All Things Beautiful

"We Are All Jews Now!"

The famous painting by Otto Dix 'The Skat Players' 1920, Gallerie der Stadt Stuttgart, Germany

 

Thank you for the hundreds of e-mails of support, begging me not to stop blogging, even if it means a post a week, an image, anything. The jury is still out...

I have been temporarily torpedoed out of my Sabbatical cocoon by this e-mail, in response to my original post called The Myth of Palestine Part II, which happens to be my favorite of all time on ATB (Part I is here). The e-mail sent my heart rate pumping, and reaching for my pills. Perhaps having stayed away from blogging had weakened my stomach for these 'anonymous cowards' who frequently pollute my Inbox. Like this one, more often than not they are in response to my Myth of Palestine posts linked to above:

I disagree. They do exists and have every right to. Racist Israelis such as yourself are one of the problem in the Middle East. If anything, the UN and the US made a mistake by creating a Jewish state. You guys were wiped off by the Romans. I wondered why? Now, with the help the American tax money, you guys are wiping the Palestinians off the map.

While Americans pay attention to China's treatment of Tibet, the world is watching Israel and their annihilation of the Palestinians.

Keep hiding under your yamacas [sic], because Karma is a bitch.

For the umpteenth time....[yawn]: I am not Israeli, nor am I Jewish. I don't wear a yarmulke, I wear Prada. If that makes me 'The Devil', so be it. Just so that we all understand each other, I am a devout Christian, and I am vehemently against the tyranny of Islamofascism. Calling me a racist simply because I am pro-Jewish, is simply ignorant.

Unlike you dear Anonymous, I don't hide under a rock, you can find out who I am simply by clicking 'ABOUT' in the top right hand corner of my Blog.

I have written enough about Israel, the so called 'Palestine', and the whole mess in the Middle East, for everyone to know that I am fiercely pro-Israel. Realizing that the Arabs in Saudi are finally reaching an understanding of the realities facing the conflict in the Middle East, it is uncanny to think that, sanity is prevailing, and the region is accepting that siding with extremists is going to get them killed at best, and let them be seen to be 'sleeping with the enemy' and then get killed anyway, at worst.

I have said it before and I'll say it again: after nearly 40 years of pin-point targeted response to Arab rabid hostilities leading to this perverse situation where the West pays the Palestinian officials, synonymous with terrorism, billions of Dollars so that they can keep spitting into Israel's face, we have come a full circle.

Nothing changes. Let's just sit tight whilst Iran builds its nuclear bomb, so that we can all cry about it afterwards, like we did when we calmly watched Hitler slaughter the Jews.

One of my favorite quotes from Charles Moore @ The Telegraph published a while back, to be never more relevant as it is today:

All I want to ask my fellow Europeans [and Americans] is this: are you happy to help direct the world's fury at the only country in the Middle East whose civilization even remotely resembles yours? And are you sure that the fate of Israel has no bearing on your own? In Iran, the new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes the link. The battle over Palestine, he says, is "the prelude of the battle of Islam with the world of arrogance", the world of the West. He is busy building his country's nuclear bomb."

I believe we suffer from acute self-aggrandizement and individualistic hyperbole, which in the final analysis is nothing but ignorant arrogance as it is both hollow and superficial in all its aspects.

In many ways, the term 'Clash of Civilizations' contains the seeds of a most comprehensive truth. I am afraid though that we will have to come to terms with the fact, that the lines will prove to be much more blurred and drawn criss-cross throughout our society. Just when we reluctantly acknowledge the reality of a long-drawn-out conflict centering around religious beliefs; just when we thought that the factions could be limited to those of Judea-Christian beliefs versus Islamic ones, must we realize, that the scope is far wider: Faith versus Skepticism with all its variations such as cynicism, pessimism, disbelief, agnosticism, atheism, and anti-Semitism. In short, the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless, otherwise called Nihilism.

The lines in the sand have been drawn...as I have said before: "We Are All Jews Now"!

As Sir Winston Churchill wisely said, and my father bravely lived: "You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something sometime in your life."

Indeed.

Introducing The Angel Of Death (Repeat)

Crowds of people have congregated as if in anticipation of experiencing a miraculous religious vision - but instead a grotesque dead chicken lies slumped across the cliff-top in front of them. The crowd's inability to recognize the inanity of the object they are venerating, emphasized the futility of their mission.
"Chihuahua" by David Alfaro Siqueiros 1947, Museo de Arte Alvar y Carmen T de Carillo, Mexico City

 

By now, at the tail end of 2007, we all know who Mohammad-Ali Ramin is. But when I first wrote about him some eighteen months ago he was a relative unknown, and aside from the odd flutter at the beginning of this year, when he claimed in a December 28th interview with a Tehran-based 'Baztab' news website that Hitler was Jewish, he is keeping his powder relatively dry. I still say, fasten your seat belts, it's going to be an explosive ride:

"We will acquire this [nuclear] technology and export it to all the 150 countries. This is the power we have not yet used."

Mohammad-Ali Ramin's looks are deceptive.

He is good looking with his soft, well manicured beard. His looks are either German or Scandinavian, blue eyes, light hair. Nothing threatening, charming smile; you'd invite him to your dinner party without a moments hesitation. Well almost....

