [Fukayama's -ed.] casual assumption that "transcending" sovereignty is a good thing to do. No "We the people" nonsense for these intellectual chappies. Still, if he genuinely thinks Europe's democratic deficit, unaffordable entitlements and declining human capital is the way to go, remind me to go to the Solomon Islands for the end of history. " [ Or someplace more remote if possible. -ed. ]

The MSMemory Hole (Part 89235)

"Ask most Americans if they were aware that Iraqis, by almost a 2-to-1 margin, believe that life today is better than it was under Saddam Hussein, and you'd most likely elicit incredulousness, blank stares or outright laughter. Not because it isn't true, though. It is.

The mainstream media just forgot to mention it."

How A State Rots...

"Shiraz Ahmed was tending his music store in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, when a group of 15 bearded young men walked in bearing bamboo poles and a chilling message. Politely but firmly, they instructed him to take down the colourful array of Bollywood and bhangradance tunes on display and to restrict his business to Islamic music. “They told me I had to change my business,” said Mr Ahmed, 25, whose family has run the store for 15 years. “I am so confused. I don’t know what to do.” Until last week he might not have worried about these men from Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Red Mosque). After all, his shop is legal and within walking distance of Pervez Musharraf’s presidential palace. But this was just one of several signs in the past ten days that a creeping campaign to “Talebanise” Pakistan has spread from tribal areas on the Afghan border right to the heart of the capital. And to judge from the Government’s response, even here it is reluctant to confront the radical clerics who openly preach jihad (holy war) and defy the writ of the state."

Welcome To The Fear Industrial Complex

"Newsrooms are full of English majors who acknowledge that they are not good at math, but still rush to make confident pronouncements about a global-warming "crisis" and the coming of bird flu. . . .

Here's another example. What do you think is more dangerous, a house with a pool or a house with a gun? When, for "20/20," I asked some kids, all said the house with the gun is more dangerous. I'm sure their parents would agree. Yet a child is 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool than in a gun accident.

Parents don't know that partly because the media hate guns and gun accidents make bigger headlines. Ask yourself which incident would be more likely to be covered on TV.

Media exposure clouds our judgment about real-life odds. Of course, it doesn't help that viewers are as ignorant about probability as reporters are."

Don't You?

"So, Bush invaded Iraq to steal the oil from what could possibly be the 4th largest producer of oil in the world, trailing the United States, which, last time I checked, Nancy Pelosi was president of.

Er, well, you get it." [ I'm trying very, very hard to get it. And failing somehow... -ed. ]

Oooops

"WHY DO THEY HATE US HIM? Al Qaeda targets the Dalai Lama. But I thought they were only mad at us because Bush wouldn't ratify Kyoto or something?"

Beyond Clausewitz

"If ours is the age of the “strategic corporal” (Krulak), ncos and junior officers will need a different kind of “situational awareness” than in the past — and that, in itself, will call for a radical transformation of professional military education (pme). Of all the social sciences, anthropology is the one that can offer the most useful insights (psychology, by contrast, can only lead to a “babble for hearts and minds.”) That said, the “strategic corporal” will have to keep in mind that, just as a military officer can be brilliant at the tactical or operational level and less than stellar at the strategic level (or vice versa), area studies specialists can offer invaluable expertise at the tribal and regional levels, yet display a total lack of judgment at the global level.36 At the interagency working level, and for the foreseeable future, “know thyself, know thy enemy” will continue to be more important than “know thy Clausewitz.” So will “know thy Trotsky” (institutional infiltration), “know thy Gramsci” (cultural hegemony), and “know thy Schmitt” (intra and international lawfare) — for this is the remarkable trinity on which the “operational code” of the Fifth Column is based today."

For You Will Be Mocked

"Let me now quote an articulate young reader -- from Ottawa, born in 1984 -- to speak for the youffs:

“I for one, although young and idealistic, and much desiring to be a gentleman, have less idea than I would like as to how to go about such. And, even if I can do so (which is the main thing, I suppose) is it possible to set our civilization back upright? ... We did not, of course, get into this state suddenly. What comes first if we wish to reverse some of this? Is there any sort of roadmap?”

