(The following is a compressed and adapted version partly of Dr. Matthias Kuentzel's writings on the Nazi origins of Islamism and Arab Nationalist Anti-semitism. Sources for it can be located here, here, here, here, here and here)

Dr. Kuntzel's book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 is well worth reading




Despite common misconceptions, Islamism was born not during the 1960s but during the 1930s. Its rise was inspired not by the failure of Nasserism but by the rise of Fascism and of Nazism.

It was the Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt, that established Islamism as a mass movement. The significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas.

The starting shot for this campaign, which established the Brotherhood as an antisemitic mass movement, was fired by a rebellion in Palestine directed against Jewish immigration and initiated by the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The Brotherhood organized mass demonstrations in Egyptian cities under the slogans "Down With the Jews!" and "Jews Get Out of Egypt and Palestine!"

“This burgeoning Islamist movement was subsidized with German funds,” Küntzel writes. “These contributions enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to set up a printing plant with 24 employees and use the most up-to-date propaganda methods.” The Muslim Brotherhood, Küntzel goes on, was a crucial distributor of Arabic translations of “Mein Kampf” and the “Protocols.” Across the Arab world, he states, Nazi methods and ideology whipped up anti-Zionist fervor, and the effects of this concerted campaign are still being felt today.

Their Jew-hatred was also inspired by Nazi influences: Leaflets called for a boycott of Jewish goods and Jewish shops, and the Brotherhood's newspaper, al-Nadhir, carried a regular column on "The Danger of the Jews of Egypt," which published the names and addresses of Jewish businessmen and allegedly Jewish newspaper publishers all over the world, attributing every evil, from communism to brothels, to the "Jewish danger."

The Brotherhood's campaign used not only Nazi-like patterns of action and slogans but also German funding. As the historian Brynjar Lia recounts in his monograph on the Brotherhood, "Documents seized in the flat of Wilhelm Stellbogen, the Director of the German News Agency affiliated to the German Legation in Cairo, show that prior to October 1939 the Muslim Brothers received subsidies from this organization.

Nowhere, however, had the hatred against Jews become more deeply entrenched than in Egypt where the Muslim Brothers called on the Palestinians to kill the Nashashibis in the name of God and who mobilized the masses in support of the Mufti against Jews.

The Mufti's so-called "Arab Revolt" took place against the background of the swastika: Arab leaflets and signs on walls were prominently marked with this Nazi symbol; the youth organization of the Mufti´s political party paraded as "Nazi-scouts", and Arab children greeted each other with the Nazi salute. Those who had to pass through the rebellious quarters of Palestine attached a flag bearing the swastika to their vehicles so as to insure protection against assaults by the Mufti's volunteers.

It was not until May 8, 1945, however, that the ideological approach between the Mufti, the Muslim Brothers and the Nazis reached its peak. This became obvious as early as November 1945. During this very month, the Muslim Brothers committed the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in all of Egypt´s history: The core of antisemitism had thus begun to shift from Germany to the Arab world. On the anniversary of the Balfour-declaration, demonstrators rampaged the Jewish quarters of Cairo. They plundered houses and shops, attacked non-Muslims, devastated the synagogues and then set them on fire. Six people were killed, several hundred more were injured.

Substitute religious for racial purity, the idealized ummah of the rule of the four righteous caliphs of the mid-7th century for the mythical Aryan "Volksgemeinschaft", and most ideological and organizational precepts of Nazism laid out by chief theoretician Alfred Rosenberg in his work The Myth of the 20th Century and by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, and later put into practice, are in all essential respects identical to the precepts of the Muslim Brotherhood after its initial phase as a group promoting spiritual and moral reform. This ranges from radical rejection of "decadent" Western political and economic liberalism (instead embracing the "leadership principle" and corporatist organization of the economy) to endorsement of the use of terror and assassinations to seize and hold state power, and all the way to concoction of fantastical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories linking international plutocratic finance to Freemasonry, Zionism and all-encompassing Jewish world control.

Not surprisingly then, as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and '40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini - incidentally the later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young firebrand by the name of Yasser Arafat.