Little would you know that you would be wining and dining the very reincarnation of Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann, Dr Josef Mengele dubbed 'The Angel of Death', you name it, take your pick, improved only in looks and finesse. Pure, unabashed, soft-spoken evil. Measured in tone, deliberate and utterly confident in everything he says. He's not a psychopath, but someone who is absolutely convinced to occupy the moral high ground, certain of his convictions being sanctioned by Allah himself.

Politics Of Terror Reign Supreme

 

What the hell are these people still doing in Great Britain? We will never learn will we. No, not until the politics of terror reign supreme, the delusional denial suffocates us to a painful death and liberal deranged PC-thinking chokes us with the perpetual whining: “we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings..”....eh?

In turn, the Liberals in America have brought every argument of this nature down to accusations of racial prejudice, and ad hominem attacks of being against other cultures if you dare declare that America has a culture of it's own. They have entirely managed to kill any sense of proud heritage they once had, in favor of some sort of misplaced democracy which allows others to spit on their culture. Why? Why should the Americans and the British allow others to spit on their culture whilst living in THEIR country? What's next? We all have to speak Arabic, and live by the Law of Shari'a just so as not to upset our Islamic friends who think our infidel culture is inferior and we should all be dead or converted.

Until the West begins to pay attention to what Muslim extremists are saying in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, rather than what their apologists sprout forth for foreign consumption, the word insulting will not take on the new meaning and level of hatred it should do.

It is a matter of 'demographic time' before Islam will become the religion of the majority, ruled by the law of Shari'a. Just in case we think we are sitting cosily here, and this is someone else's problem, we need to know that Islam is the fastest growing religion in America. Today, the number of followers of Islam in the United States has reached 7 to 8 million Muslims in the United States. More than a quarter of a million people of Arab descent live in southeastern Michigan, making the area the second-largest Arab community outside the Middle East (after Paris, France).

The vast majority (80%) of American mosques are funded with Saudi Arabian money and most subscribe to 18th century Wahhabism that calls for the spread of Islam through violence. Many mosques, "Islamic Learning Centers" and Arab/Muslim Student Unions are distributing large numbers of pamphlets and leaflets attacking Judaism, Christianity and other non-Muslim religions and urging young Americans to convert to Islam.

The so called 'moderates' don't exist. There are only those who admit openly to supporting conversion to Islam through 'Jihad' and those who don't. There are only those who get their hands 'officially' dirty and those that don't. And then of course there are the 'Ellison atheists', and they belong to the 'nutball category'.

The threat of Islam is real. More so than Communism and Fascism ever was, because with Islam, Muslim activists are willing to kill and to die for the cause of spreading their religion. 'Jihad', is a sacred duty for all Muslims to perform, by any support or means available to them. Jihad is not, as asserted recently by apologists in the West a "spiritual struggle", but a Holocaust of non-Muslims.

The Power Of Demonization

 

Kenny Pierce continues from his ATB post on The Black Pleasure Of Hatred And Cultural Provincialism:

"From debate on the Senate floor about interrogation tactics at Guantanamo:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report: On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.   -- Senator Dick Durbin

I recently wrote a post expressing my concern about the prevalence of hate-speech and hate-rhetoric in modern American politics, in which I used Senator Durbin's demonization of the Guantanamo interrogators as an example of objectionable rhetoric. And a good friend of mine, who happens, like Durbin, to detest Dubya and to consider Guantanamo to be an indelible stain on our national honor, had a response that interested me very much. She couldn't understand why I would have a problem with Durbin's rhetoric; well, okay. But then, even more interestingly, she in the very same conversation complained about conservatives' referring to liberals as "unpatriotic" and as "aiding and abetting the enemy." That is to say, she thinks that sometimes it's okay to demonize, and sometimes it isn't, though she's vague as to how one is supposed to tell what is good demonization and what is bad demonization.

Fairly deep into the conversation she got somewhat plaintive in her frustration over my (to her) incomprehensible take on Durbin's rant:

Why must [Durbin's contention] be put nicely? Why is not this remark evaluated on the basis of the truth that underlies and causes the occasion? Why, Kenny.... why, why, why? :)

The conversation petered out shortly thereafter and we've since moved on to other topics. But the more I think about her question, the more I think it's a question worth a careful and detailed answer. The problem is, there are several reasons to say that responsible people do not, except under exceptional circumstances (if ever), resort to that particular rhetorical tactic. So I think what's called for is a series of posts, each one examining in detail a single reason that demonization is a bad thing, something which we as individuals should not engage in and which we as a culture should not deem socially tolerable. My time constraints being what they are, I may not be able to finish the series (I usually don't manage to finish long series of this nature, because the family-of-eleven things, and the job-that's-demanding-enough-for-me-to-be-paid-enough-to-support-a-family-of-eleven things, tend to rise up and derail me). But I can at least make a start, beginning with what I think is most important; and perhaps other people can pick up the baton when I wind up dropping it.

The Democratic Congress' Fatal Self-Deception

 

I give you my dear friend Kenny Pierce with yet another gem:

"If Fred Thompson doesn't have all the other Presidential pretenders quaking in their boots -- especially the charmless Hillary -- then they're way too bloody stupid to be running the country. His take-down of Michael Moore was masterful in about half a dozen different ways.