Now that is worth answering. And I think it can be answered in less than a column.

Especially in this Holy Week, we must realize that we are speaking of difficulties beyond our making, and of resolutions beyond our imagining. For those who were the builders of our civilization, as for those who may be the rebuilders, the task was and remains beyond the work of human hands. At the centre of the whole project was redemption in Christ.

The biggest single thing any individual can do, is to re-embrace that centre. He must endeavour less to change the world, than to change himself. And necessarily, to ask for the grace of God in doing so. For the project is no less than to rebuild Christendom: the foundation of the West. And this can only be done in human souls. The buildings and the clothing, the art and the music, that mysteriously hopeful view of the universe -- these things are outward reflections of what is wrought in human souls.

I believe the answer begins in personal conversion; in reading and thinking as deeply as we can about reality, and about our history. This requires courage: for you will be mocked. I would hold that the “roadmap” exists, in the Bible and the teachings of the Church and her saints. And that, while reason is our guide, the road is essentially sacramental."

Welcome To The "Democracy" Of Dictatorships (Part 92365)

"It would be an insult that we cannot afford to let pass. If the UN does not immediately fire everyone involved in this scandal and revoke their immunity, then we must cut off all funds for the UN and create a timetable for withdrawal from this thoroughly corrupt organization. We have no need of a debating society whose members transform refugee camps into seraglios, who stuff the pockets of dictators with money meant for those they oppress, and who actively assist other nations in undermining our currency. If the UN fails to cooperate, it's time to push Turtle Bay into the water and bid adieu to the last of the Cold War anachronisms."

Gramscian Pelosian Damage

"As a Muslim, I fully understand respect of our religion by visiting US officials and I applaud that respect. Had Speaker Pelosi worn the Hijab inside a Mosque, this would have indicated respect but for Pelosi to wear it on the streets of Damascus all the while she is sitting with the self-imposed Baschar al-Assad who has come to symbolize oppression and one of the reasons why women are forced to wear the Hijab as they turn to religion to express their freedom is a statement of submittal not only to oppression but also to lack of women’s rights in the Middle East. Pelosi just reversed the work of the Syrian civil society and those who aspire for women’s freedom in the Muslim countries many years back with her visual statement. Her lack of experience of the Middle East is showing.

Assad could not have been happier because Syrian women, seeing a US official confirming what their husbands, the Imams in the Mosques tell them, and the society at large imposes on them through peer pressure will see in her wearing a Hijab as a confirmation of the societal pressures they are constantly under. No one will ever know how many women took the Hijab on after seeing Pelosi wearing it. The damage Speaker Pelosi is causing with her visit to Syria will be felt for many years to come."

UPDATE: "You know, Syria? The puppet government of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Supporters of Hizballah? Insane hatred of Israel and America? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a TV series? Nazi fugitives harbored for years? Am I ringing any bells?"

The Automotive Future Today...

... costs a cool $2 mil. But it is pretty cool...

The Ssssspell Of Dependency

"This is a nuanced view, so let's consider it a bit more carefully, for it explains how evil can exist in a universe created by the Sovereign Good. It is not so much that evil is determined, but it is more or less "inevitable" (or ineveateapple) due to the conditions of existence. It makes no sense to say that evil is “willed by God”; rather, it is more like willing weather, which will inevitably bring occasional hurricanes and tornadoes. Therefore, even if God "cannot eliminate evil as a possibility" on pain of no longer being the infinite God, God would also no longer be God if his divine nature were not opposed to it. And since we are "the mirror and image," we can see how we must be resigned to evil and error in the world, but never accept it. Rather, we must fight against it.