A central role in the propaganda offensive was played by a Nazi wireless station, now almost totally forgotten. Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics a village called Zeesen, located to the south of Berlin, had been home to what was at the time the world’s most powerful short-wave radio transmitter. Between April 1939 and April 1945, Radio Zeesen reached out to the illiterate Muslim masses through daily Arabic programmes, which also went out in Persian and Turkish. At that time listening to the radio in the Arab world took place primarily in public squares or bazaars and coffee houses. No other station was more popular than this Nazi Zeesen service, which skilfully mingled antisemitic propaganda with quotations from the Koran and Arabic music. The Second World War allies were presented as lackeys of the Jews and the picture of the "United Jewish Nations" drummed into the audience. At the same time, the Jews were attacked as the worst enemies of Islam: "The Jew since the time of Muhammad has never been a friend of the Muslim, the Jew is the enemy and it pleases Allah to kill him".

One of its regular listeners was a certain Ruhollah Khomeini. When in the winter of 1938 the 36-year-old Khomeini returned to the Iranian city of Qom from Iraq he “had brought with him a radio receiver set made by the British company Pye ... The radio proved a good buy… Many mullahs would gather at his home, often on the terrace, in the evenings to listen to Radio Berlin and the BBC”, writes his biographer Amir Taheri.

Even the German consulate in Tehran was surprised by the success of this propaganda. “Throughout the country spiritual leaders are coming out and saying ‘that the twelfth Imam has been sent into the world by God in the form of Adolf Hitler’” we learn from a report to Berlin in February 1941. So, “without any legation involvement, an increasingly effective form of propaganda has arisen, which sees the Führer and Germany as the answer to every prayer… One way to promote this trend is sharply to emphasize Muhammad’s struggle against the Jews in the olden days and that of the Führer today.“

While Khomeini was not a follower of Hitler, those years may well have shaped his anti-Jewish attitudes which in turn would later shape the attitudes of his most ardent follower Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In November 1945, just half a year after the end of the Third Reich, the Muslim Brothers carried out the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in Egypt's history, when demonstrators penetrated the Jewish quarters of Cairo on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. They ransacked houses and shops, attacked non-Muslims, and torched the synagogues. Six people were killed, and some hundred more injured. A few weeks later the Islamists' newspapers "turned to a frontal attack against the Egyptian Jews, slandering them as Zionists, Communists, capitalists and bloodsuckers, as pimps and merchants of war, or in general, as subversive elements within all states and societies,"

In the following decades, large print-runs of the most infamous libel of the Jews, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were published at the behest of two well-known former members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.

While the conflict between Zionism and anti-Zionism appeared on the surface to be about land, it concealed within it a far bigger conflict, over the question of how to relate to modernity. While the modernisers as a rule sought compromise with the Zionists, the Islamists denounced any attempt to reach an understanding with the Jews as treachery.

Islamism, or fascism with an Islamic face, was born with and of the Muslim Brotherhood. It proved (and improved) its fascist core convictions and practices through collaboration with the Nazis in the run-up to and during World War II. It proved it during the same period through its collaboration with the overtly fascist "Young Egypt" (Misr al-Fatah) movement, founded in October 1933 by lawyer Ahmed Hussein and modeled directly on the Hitler party, complete with paramilitary Green Shirts aping the Nazi Brown Shirts, Nazi salute and literal translations of Nazi slogans. Among its members, Young Egypt counted two promising youngsters and later presidents, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar El-Sadat.

Hassan Al Banna knew that faith, good works and numbers alone do not a political victory make. Thus, modeled on Mussolini's blackshirts (al-Banna much admired "Il Duce" and soul brother "Fuehrer" Adolf Hitler), he set up a paramilitary wing (slogan: "action, obedience, silence", quite superior to the blackshirts' "believe, obey, fight") and a "secret apparatus" (al-jihaz al-sirri) and intelligence arm of al-Ikhwan to handle the dirtier side - terrorist attacks, assassinations, and so on - of the struggle for power.

Under a new, more radical leader, Sayyid Qutb, the al-Ikhwan fight for state power continued and escalated. A mid-1960s recruit was Ayman al-Zawahiri, present number two man of al-Qaeda and the brains of the organization. Osama bin Laden has the money, proven organizational skills, combat experience, and the charisma that can confer the air of wisdom and profundity even on inchoate or trivial utterances and let what's unfathomable appear to be deep in the eyes of his followers. But he's no intellectual. The brains of al-Qaeda and its chief ideologue by most accounts is Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, 51, the organization's number two man and former head of the Egyptian al-Jihad, which was merged with bin Laden's outfit in February 1998 to form the "International Front for Fighting Jews and Crusaders".