Meanwhile the Democratic Congress continues on its suicidal path toward the destruction of its own party. I can't remember in which on-line forum I said, shortly after the mid-term elections, that I thought the Democrats' apparent success would turn out to be a disaster for them, and that Hillary's candidacy had just taken a major hit. My reasoning was that the Congress, being rendered stupid by their hatred of Dubya, would take entirely the wrong lesson from those elections, and would proceed to spend the next two years making it absolutely clear that no matter how bad an idea it is to give Republicans power, giving Democrats power is, mirabilu dictu, an EVEN WORSE idea.

And the Democrats are playing out the script exactly as written.

See, when those elections came in, suddenly everywhere you turned the Democrats were talking about their "mandate," and specifically they were claiming that they had a mandate "to end the war." Now, let's set aside the fact that the Congressional elections were not, in fact, a referendum on the war, and that the Constitution (which the Dubya-terrified insist that Dubya wishes to undermine) certainly does not say that if the opposition party wins control of Congress during a war, then Congress is authorized to usurp the power and function of the executive branch. (When you hear a Democrat complaining about Dubya's attempts to behave un-Constitutionally, ask them if they object to Nancy Pelosi's blatant attempts to pursue a shadow foreign policy in direct opposition to and subversion of the President's foreign policy. Nobody who supports what Pelosi did has any business pretending that it's Constitutional checks and balances they're out to defend.) Let's pretend for the sake of argument that the only issue that anybody in America took into account in casting their Congressional vote this last time around, was the war. What, then, is the real mandate?

I'll tell you what it is. The mandate is not to stop waging the war. The mandate is to stop screwing around getting nothing accomplished like Bush and Rumsfeld and Co. have spent the last four years s-a-g-n-a. The American people thought that if Bush was allowed to just keep on muddling along and pretending that Rumsfeld was right and you could conquer the world with six National Guardsman, a K-9 unit, and a bunch of high-tech equipment, then we'd continue right on with the slow bleed of Iraq and never get anywhere.

The Black Pleasure Of Hatred And Cultural Provincialism

 

I give you my great friend and mentor Kenny Pierce:

"Usenet veterans are familiar with the common rule, "Whoever mentions Nazis or Hitler first, automatically loses the argument." My own feeling has always been that the only way that that rule could possibly be valid, would be if you had a bunch of people in your discussion who weren't worth talking to anyway -- which, I have to admit, does after all describe a great many Web "discussions."

See, there are two different ways in which I can introduce a comparison to Hitler. In the first, the guy I'm talking to has just embraced a position that seems to me to be more or less the same thing in principle as that of Hitler or Stalin. But I know perfectly well that the guy sitting across the cyberspace table from me is a nice guy who would be appalled at the thought of committing genocide. I therefore point out that his position is very similar to a Nazi position, precisely so that he can explain to me wherein lies the difference. In short, when I say, "It seems to me that you're taking a position that's not significantly different from that of the Nazis," the point is to give my friend the opportunity to say, "Oh, well, I see where you're coming from with that, but you're missing something: here's how my position is different from Hitler's." The analogy is directed at exploring his position, with which I strongly disagree but which I suspect I may not fully understand; and there is not the slightest question of any disrespect of his character.

But the other reason to introduce a comparison to Hitler, is precisely in order to attack my opponent's character as a human being -- to show not that he is intellectually wrong, but to prove that he is morally contemptible. In this form, when I say, "You're just like the Nazis," the point is not to give my opponent the opportunity to clear up a misunderstanding on my part. It is a vicious personal attack. The point is not to introduce understanding, but to inflame passions. The point is not to enhance the discussion, but to demolish all hope of the discussion's ever yielding fruit. And when somebody starts throwing Hitler around in that fashion, then the discussion is indeed over; and the question of which person is correct on the original issue pales in importance, compared to what you have just learned about the character of the Hitler-mongerer. For a vicious character is a far worse thing than a false belief.

Sunday's On It's Way

'The Resurrection' (detail) by El Greco 1596-1600, Museo del Prado, Madrid

 

Written for ATB by my dear friend Kenny Pierce

On Easter, Christians celebrate what C. S. Lewis called, The Grand Miracle, the one single event in human history that changes the meaning of the entire human story in general and our own personal story as well. A lifetime isn't enough to exhaust the contemplation of Easter. All you can do each year is contemplate what Easter will have to teach you this time around.

I think it a particularly great challenge to attempt to explain to people who aren't Christians, what it is that Christians see in Easter particularly since the Christian response to Easter is so highly individual, given the richness of the Myth That Really Happened. So I thought that I would take a shot at explaining to an imaginary audience composed of interested and intelligent, but unbelieving, imaginary friends one of the odd ways in which I think Easter looks different when you're seeing it from the other side, as it were. This is very far from the most important thing to understand about Easter. But it's interesting, I think, in its own quirky way, and it's almost certainly something that hasn't occurred to you if you are not yourself a Christian.