But the cosmogonic winds blow in all directions, up and down, forward and back, and some people obviously like to get their kicks on route 666 -- which is often paved with good intentions. In this regard, Schuon makes another subtle point, that evil, "by its very nature, tends to communicate itself... but it has this tendency precisely because it is opposed to the radiation of the good and thus cannot help imitating the latter in some fashion. For evil is by definition both opposition and imitation: within the framework of opposition it is ontologically forced to imitate; 'the more they curse God the more they praise Him,' said Meister Eckhart. Evil, insofar as it exists, participates in the good represented by existence." Evil "cannot be absolute," but "always depends upon some good which it misuses or perverts."

Therefore, we have faith that the Good must eventually triumph in the end. However, the Raccoon principle of "March Forth Madness" assures that there will be penalties for having picked and wagered on the wrong bracket in the course of one's life.

Thus, it seems to me that the most dangerous and deceptive form of evil is this grandiose and intoxicating imitation good, or ape of God. Can we just stipulate that this represents the ontological essence of "psycho-spiritual leftism" in all its diverse forms, or must I ssspell it out in another possst? "

(Oh) Brother Biden

"Biden is saying that Iraq is currently experiencing a civil war and that our troops should have no part in it. We should train Iraqi troops--presumably those of the Maliki government. However, Iraq needs a system of local control with a weak central government. So since we cannot militarily step in and help set up such a system, we should... what? Encourage civil war, as long as it's leading to the system that Biden says Iraq needs? That's Biden's 'political solution?'

What if our troops become targets in the Iraqi civil war? What if--sitting at their bases and training troops--insurgents attack them? Are we allowed to move among the general Iraqi population to weed out the insurgents? Because that sounds rather like what we're doing now. Or should U.S. troops simply stay on base and accept the 'slow bleed' as part and parcel of being in Iraq?

And what if we determine that al Qaeda is closely aligned with one of the parties to the civil war? Can we effectively take sides to keep terrorists from seizing large swaths of Iraqi territory?

Does anyone think that the Democratic 'plan'--insofar as it does not involve retreat--can actually work?"

Gagdad Discovers Gramsci

"Now obviously, all of these ideas are warped, twisted, and unnatural. No innocent person could ever spontaneously come up with these perversions. No one can believe these things unless they are placed there by an outside influence, or leftist reptool. Nevertheless, as in Genesis, the snake can have no influence over us unless there is something in man that is drawn to the dark, lower world of the snake.

Now, I wonder. Is there something analogous in the soul to that eery and otherworldly feeling of happening upon a snake in the wild? In a way, it is a sort of "high," for it does take you out of the ordinary, into a sort of thrilling and dangerous existential space. It certainly isn't boring.

Could leftism represent the dizzying thrill of the fall? After all, falling is a thrill, at least until you hit bottom, just as -- no disrespect intended here -- being the Crocodile Hunter was a thrill until he hit a stingray, and being a Euro-socialist will be a thrill until their experiment against reality is conquered by Islam.

You don't learn anything useful in a liberal education at an elite university -- nothing that you won't have to later unlearn. But what a thrill to fall so far in just four years!" [ I just realized what a dope I've been forgetting to put "Gramscian Damage" on my Classics links! -ed. ]

Neener, Neener, Neener

"Tomkins also said that they would be using new RAID technologies which allow them to store copies of e-mail in parallel universes. This means that if their servers crash they will be able to recover your data from another universe where they haven't.

"Once your Yahoo e-mail box is full, you'll be able to transfer it to Gmail and add one more message," said Tomkins. "Those Yahoos will have a hard time beating that."

When contacted about the Google announcement, a Yahoo representative said, "We will be making an announcement shortly about our million-trillion-billion infinity storage," and added, "Neener, neener, neener."

Not to be left out of the storage bonanza, a Hotmail representative said that while they "can't offer unlimited storage, they can delete all your e-mail at random intervals in conjunction with their Live OneCare service, to make sure you never run out of space.""

But You're Already Asleep Aren't You?