The mad notion of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, suppressed in Germany since May 8, 1945, survived and flourished in the political culture of the Arab world. An especially striking example is the charter adopted in 1988 by the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, better known as Hamas.

In the Charter, the Jews are accused of being behind all the shocks of modernity: “They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. (They are) behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.” In addition, they are held responsible for every major catastrophic event in modern history: The Jews "were behind the French Revolution [and] the Communist Revolution. . . . They were behind World War I . . . they were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. . . . There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it. . . . Their plan," states Article 32 of the charter, "is embodied in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."

For example, in the “Letter to the American People” of November 2002, which the report repeatedly cites, bin Laden warns: “The Jews have taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense.” Osama goes on: “Your law is the law of rich and wealthy people. . . . Behind them stand the Jews who control your policies, media and economy.” Yet the report’s authors inexplicably fail to see the significance of these words and the ideology behind them.

The idea of using suicide pilots to obliterate the skyscrapers of Manhattan originated in 1940s Berlin.

“In the latter stages of the war, I never saw Hitler so beside himself as when, as if in a delirium, he was picturing to himself and to us the downfall of New York in towers of flame,” wrote Albert Speer in his diary. “He described the skyscrapers turning into huge burning torches and falling hither and thither, and the reflection of the disintegrating city in the dark sky.”

Not only Hitler’s fantasy but also his plan of action foreshadowed September 11: He envisioned having kamikaze pilots fly light aircraft packed with explosives and with no landing gear into Manhattan skyscrapers. The drawings for the Daimler-Benz Amerikabomber from the spring of 1944 show giant four-engine planes with raised undercarriages for transporting small bombers. The bombers would be released shortly before the planes reached the East Coast, after which the mother plane would return to Europe.

Hitler’s rapture at the thought of Manhattan in flames indicates his underlying motive: not merely to fight a military adversary, but to kill all Jews everywhere. Possessed of the notion that the whole of the Second World War was a struggle against an imaginary Jewish enemy, he deemed “the USA a Jewish state” and New York the center of world Jewry. “Wall Street,” as a popular book published in Munich in 1919 put it, “is, so to speak, the Military Headquarters of Judas. From there his threads radiate out across the entire world.” From 1941 on, Hitler pushed to get the bombers into production, in order to “be able to teach the Jews a lesson in the form of terror attacks on American metropolises.” Towards the end of the war this idea became an obsession.

Some observers claim that political concessions by Israel would be enough to stop anti-Jewish hatemongering within the Arab-Islamic world. They are wrong. For Islamists, the issue at stake is not the welfare of individual Palestinians but the abolition of enlightenment, reason, and individual freedom – achievements whose spread is attributed primarily to the Jews.

The historical record gives the lie to the assumption that Islamic antisemitism is caused by Zionism or Israeli policy. In fact, it is not the escalation of the Middle East conflict that has given rise to antisemitism; it is rather antisemitism that has given rise to the escalation of the Middle East conflict - again and again.

There is a sure way of identifying the real roots of such antisemitism, and that is to look at the current attitude in this part of the world to Hitler and the Nazis. If Germans in Beirut, Damaskus, and Amman are greeted with compliments for Adolf Hitler, this can hardly be Israel’s doing. When Iranian cartoons show Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, what on earth has this to do with Zionism?

When graffiti in Hampstead Garden Suburb combine swastikas with the words “kill all Jews” and “Allah” – what on earth has this to do with Zionism? Our historical excursion has, however, revealed that this combination is in no way accidental. The linkage of “kill all Jews”, “Allah” and the swastika indicates a specific ideology, one that is connected both historically and ideologically with Nazism and needs to be opposed with equal determination.

Those who view the Jews as such kind of global force of evil cannot sincerely criticise Hitler’s Final Solution. Instead they will deny the Holocaust to the outside world while secretly drawing inspiration from it, as a kind of precedent that proves it can be done, that one can murder millions of Jews. Every denial of the Holocaust contains an implicit appeal for its repetition.