God is, of course, the Author of the human story, the Dramatist who created this world that famously is all a stage. Most monotheists would agree with that, at least in some sense. Now, Easter tells us what kind of story God is writing it is a mystery novel and a thriller and a romance all rolled into one, but most especially it's the kind of novel where you can't tell what's going to happen next. It turns out that the infinite God is not unlike M. Night Shyamalan the moment when the Resurrection happened is exactly like the moment the audience realizes that Malcolm is himself dead, only more so. The second time through The Sixth Sense the entire story is different from the first time you watched it, because you know the great central secret: Malcolm is dead. And for Christians, the second time through the story, as it were whether it is the story of one's own life and apparently pointless sufferings, or the New Testament story of the disciples cluelessly tagging along behind Jesus without ever figuring out what he was talking about, or even the second time through the Old Testament the second time through, the entire story is transformed, because you know the great central secret: Jesus is alive.

What Matters More

"Blind Leading The Blind III" by Peter Howson 1991, Private Collection, London

 

Yesterday morning we woke up to Senator Jo Lieberman's probing question: "What matters more to us, the real fight over there, or the political fight over here?"

Well, as to option-A, fair question, providing of course you have consensus that we are still fighting over there.

Problem is, most Democrats -- and increasingly poll-weary Republicans -- have bought into their own propaganda that the war is already lost; all that is left to do is exercise damage control on the way back home.

Leading us swiftly to option-B: No one wants to be associated with a loss, especially not with a lost war and all the blame that follows in tow.

So, are we really witnessing a 'political fight over here'?

I think not. We are much more treated to front-row seats in an unfolding blame-game of epic proportions.

This kind of constellation brings out the worst in most politicians as they prepare the fight for survival;  as they prepare for a prolonged period of musical chairs.

The sad consequence is an ironic convergence of bad choices made. Ironic, because the resulting actions by both Democrats and Republicans increasingly resemble Gore Vidal's post-Watergate gloom 30 years ago.

The Jury Is Out

 

I am baaack!

This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle.

President Bush wryly hit the nail on the head when he was referring to Lt. Gen David Petraeus as the 'new commander'.

Only last week did the Senate unanimously confirm General Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, full well knowing that his appointment "marks the real start of the new US strategy in Iraq, but is also seen as a last chance to turn things around".

And the new US strategy is what? Is it just more troops -- 21,500 extra U.S. troops, to be precise? Does it mean, that these extra "troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys", as critics immediately after the President's State of the Union address had us believe?

Of course not.

Restoring Humility To Our National Psyche In The Face Of Nihilism (Repeat)

 

Preparing for travel, hence not much time for blogging right now, I am re-posting something I wrote last year, on a subject dear to me, as relevant today as it was when I first thrashed it out on my keyboard.

Victor Davis Hanson has a fine essay out called "The Prison of the Present".

I rarely disagree with him and on his many brilliant insights, especially when put so expertly in historical context, as Hanson has again succeeded to do.

The question "..aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse?.." leads to very relevant historical comparisons, which do not seek to "..excuse present mistakes by citing worse ones from the past--or to suggest that all wars are always the same. Much less should history's examples be used to stifle necessary contemporary criticism that alone leads to remedy."

Instead, Hanson believes that "..knowledge of the capricious nature of wars of the past can restore a little humility to our national psyche":

We need it. Ours is the first generation of Americans that thinks it can demand perfection in war. Our present leisure, wealth, and high technology fool us into thinking that we are demi-gods always be able to trump both human and natural disasters. Accordingly, we become frustrated that we cannot master every wartime obstacle, as we seem otherwise to be able to do with computers or cosmetic surgery. Then, without any benchmarks of comparison from the past, we despair that our actions are failed because they are not perfect.

The key question to me, one which is constantly on my mind these days, is the one concerning the level of the current collective "Confidence" in ourselves as a Nation and whether such confidence or the lack of it, if this is indeed the case, lies at the heart of the acrimonious divide which has beset our nation in the face of the war on terror.

Nuclear Communist Islamofascism

'Winter Landscape with Church' by Caspar David Friedrich 1811, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

 

'Nuclear Communist Islamofascism' -- you think I am joking, just wait...

During his recent trip to Iran, the German head of the opposition Green party faction, Fritz Kuhn, confirmed how the leading thugs of the Mullahcracy had been caught by surprise after Russia and China supported UNSC Resolution 1737.

On the contrary, they had hoped to isolate the U.S. by splitting away Russia and China, and, with a bit of luck, even most of Europe. What they didn't expect, was the unanimous vote against them.

I don't share many convictions with Fritz Kuhn of the Green party -- bloody champagne communists, the lot of them, if you ask me -- but because the Mullahs know the Green party to be thoroughbred appeasers, because they trust them not to interfere, they'll drop their guard on occasions lower, thus revealing more, than intended. And the likes of Kuhn, or John-America-is-a-"pariah"-Kerry, never seem to disappoint. Kuhn goes out of his way to explain to his Iranian counterparts, all that is needed is to tone down the rhetoric; that they should understand, eventually Israel will connect such rhetoric with the 'Atomfrage' ('atomic question' - some question, yeah right...), "...you know, what would happen, if someone who talks so aggressively, has the atomic bomb at his disposal...That's the thing, you guys in Iran have to understand, that there is a connection...". Wow, really? Now that you are telling me.... My word!

On the other hand, we have the Supreme Thug-In-Chief Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei blinding us with breathtaking logic: American forces plant the bombs in order to create the appearance of sectarian violence. "They are well familiar with the secrets of their seditious job. They know how to provoke Sunnis against Shiites and how to incite Shiites against Sunnis. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran the colonialists intensified their efforts."