"To take an example I've been harping on recently, there are all sorts of appalling violations of power by local police and prosecutors, as Radley Balko has recently exposed with his superb work on the Cory Maye case. Many prisoners endure such brutalization that if I had to choose between going to a high-security prison and being interrogated by the Bush administration's favoured methods, I'd pick the waterboarding. This is a stain on our national honour, an outrage, an abomination. But does it mean that our society is not worth living in? Are we not free? Have we no liberty? Do we live in a police state because some peoples' liberties are thusly threatened? Are we close to a police state? Were we under the Democrats, when such abuses were equally likely to occur?

The other problem with the Democrats is that not all of their liberties abuses are economic. My understanding is that many of the abuses of the WOT result from expanding the Clinton's innovations in the execrable War on Drugs to terror suspects. It was, after all, the Clinton administration that sent tanks and SWAT teams in to deal with what were, at least allegedly, child custody disputes. Likewise, the innovations pushed by Democrats to shake more tax revenue out of the rich . . . like retroactive prosecution, special opaque courts for tax cases, spying on people's cash flows, asset seizure laws, and so forth . . . strike me as major civil liberties violations by any standard, which have trickled down the food chain quite rapidly. Democrats are pushing card check, which strikes me as a license for union organisers to terrorise uncooperative workers. They favour "hate crimes" legislation, which is the closest thing to a thought crime our society has. I could go on, but you're already asleep, aren't you?"

Welcome To The Memory Hole

"Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) :
"…I don’t think anyone can find a war that this country was engaged in where the funds were cut off. No one is talking about cutting off the funds."

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) :
"I do not support cutting funding for American troops."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) :
"We're not going to cut off funding to the troops … no one wants to do that."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) :
"I don't know of any senator who would cut off funds for troops in the field." " (HT Glenn)

Private Moyse: Were, Were, Were

"The tragedy—and I am using that word in its full and proper meaning—the tragedy is, that these westernized Muslims are banging their heads against that Orwell quote. They have signed on to the modern world and its multi-culti fantasies. There was plenty of courage and good sense on display at St. Petersburg, but not much of those energizing principles Orwell spoke about: “racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war.” It’s the jihadis who have those.

The great genius of the English-speaking peoples was in holding the two sets of ideas in their minds at the same time: both “racial pride, leader-worship (well, to be fair to the Anglosphere, we never really went for that one), religious belief, love of war,” and “the inviolable freedom of the individual conscience ... the equality of all human persons.” This was quite a trick, as the two sets of principles actually contradict each other. It was Orwell himself who gave us the word “doublethink.”

The English, however—from Dr. Johnson down to Private Moyse and my Mum—were an un-intellectual lot, not much bothered by logical contradictions. Were, were, were." [ Wow. RTWT it's short. This one gets added to the classics links over right. Look up at this blog's masthead for the relevant F. Scott Fitzgerald quote... -ed. ]

Welcome To The New Parade (Same As The Old Parade)

"NEWSWEEK: How does your personal experience as a vet in Korea and Vietnam, and as a POW in Vietnam for nearly seven years, shape your thinking in the debate about the best way forward in Iraq?
Sam Johnson: People don't listen to history. If you look back to Vietnam, when we were POWs being held by the Viet Cong, we heard them broadcasting that our Congress had cut off funding. Congress did the same thing then that they're trying to do now—pull money from our war effort. They let the communists overrun South Vietnam after they'd already retreated to the point of giving up. We didn't support South Vietnam, and the communists sensed weakness and moved back in. I'm afraid that's what's going to happen again.

Do you think it's valid to compare what happened in Vietnam to what's going on in Iraq today?
I think it's a valid comparison. The only difference was we were fighting communists then in one country, and we're fighting terrorists now, worldwide. If you look at this Iranian capture of those British seamen, they acted the same way the communists did. They're parading them around on TV just like the Viet Cong did with American POWs. I don't think you can call the terrorists we're fighting now communists, but it's obvious that they've taken some lessons from somebody.