The naivety or malice with which the political left has nevertheless yielded to the siren songs of Islamism is therefore frightening. Thus, in May 2006 Noam Chomsky met the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and defended and praised Hezbollah’s insistence on keeping its arms, in defiance of United Nations decisions; Tariq Ramadan, an eloquent Islamist, has been given star treatment at European anti-globalization events; the Muslim Brotherhood’s TV preacher, Sheikh Qaradawi gets invitations from the left-wing Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone; while the Socialist Workers Party have made the strategic decision to ally with a British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Muslim Association of Britain – in building the Stop the War Coalition. Last summer thousands of people were mobilised by this alliance to march through central London chanting “we are all Hezbollah now”.

Of course, a left which brands Israel as abstractly “evil” is not going to take Islamic antisemitism seriously. Demonising Israel entails becoming deaf to antisemitism. Or, as Sigmund Freud put it, “a participant in a delusion will not of course recognise it as such”. 3 comments Permalink Email Post (Backlinks)

The Caliphate vs Multiculturalism

The cult of multiculturalism has been the biggest failure of liberal Western governments in the previous century. It might have survived its many failures however to slowly strangle its host societies had it not been for the emergence of a competing vision against which it is helpless, that of the Caliphate.

In any showdown between a multicultural society against the caliphate, the caliphate will always win among Muslims, simply because a multicultural society is incapable of defending its own existence and must tolerate the proponents of the caliphate.

The problem with multiculturalism and the reason why in the end Muslims and even many non-Muslims will choose a romanticized caliphate over the bleak reality of a multicultural system, is that in the end it stands for nothing. Tolerance of everything really means standing for nothing and embracing all cultures means lacking any culture of your own.

We have long since passed the point of orientalism and reached the stage where people do not value their own culture but only that of others. The culture of Africa, Asia and Native Americans is inherently considered to have more value than anything Europe, American or Jewish. Tolkien insightfully repackaged a national origin myth as fantasy thereby creating an English mythos that would survive and even thrive in a bloodless politically correct future. Most however have not been so lucky.

Multiculturalism is Western culture on a starvation diet. Whether calculatedly or not, it creates a deprivation and a hunger that winds up ultimately being filled by foreign cultures and beliefs. This vacuum of culture and faith, this starvation diet for the mind and the soul, creates an inferiority complex among liberals in the west, a complex that insures hatred for their society and a desire to identify with outsiders, even its enemies.

Browsing through the websites of liberal churches and temples one finds extensive celebrations of other people's religions. Studies of Islam, Buddhism and everything but their own actual faiths. Diversity is the priority in the new salad bar of civilizations. Two hundred Guatemalans emigrating to the United States is met with joy, but if two hundred Irish were to make the same trip, no one would much care. The story of the 55 member black congregation that converted in Cairo, Illinois is all the talk of the press, yet if 55 Jews were to join a synagogue, what Reform synagogue would care or even accept them if they lacked the means. Despite the blatant failures of multiculturalism, in America, Europe and Israel the cry goes up for more diversity.

America has long ago prioritized immigration from the Third World over immigration from the West, leading to a bizarre situation in which the United States takes in hundreds of thousands of people with no job skills and heavy social services needs while hardworking Irish immigrants in New York remain illegal, because their quota is ridiculously small. Meanwhile the actual Ireland is busy transforming itself into the New Ireland, a vision of Ireland that is no longer Irish in order to accommodate the tide of African immigrants. In Israel and America, the key Jewish social services venture is not aid for those displaced by expulsion and war, but lobbying to bring a million Ethiopians to Israel. In France Sarkozy is backing away away from his pledge to crack down on illegal third world immigrants. The pattern stays true everywhere.

If you starve people long enough of anything to feel pride in and find meaningful that is their own, they inevitably develop an inferiority complex, a state of mind that devalues what is their own and celebrates diversity not out of a genuine appreciation of other cultures, but out of a lack of their own culture.

Multiculturalism is the West's cultural anorexia, a mental disease masquerading as a moral cause, a culture forever trapped in looking in the mirror and seeing its own bloated corruption like an inverted Dorian Gray, seeing evils that are not there and others that are laughable in contrast with the brutal dictatorships of Islam.