Faces Of Evil

"Martyrdom of St Erasmus" by Dieric Bouts the Elder ca.1458, Sankt Peterskerk, Louvain

 

Well, if dealing with naughty 'Hubby Bubba' is all Hillary is proposing to offer as credentials to deal with evil men, one poster child, Hossein Shariatmadari, should pop the cork.

And only days after the first annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, it is of particular importance to put a face to evil whenever possible, hence the link to Hossein's picture from Holy Crime's list of Iran's 'Most Wanted' -- don't miss the Mullahcracy's panoptic who's who of butchers and henchmen.

You remember my expose on Iran's current godfather of evil, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, who trumped his Holocaust denial with the recent claim that Hitler was Jewish and the founder of Israel -- all of course in the interest to further discredit the State of Israel in preparation for its destruction.

So, what sets Hossein Shariatmadari apart? Not surprisingly, he joins Mohammad-Ali Ramin as a member of a neo-fundamentalist think tank, another who's who of evil; all are of course sworn supporters of Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad and Supreme-Thug-In-Chief Ali Khamenei -- recently voted the 'least popular of Iranian leaders', just over 1%....

Also, Hossein is busy spreading the Holocaust denial propaganda via the Iranian daily, Kayhan, where he is Editor and General Manager of the Kayhan Institute and Publishing Company or, according to the Official News Agency of the Islamic Republic (IRNA), the head of the 'Media Mafia' -- it's a must read, granting us a rare insight as to the extend to which the Mullahcracy have fashioned their entire infrastructure after that of the Nazis.

Shari'a And Human Rights

 

So, what do the Muslims have to say about that?

Emran Qureshi is a journalist and an expert on Islam and human rights. He is currently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. Emran ought to know, and it seems he does:

The Sharia law, as is practiced in many Muslim countries today, is clearly incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today Sharia is a source of injustice that profanes Islam and shames Muslims who adhere to a compassionate and merciful interpretation of their faith. [...]

Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent Islamic intellectual reformer in the United States, has observed of contemporary Islamist intellectuals "Instead of Islam being a moral vision given to humanity, it becomes constructed into the antithesis of the West. In the world constructed by these groups, there is no Islam; there is only opposition to the West." This is sadly true.

These corrosive ideas do not spring from a vacuum. They arise instead from impoverished Salafi and Wahhabi discourses, which are corroding Islam from within. There is a straight line between the Salafi/Wahhabi interpretations - a puritanical, anti-rationalist, misogynistic Islam with a punitive, intolerant Sharia - and the violence, which now bloodstains our faith.

Those who challenge this moral and ethical perversion of our faith are instead attacked as heretics as we can witness in Saudi-Arabia.

These are excerpts from Emran's opening letter, starting a discourse in June and August 2004 (note, this is pre-Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad, who since Summer 2005 kindly revealed to the West, what a carefully orchestrated 'moderate' Mullahcracy had been thinking and planning all along) between Emran and a lady in Cairo by the name of Heba Raouf Ezzat. Heba teaches political theory at the Department of Political Science, Cairo University and is co-ordinator of the Civil Society Program at the Center for Political Research and Studies at Cairo University as well as editor of the Global Civil Society Yearbook. She also works as womens' rights activist.

And what do we get? Nothing but empty rhetoric and platitudes from our 'womens' rights activist' in Cairo. Am I glad, that dear Heba hasn't been speaking out for my rights of late.

I find this exchange interesting, because only two and a half years later, we have learned, that Emran is unfortunately incorrect to limit all of Islam's ills to Salafi and Wahhabi Muslims; that Iran's Shia Mullahs are just as passionately murdering in the name of Allah and Shari'a laws.

He is however correct in his assessment, when he says: "I sadly think that a gentler Sharia is unlikely to emerge since today we are presented with the anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and moral depravity of these self-appointed Salafi guardians of Sharia."

Read the correspondence in its entirety.

No Union In The States

'St George Fighting the Dragon' by Pieter Pauwel Rubens, ca.1606-10 Museo del Prado, Madrid

 

"OK, let's do it" were the President's starting words to Nancy Pelosi, moments before the official SOTU speech began.

Do what? Plenty:

The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security … we must.

But how?

Shortly after 9-11, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted, that western diplomacy, including all of UN Security Council posturing, couldn't even touch a single nerve of the growing threat of so called Islamic radicalism. Both men realized, that the number one priority was to prevent a further escalation of jihadist attacks; that they had no choice but to lead the charge to alter one particular, theretofore well established perception of the West among the Islamofascists, namely that the West is militarily impotent. 

Consequently, both men understood that military action was unavoidable and necessary, because it was, what the murdering thugs feared the most, but expected the least -- and thanks largely to our opposition's irresponsible, because politically motivated, defeatist rhetoric, this sense remains unchanged today among all members of the Iranian Mullahcracy, thus in effect prolonging the conflict.