And you think what the Democrats in Congress are doing now compares to what the Democratic Congress did during Vietnam?
Sure it does. Furthermore, nowadays I think it won't just prompt the takeover of one country or part of one country, but it will stimulate activity worldwide in terrorist environments. They've already said they're out to annihilate the U.S. and Israel."

Surprise!

"Well, shucks! Looks like we underestimated those darned Iranians once again. Who knows how they'll surprise us next? Perhaps a mushroom cloud on the Hudson, or a series of them around Tel Aviv ..."

In Case You Were Wondering...

Reagan got the same MSMemory Hole treatment of course...

Did I Forget To Mention The MSMemory Hole?

"Mr. Stephanopoulos doesn't mention his own valuable expertise on the subject of fired federal prosecutors, the kind of expertise that might help place the current mess in context. Mr. Stephanopoulos was the Clinton White House communications director in 1993 when the Justice Department cleaned its slate of all 93 U.S. attorneys, and he was central to the administration's finessing of the episode--just the sort of insider experience, presumably, that prompted ABC News to hire Mr. Stephanopoulos fresh out of the White House in 1996.

And yet even when Mr. Gibson and Mr. Stephanopoulos engage in the sort of exploratory anchor-reporter chitchat that is a staple of network news nowadays, somehow the two manage not to crack up as they rake over the latest sinister developments in the fired-prosecutors "scandal" without acknowledging that one of the newsmen knows a good bit more than he lets on about how these things work.

Mr. Stephanopoulos remains just as sober when working solo on Sunday mornings as the host of "This Week" or helping out on "Good Morning America." There hasn't been this much stone-faced comedy in circulation since Buster Keaton's heyday.

It's a pity, because Mr. Stephanopoulos might be able to help viewers understand why the firing of eight U.S. attorneys in the Bush administration has been by far the biggest television-news story lately, and yet when dozens of federal prosecutors were fired during the Clinton administration, it was barely noticed by network newscasts. According to the Tyndall Report, which tracks this sort of thing, during the week of March 12-16, the three network evening newscasts spent a total of 45 minutes on the prosecutors story, with the war in Iraq placing second at 16 minutes. "World News with Charles Gibson" logged 13 of those 45 minutes on the prosecutors.

By contrast, in 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno's wholesale firing of U.S. attorneys appointed by George H.W. Bush was a non-story on the ABC evening news--literally a non-story, according to records kept by the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive, as in zero coverage. CBS also skipped it; NBC gave it 20 seconds.

At the risk of putting a damper on all the fun, here's a primer on the sort of White House experience that ABC's chief Washington correspondent could draw on to enlighten viewers.

First of all, misleading messages from a hapless attorney general can be corrected: Janet Reno had only been on the job for a matter of days when she announced the blanket dismissal of U.S. attorneys in March 1993, and she bungled the job, letting word get out that prosecutors involved in significant investigations would be allowed to complete them. As was noted at the time, this would have meant that an ongoing investigation of the powerful House Democrat and vital Clinton ally, Dan Rostenkowski, by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jay Stephens, would continue uninterrupted.

The White House, or rather Mr. Stephanopoulos, quickly torpedoed that idea. In a press briefing, he announced that among the prosecutors whose resignations had been demanded, "there are at least some people who are in the middle of trials right now who will not be replaced." Trials, he specified, not investigations. "Interestingly," a Hartford Courant editorial noted back then, "Miss Reno didn't explain the impending dismissals. The president's personal spokesman, George Stephanopoulos, did the fast talking.""

The MSM Copperhead Blackout (Part 89754)

"And of course, there is irony that Sen Thurmond or Sen Lott have been hounded on charges of racism, but the only Senator who is a former member of the KKK, and who voted against both Black Supreme Court nominess (one Repub, one Dem) and both black Sec’ties of State (both on Pres Bush’s watch) is the guy there at the event to honor the Tuskeegee airmen.

Naturally, the press won’t breath a word about it."

Welcome To The New Corruption

So much better than the old of course... (Power Line via Glenn)