If the West is suffering from anorexia, Islamism is the obsessive eater, gorging on everything in sight. The West has a fear of power but the East has a fear of powerlessness, their destructive collision forms a grotesque abusive relationship as the Islamists devour Western civilization while the multicultural apologists make excuses for them all the while.

Is it any wonder that having to choose between life in a multicultural society and an Islamist one, Muslims in the West ultimately choose the Islamist way? After all who would willingly choose to starve when they can feast? The lack of self-respect that multiculturalism shows its own society and culture only confirms to Western Muslims that there is no reason or basis for respecting it. The Caliphate emerges for them as a strong and appealing vision, all the more so because it is a myth and can never be realized. And best of all there is no reason to choose, because multiculturalism's fatal flaw is that it is willing to tolerate and give ground to even the beliefs that call for its destruction.

And so Muslims in the West can work as doctors, socialize, marry, receive benefits and have access to everything Western society has to offer while still supporting terrorism and Jihad. And it is no wonder, multiculturalism allows them to receive all the benefits of Western living while still being true to the Muslim code of conquering the Dar Al Harb. This makes the multicultural vision of promoting a moderate Islam or a reformed Islam laughable. After all why should Islam reform as long as it's winning?

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In Defense of Waterboarding

In Defense of Waterboarding

The most common objections made to waterboarding are that

1. It compromises the safety of our personnel in enemy hands

2. It is torture

3. Torture is useless for extracting information

The first and second arguments are easiest to dismiss.

In 1985 former Marine and DEA agent Enrique Camarena went undercover in Mexico in pursuit of Mexican drug lords. He was identified and tortured for two days straight on the probable orders of Mexico's Secretary of Defense, General Juan Arevalo and a doctor was used to bring him back from the brink of death time and time again before he was finally killed. Among the implements used were a tire iron, red hot metal pipes and a cattle prod. By the time his body was found, most of his head had been crushed.

Also in 1985 a former decorated Korean War veteran and the CIA Station Chief in Beirut William Francis Buckley was kidnapped by Hizbollah while working on a plan to rescue the hostages. His torture was videotaped and the videotape was sent to the US Embassy. Buckley was tortured for fifteen months and only his remains were left behind to be buried.

In 1985 the United States respected the full legal rights of drug dealers and Islamic terrorists. It assigned them lawyers and treated them as any other criminal suspects. That did not help Camarena or Buckley in the least, the very same sort of groups who use real torture do not care about reciprocity and that is why there is no sensible reason to treat them with kid gloves in the hopes that they will treat our captured personnel likewise. We know they won't.

United States prisoners have been tortured or assaulted in virtually every war in the 20th century from WW2 to Korea to Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. The fact that the United States respected the rights of Nazi, Imperial Japanese, Communist and Islamist prisoners did not in any way restrain the followers of these totalitarian ideologies from abusing our captured soldiers. If anything it made it safer for them to do so knowing that there would be no retaliation.

The cases of Buckley and Campena are reminders of what real torture is. Waterboarding is not torture. Torture is a form of physical brutality that causes enduring physical damage. Waterboarding is psychologically, not physically, damaging. It does not leave permanent scars, it does not maim and does not kill. The potency of waterboarding is in its ability to break down psychological barriers, much as sleep deprivation, extended interrogations, hooding, intimidation, solitary confinement and other forms of psychological pressure do. When waterboarding opponents conflate physical and psychological pressure, they create a dangerous moral equivalence between the murderers of Buckley and Campena and those who are trying to bring them and their like to justice.

The third objection regarding the integrity of information obtained under the influence of such tactics is the most relevant. Indeed information directly obtained through torture is of dubious value. However the purpose of interrogation is to first break down mental resistance and then extract information. There is no one who can seriously argue that waterboarding is not an excellent tool for achieving the former. Contrary to the impression produced by TV shows such as 24 in which pain leads to immediate confession, the purpose of physical and psychological pressure is to break down the psychological defenses of the detainee in order to bring him to a state where he is prepared to provide truthful answers. That is why psychological pressure is more effective than physical pressure, attacking the source of the mental resistance, rather than sadistically savaging the body.