And therefore, irrespective of all successes and mistakes combined, something else was unavoidable and equally necessary, nay, critical for the survival of the enemy: Bloody resistance against the threat of a secular society allied with the Great Satan in the West. The President summed it up for us:

The Big Push - To Take America Down A Peg Or Two

"The Survivor" by George Grosz 1944, Private Collection

 

Even award winning historians sometimes can't resist the allure of contortionist acrobatics. I am of course speaking metaphorically as I am referring to Adam Hochschild's extraordinary efforts to connect National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's "the big push" quote to 600,000 killed soldiers with the disastrous "The Big Push" campaign during the 1916 Battle of Somme.

Rarely have we been treated to such spurious foundation, which in a nutshell depend solely on the vivid description of trenched warfare in "muddy, shell-pocketed wasteland" during WW-I and an isolated quip by retired US Army Lieutenant-General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, saying: "It's like finding yourself in a hole and then digging deeper."

That's it. That's all that connects the horrors of World War I with tackling the murdering Islamofascists in Iraq; an analogy in itself, conjuring up the image of trenched warfare and, voilà, we have the headline: "Why the 'big push' sounds horribly familiar".

If we needed more evidence that those surrounding US President George W Bush have a tin ear for the lessons of history, it came this month when National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley referred to increasing the number of US troops in Iraq as "the big push" that would bring victory closer.

"The Big Push" is a phrase that came into the language with another troop surge that was supposed to bring another war to victory. For months beforehand, the Big Push was how British cabinet ministers, propagandists, generals, and foot soldiers talked about the 1916 Battle of the Somme.

I am no longer surprised by the bold-faced audacity, with which the left attempts to discredit all and every efforts to defeat acknowledged evil in the form of proxy terrorists from Iran and Syria, hell-bent to bring death and destruction to our way of life; irrespective whether Democrat or Republican, to them we are all Infidel scum.

But this contortion to fabricate a connection between Hadley's "the big push" and WW-I, just to be able to deliver the opening broadside of having a 'tin ear for lessons of history', is simply pathetic.

None of that alters the fact, that the Administration is facing growing opposition against the 'surge' even from within Republican ranks -- and I hesitate a guess, the President's SOTU address in a few hours time isn't going to change that -- but, at least the arguments are perfectly transparent in so far as they are politically motivated or, as Dean Barnett @ Hugh Hewitt explains, motivated by taking the U.S. down a peg or two.

Danger And Opportunity

 

"Our two revolutions are at heart the same", Chavez said, comparing Iran's overthrow of the Shah with his self-styled socialist movement.

Such statements always intrigue me.

Could Chavez really be so ignorant and not only fail to grasp the difference, but the sheer enormity of it? Or does he so much like the sound of a catchy phrase, cheerfully continuing the every day practice of endlessly reciting socialistic slogans, in the perpetual effort to placate the mostly uneducated poor and thus condemning them to remain just so? Is it possible, that he doesn't know any better? Or does he choose to ignore the Mullahcracy's all-important emphasis on it being an Islamic revolution; that they couldn't care less about all the worldly and material promises inherent in the western ideology of 'revolutions'.

Back in the dusty streets of Tehran, critics are quick to attack the obvious:

What are our bounds with Venezuela, Nicaragua or Ecuador and Bolivia? Are we neighbors? Do we share the same faith?

Of course not. Chavez is just another Infidel; yes, one of use temporarily, but Infidel none the less. Much in the same vain as Infidel members of the MSM are temporarily praised when promoting Islamofascist propaganda. Case in point is BBC's dramatization of Thug-In-Chief's visit to South America:

"With his eyes fixed firmly on the Middle East, the last thing President Bush wants is another hostile diplomatic front opening up in his own backyard. But with the arrival of the Iranian president in the region, that is exactly what some commentators are predicting", reported the BBC’s Latin America correspondent, adding that, "The most worrying alliance for Washington is that being forged between Iran and Venezuela".

Most worrying indeed... especially as our Thug-In-Chief is most likely promising nukes to each and every one who will support his struggle against all of those nasty nations trying to stop him from fulfilling his promise of a nuclear Holocaust. What a dream scenario: the US surrounded by hostile nuclear powers, giving hell to the great Satan in the North. That ought to buy our Thug-In-Chief some time to sort things out in the Middle East - or so he hopes.

But why worry? The Haute Couture shows in Paris are the biggest ever with almost double the designers parading before overcrowded catwalks. Our love for the monarchy is alive and well, judging by Dame Helen Mirren's success at the Golden Globe awards; a success likely repeated at the Oscars.

Failure Is Not An Option

'The Crucifixion (detail)' by Matthias Grünewald ca. 1515, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar

 

"Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to destroy our way of life." President Bush, Wednesday, January 10 2007.

Can you say it anymore clearly than that? No, of course you can't. But who is listening?

Nobody!

To those, who realize the need for us to remain in Iraq in order to push back at the Islamofascists, the President is preaching to the already converted. And according to the ostriches among us, he merely continues with his 'fear/war-mongering' and 'sable-rattling' so as to divert attention away from the no longer so secret agenda of turning the United States of America into a fascist dictatorship, or, depending on whether our ostrich got up on the wrong side of the bed, into a evangelical theocracy.

So, no mileage there. Period.

And period again. That's the problem. No matter the eloquence, no matter how persuasive the logic and arguments, the opposition has long abandoned any interest in reason. Were it not so, the safety of unconditional hatred would have to be abandoned, which is of course much too inconvenient, for it is tantamount to popping out the pacifier from a baby's mouth.

The alternative?

Where Was The Outrage?

'The Return of the Prodigal Son' by Rembrandt ca. 1669, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

 

A dear friend in New York sends me this in an e-mail:

"The last few days’ news coverage in Europe of the pending and then the actual execution of Saddam Hussein has been bewildering. It has removed some of the satisfaction of justice finally being done.  It is unbelievable how the “world” now in a reinvigorated fashion is calling for the ban of the death penalty. Where were these cries when Saddam Hussein, apart from all his well documented atrocities, regularly had innocent people condemned to death and executed by his favorite method – by hanging. But Saddam hanged people publicly letting the poor victims’ bodies remain hung for hours for public display and “games”. Where was the outrage by the world? Where was the outrage of the world when 9 innocent Jews were hung in a public spectacle accused of spying for Israel and where their through the wall air condition units were deemed to be secret radio transmitters? Nothing of what was allowed Saddam Hussein, was ever afforded to his innocent victims – Christians, Jews, Kurds and Shiites.

CNN and the International Herald Tribune have actually inferred that the US may be behind the execution, the trial was unfair, the US should never have handed Saddam over, life imprisonment would have been a crueler sentence, he will be more dangerous dead than alive, he will become a celebrated martyr in the Islamic world for standing up to America, the violence in Iraq will increase dramatically, the world will be outraged and broadly condemn the execution etc., etc. Each statement is ludicrous and irresponsible. It doesn’t only show bias against the US, clumsy and cheap flirtation with the Arab world, but it demonstrates ignorance, superficiality, total lack of responsibility and no attempt to uphold the most basic standards of journalism.

Blind Justice (New Year's Thread)

 

Saddam is dead, but our Thug-In-Chief is very much alive, albeit politically wounded.

I don't know why the news about Saddam's hanging fails to stir any emotion in me. Well, other than being incensed by the reaction from the left. Thanks to Jim @ Gateway Pundit for the display of liberal bullshit, such as this classic from Huffington Post

Saddam indeed was a brutal dictator.

The fact that atrocities worse than those caused by him are now going on during the occupation, should make the Bush administration feel ashamed that they have made Saddam's brutal dictatorship look like a walk in the park.

I believe that every execution is controversial; Hussein's probably the least of all in terms of accumulated guilt -- he certainly deserved to be put to death by his people.

Iran's Middle Finger Is Firmly Up

 

Ahem, this is no surprise to anyone, least of all ATB readers, who had a heads up nudge well ahead of time.

Well, I don't know what the appeasing, rabid anti-Semite ElBaradei was playing at, but the astonishing admission of one of Iran's top officials, that they were playing games with the IAEA so as to gain more time to complete their true nuclear ambitions, namely the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, as I revealed exclusively ahead of the MSM already in February, is something that ElBaradei certainly cannot deny anymore. I have never trusted that man, and his image as the Director General caught sleeping at the wheel grows more suspicious every day.

But, alas nothing. And certainly not at the seemingly perpetual stage of endless so called 'diplomatic wrangling', better described as impotent hand wringing; of utterly diluted UN sanctions, which Iran knows won't bite -- after all, the MSM has made it abundantly clear that any possibility of military strikes against Iran has completely evaporated, so why care about sanctions without any stick attached. All that is left, is a UN, hell bent on pursuing their usual 'stop or I'll say stop again' strategy.

Demonizing Christmas....Has Anything Changed?

 

I wrote this post at this time last year, and I am curious my gentle readers...has anything changed? My friend Francis Porretto, whose blood pressure rises at the mention of the subject, doesn't seem to think so. The inimitable Ann Althouse points to war on Christmas Chinese style. Meanwhile, see for yourselves...

This is an outrage.

Let me say this out loud and clear: "I am a devout Christian", and whilst I am at it let me proclaim that "I am fiercely pro-Israel". So there you have it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it you rabid anti-Semites, you fanatical Islamofascists, and you militant Jew hating Holocaust deniers.

Now we have that out of the way, we can continue...

'Show Me The Bodies'

"The Head of Medusa" by Pieter Pauwel Rubens c. 1617, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Deborah Lipstadt, the American scholar who coined the term "Holocaust denier" and who has made it her mission to combat the contention that the Holocaust did not happen said:

"What's in the settlement? How many gas chambers would you like me to settle for? What number of Jews killed should I agree to in the letter of apology? You have to stand up for the truth of what happened."

And stand up and shout out, 'Holocaust deniers' are rabid anti-Semites, or to put it more accurately, they are racists and liars.

Released and unfortunately returning David Irving, serves as a poster child for the mindset and attitude of all those who hate Jews and who prefer for their own ideological reasons to "persistently and deliberately misrepresent and manipulate historical evidence".

Our very own Mac Brachman, who most of you know to be a frequent and valued commenter here @ ATB, was recently rightfully exasperated in the face of such determined vigor to defile the Holocaust Remembrance; apart from feeling sick to the stomach, the only thing left is to name and shame, to cut right to the chase whenever we encounter such mindless or deliberate evil.

There is only ever one purpose behind all of this: To spread hatred, animosity and envy against Jews.

No other motivation could possibly drive these perfidious proponents. And thanks to Thug-In-Chief Ahmadinejad and his pet conference, the true intentions and motivations in all their ugliness have once and for all been revealed for all to see.

"Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine,"

Oh really? Not quite enough rabid anti-Semitism it would seem for Carter adoring Liberals, who rather busy themselves to minimize the Holocaust Deniers' Conference as a harmless jibe at the West in response to Europe's mixed reaction to the Mohammed cartoons - our Thug-In-Chief expected of course the relentless persecution and prosecution of the cartoonists and, as Danish statutes prohibit the death penalty, the deportation of said offenders to Iran, where the just execution could have been swiftly meted out.

Interesting to note that Ahmadinejad's right hand man, Mohammad-Ali Ramin, has been appointed Secretary General to the newly formed 'World Foundation for Holocaust Studies'. I wrote about him extensively earlier this year in my article The Angel of Death (check it again if you have time) This is a dangerous man we should all be watching very carefully. Mohammad-Ali Ramin who is what Joseph Goebbels was to Hitler, appears moderate, calm and reasonable, yet his views are the same as those that led without fail to the biggest atrocities and genocidal crimes committed by man-kind.

A World Apart

 

Dave Bailey over at FaithFreedom shares with us today his gradual path to the realization, that "despite oft-repeated claims to the contrary, the Koran was definitely not a book of peace".

One week before Christmas, surrounded by the lovely sights and sounds of the Advent season, Bailey's reminder of why most Muslims hate us, seems particularly far removed. But our boys and girls in Iraq face this bigoted hatred every day as they miss their families and loved ones especially badly at this time of the year. So let us 'tune-in', as it were, before we send our prayer and thoughts:

Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2007

"Tête Raphaëlesque éclatée (Exploding Raphaelesque Head)" by Salvador Dali 1951

 

Gay Patriot, "Blogcasting from the worldwide headquarters of the not-so-vast gay right wing conspiracy" and a Pajamas Media contributor, is hosting the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva 2007 Award. I am thrilled to have been nominated, and honored to be in the company of such incredible icons:

Ann Althouse
The Anchoress
Little Miss Attila
Tammy Bruce
Dymphna of Gates of Vienna
e-Claire
Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham
Sondra K of Knowledge is Power
National Review Online's K-Lo (Kathryn Jean Lopez)
Michelle Malkin
Virginia Postrel of Dynamist Blog
Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic

Voting takes place every day until December 24th, when there is a final round with the top four candidates. So vote now!

Thank you to my friend Michael van der Galien @ The Moderate Voice for the endorsement, my Blogfather Hugh Hewitt for the mention, and the ever gracious Tammy Bruce for the incredible compliment.

UPDATE CHRISTMAS DAY: The final round is now thrashed out between the four top Divas only, namely Ann Althouse, who is soaring way ahead of the rest, Michelle Malkin firmly in second, and Mary Katherine Ham and Sondra K in third and fourth place respectively. Good luck girls, or should I say, Divas!

Politicizing 'An Inconvenient Truth' (Repeat)

"St Roch Asking the Virgin Mary to Heal Victims of the Plague" by Jacques-Louis David 1780, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille

 

I received an e-mail this morning from Alex Muchow @ Across The Board, a new reader of ATB, who is passionate about the subject of global warming: "The crisis that the earth faces is real, and the evidence that suggests that humans are responsible for global warming is indubitable and overwhelming. I think it is very important that we make this issue known to the world. Very important indeed."

Alex panged my conscience and prompted me to re-post below what I wrote a few months back, and re-visit this important subject once again, the relevance of which cannot possibly be forever stained by the mere fact that Al 'Truthiness' Gore seems to have monopolized the subject and given it the all too evident liberal spin. As I say below: "Think of Gore and his message what you will, the issue is far bigger than that." And it is.

Are we too blasée? Do Republicans not care for the environment? Are we placing partisan ideology before the healthy future of our children?

These and a flurry of related questions that have been bugging me over the last few days since Vice President Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" hit the silver screen, giving his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming a decisive push.

Let me be upfront and tell you outright, that I have not been able to reach any halfway satisfactory let alone conclusive answers to these fundamental questions. How could I.

Calling us "a renegade band of rightwing extremists", didn't help shoring up sympathies for his cause. But neither did Bill Gray's sensationalist and holy unrelated comparison, "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews", add any credibility to his claim that Global warming is a hoax.

So what is a blogger to do? Take up the study of climatology and question the research and data hurled back and forth between scientists of both camps, with the media pitching for a position of their own? I don't think so...

The Race For Souls (Weekend Thread)

'The Adoration of the Name of Jesus' by El Greco 1578-80, National Gallery, London

 

The term, 'Southern Christians' needs our attention and Spengler's reminder of Philip Jenkins' fascinating book, 'The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South' is indeed timely. (You must read the entire article, and in particular the second page)

It is timely, because in these foreboding times, clarity of vision is of supreme importance, not least so as to overcome any feeling of despair, but instead, to refocus on how each and everyone of us can do his or her best to forge a better world for our children.

Programs, like the series at the Carnegie Council called 'The Resurgence of Religion in Politics', help us recapture the all important strategic overview, especially, when we are granted a rare understanding of the grand motivator, which is driving key strategic decisions of foe and friend alike:

The fact is, that the race for souls in the most populous parts of the world is won by Christianity.