Opponents of waterboarding claim that uninterrupted waterboarding would cause death. Of course so would any activity that went on uninterrupted. Handcuffing a prisoner for a long enough period enough could cause death as well. And has. These same opponents typically focus on how emotionally traumatic waterboarding is. Which is of course the point.

Some forms of psychological pressure are used by law enforcement on a day to day basis. There are people who experience psychological trauma after an encounter with law enforcement. But if law enforcement personnel were not intimidating, they would be useless. In preparation for the 1972 Munich Olympics, police were equipped with candy and flowers to distribute in response to any trouble. The result was the infamous Munich Olympics Massacre because peace and love is simply not a useful deterrent.

To accomplish any goal, pressure must be applied and motion cannot exist unless energy is applied. In contrast to the methods used by terrorists and drug lords, waterboarding is a humane way of applying minimum pressure for maximum results. It is not a pleasant experience but it is a good deal more pleasant than the fatal consequences of not applying it. Though liberal opponents of waterboarding continue to insist that we live in a world where coddling prisoners would produce better results than vigorously interrogating them, but evil men fanatically dedicated to their cause will not surrender that cause unless the will that holds them to that cause is broken first.

(A Version of this article appeared at the Canada Free Press)

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Parshat Besalach - Punishment and Salvation

Parshat Besalach has the Jews departing Egypt with the Egyptians armies in rapid pursuit. In that process it features two sets of baffling behaviors, one by the Jews and the other by the Egyptians.

The Egyptians behave in a seemingly insane manner, heading off in pursuit of their escaped Hebrew slaves even after the devastation of the ten plagues and even proceed down into the split sea. The Jews by contrast seem to complain endlessly once they are out of the sea displaying little faith in G-d.

In fact both behaviors are ultimately attributable to a lack of faith in G-d, but a different sort of lack of faith. The showdown at the sea follows a long series of punishments visited on Egypt by G-d. Why specifically punish Egypt, a bleeding heart type might ask. Why not have Moshe arrive in Egypt and spend the next decade or so urging Egyptians to repent backed by wonders and miracles, but not by punishments?

The key though is that the Egyptians lacked a specific kind of faith in G-d. A few plagues in Pharaoh had already been convinced that G-d existed and had great power, yet he irrationally continued to refuse to free his slaves. Each plague battered at his resistance, but none fully convinced him, not even the last. Clearly Pharaoh's faith in G-d was lacking in a specific area, the area of punishment.

Successful and prosperous people often believe in G-d but only in a G-d who rewards them but not a G-d who punishes them. That is where you get so many powerful and corrupt religious and lay leaders who profess to believe in G-d and yet behave in completely amoral ways. Like Pharaoh, they believe that when something good happens, it's from G-d, but when something bad happens, they reject a divine role in it. That was why the Pharaoh of Joseph's time was willing to believe in G-d because the famine was preceded by seven years of plenty and resulted in prosperity for him and for Egypt. It did not however make him into a moral leader and the ultimate outcome of his rule was slavery and oppression. Given great wealth, Egypt grew all the more arrogant and brutal.

The lack of faith of the Egyptians was in a G-d who punished in order to enforce justice as a higher moral authority. And so the Egyptians followed their escaped slaves into the desert and into the sea, madly certain that they would succeed. Such self-destructive hatred of Jews has no shortage of contemporary parallels, think of rockets being shot from the rubble of Gaza and Lebanon or Nazi Germany diverting resources from the front to transport and kill more Jews even as the war was being lost. Battered post war Russia plotting to wipe out its Jewish citizens at a time when the country needed to be rebuilt or Spain hounding the last of the Conversos and eliminating entire professions in order to hunt down anyone with Jewish blood.

Where the Egyptian lack of faith was manifested in a failure to believe in a G-d who punishes, as is the way of successful people, the Jews who had been oppressed and downtrodden, lacked faith in a G-d who brings good. As slaves they had no trouble relating to the idea of a G-d who punishes but had trouble believing in a G-d who provides for them, thus their complaints were focused on a lack of food and water.

Arrogance breeds a belief in immunity from punishment, oppression breeds a belief that punishment is only to be expected and a lack of belief in anything positive. Both represented opposite lacks of faith created by their mutual relationship. The Egyptians had grown used to having slaves and refused to accept that they weren't entitled to them. The Jews had grown used to having masters and refused to accept that G-d was a fundamentally different being than their Egyptian masters.

True understanding of G-d takes in the fact that he delivers both punishment and blessing, yet it is often easier to pick one or the other and practice dualism, to see G-d as a source of punishment or blessing exclusively, rather than both. By drowning the Egyptians in the same sea that he used to lead the Jews to safety, the unity of G-d was conveyed and yet not properly understood.

To this day if one looks at Israel, many Haredim are eager to believe that the 39 scud missiles that fell during the Gulf War were a punishment for violating Shabbat but few were willing to believe that the Six Day War and the Creation of Israel were a blessing from G-d. Vice versa, many "traditional" Jews are willing to believe that victories in wars are divine blessings but fewer are willing to believe that there are direct divine punishments too. Yet it is not one or the other, true understanding of G-d demands that it be both.

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Friday Afternoon Roundup - Politics, Politics and More Ticks

It's been a moderately short week yet an explosive one.

The Democratic and Republican races are both tangled up in confusion with two and four front runners respectively. Some Jews are getting excited over McCain's supposed plan to make Lieberman his VP. I find that to be a foolish mindset, as foolish as those planning to vote for Obama because he's black or for Hillary because she's a woman. You vote for the person or the policy, you don't vote for the race or religion. McCain is no more appealing to me simply because Lieberman is his V.P., nor would Lieberman as a Presidential candidate be any more appealing to me. As a matter of fact he would be less appealing to me. A certain amount of pride in the success of a fellow Jew, a fellow black man or a fellow woman is understandable, but not when it comes to voting who leads the country.

Meanwhile in Israel, Olmert is hanging on. Protests are going on over the Winograd Report as Israel bombs another empty building, a practice that began under Rabin, to appear tough. Shas has continued to keep its deal with the devil until the thin veil of claiming that Jerusalem will be given away last and only then will they supposedly quit. UTJ has a high asking price to join the government but if Olmert gives away Yerushalayim under a Haredi government, not all the Daf Yomi Shiurim in the world will be enough to wash away the blood they have so callously spilled with their greed.

The blood of their brothers cries out from the earth and they hear nothing but the clink of the shekel.

Front Page Magazine has some interesting articles this week including David Hornik's look at A Day in the Life of a Gaza-Belt Israeli Community that shows where the new frontier is the real cost of the Gaza Disengagement.

(Via Lemon Lime Moon) an interesting FPM article on the Putin-Osama connection, considering that Palestinian and modern Arab Marxist terrorism was born out of the halls of the KGB and the Soviet Ministries, this is not too far fetched, particularly when backed up by statements made by assassinated ex-KGB man Litvinenko, who one presumes knew enough to be worth killing in such a gruesome fashion.

Alexander Litvinenko revealed, in his articles and interviews included in the Allegations, that at least two notorious Al Qaeda terrorists are secret agents of the FSB – one of whom, Aiman al Zawahiri, is bin Laden’s second-in-command.

As the former leader of the terrorist organisation Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al Zawahiri was on international lists of most wanted terrorists for many years. In 1997, he suddenly re-surfaced in Russia, where he undertook a special training course at a secret FSB base in Dagestan. After that, he was sent to Afghanistan, and joined Al Qaeda as bin Laden’s number two. Meanwhile, the FSB officers who had supervised him in Dagestan were promoted and re-assigned to Moscow. It was from them that Alexander learned about al Zawahiri.

These and other facts of FSB involvement in international terrorism, revealed by Alexander, have tremendous implications. Contrary to the view of many in the US, Russia is anything but a reliable ally of yours in the ‘war on terror’. The Kremlin is playing a treacherous double game: while enjoying the West’s support as ally, it secretly supports and manipulates the Al Qaeda through FSB agents of influence.

As Alexander writes: “It is possible to destroy the whole international terrorism tomorrow, along with Russian Mafia. All you need to do is disband the Russian special services.”

FP: What interests does Putin have in helping Al Qaeda and other jihadi terror groups?

Stroilov: To stir up trouble, in the world in general and in the Middle East in particular. The most obvious consequence of that are sky-high oil prices, which are both the source of KGB junta’s wealth and the salvation for their regime.

Meanwhile paralleling the previous story on Israel's crackdown on Blogger, word that Gulag aka Google turned over the IP address of a blogger to the authorities at Israel Matzav. Considering Yahoo and Google's actions in China, this is not too surprising but for those looking for an exit, I would strongly recommend using a company that does not do business in Israel if you're an Israeli, that doesn't do business in the UK if you're British, etc... Companies are motivated to cooperate with foreign countries primarily if they do business there. Worldwide companies like Google or Yahoo are the least secure in this regard.

On a common note, At My Flander Fields there's a post on the new law, which is a topic I'll be covering next week too along with definitions of extremism.

The measures of repression being passed by them are aimed at those ordinary and patriotic people of our Western countries who are expressing those freedoms which are traditional to all Free People.

The forces and methods described are not only those of persons or organizations in the USA. They are not practiced only in the UK. The application of those methods and ideas are not limited to Europe.

Layers of bureaucracy have been added within our systems in order to make sure that an appearance of legality has been retained for the public. The maze of administrative layers allow the leftists to deny that an agenda is being undertaken by them while giving an appearance of unbroken traditional legality. The layers absolve any one identifiable person of responsibility or of charges of malfeasance. Responsibility and accountability are instead replaced with a bureaucratic irrationality and plausible deniability. Spread throughout our societies is a tangled web of leftist visions administered by an elusive loosely organized centralized system.

It's a quite good description of the totalitarian nature of the modern bureaucratic system that stifles and criminalizes free speech in the name of human rights, which are somehow now incompatible with freedom.

Lemon Lime Moon meanwhile writes on the analogy between abuse victims and the state of Western society in response to the Jihad in Europe, America and National Madness

"Whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad" is how the saying goes and we can see it in the works today with nations of the West giving themselves over to their enemies to be raped and abused with not a whimper or a word. Bomb the west and get free education, welfare, foreign aid and a place to live away from your own abusive governments. Leave your sharia run situation , leave Mexico with its corruption and come take from the nations you hate. Live off them and abuse them while doing it. It is like a big, fat ,slovenly, abusive man sitting in his underwear while his timid little half dead wife brings him more pork rinds and beer to stuff down his greedy gullet.

The west has become like a half mad, abused woman, taking the beatings and standing up for her abuser when the law comes to call. Europe and America have even given themselves over to sleep with the enemy, giving every concession. Like the abused woman the west wrings it's hands in self deprecation and thinks, 'if only we were better people this would not be happening to us'. This is madness.

For those interested in the continuing implosion of the Ron Paul campaign, Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican has all the coverage.

At Keli Ata, a note on how the AP wire services minimizes terrorist attacks against Israelis.

And at Mark Steyn via LGF, is an interesting story about what human rights investigators get up to.

Meanwhile for those following the case of the 7 imprisoned girls, my own reading of the non-english news suggests that contrary to english A7 reporters which people have picked up, they are not all being released after the police filed an appeal.

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Crackdown on Israeli Bloggers Begins

Israel Hasson's bill to make any website with over 50,000 hits a day be legally considered a newspaper and liable for the comments left in its talkbacks have passed preliminary reading in the Knesset.

Now as a wave of censorship is hitting European and Canadian bloggers, that wave is now hitting Israeli bloggers as well. British blogger Lionheart's potential jail time made headlines and now a a blogger from Mystical Paths has been called in for interrogation for "possible involvement in planning anti-public activities, and for publishing a Violent Anti-Government and Anti-Homosexual Blog - Mystical Paths."

R. Nati is a former United States Marine but Mystical Paths is a primarily religious blog with a side emphasis on events in Israel.

Mystical Paths is on the opposite spectrum of violent, as the name alone would indicate. Anti-Public activities is a creepily Stalinist term. It is critical of the Olmert government and as a religious blog it of course views homosexuality like any other sexual perversion but does not spread hate toward individuals. Neither of those two things should in any case result in a police interrogation but it was probably posts like these written by R. Nati detailing the police crackdown during Bush' visit that sparked the police's ire. A highly religious post that at the same time describes the abuse behavior taking place.

But this interrogation is itself is a signal that the wave of crackdowns on Israeli bloggers is underway. government is trying to push through a massive series of terrorist concessions that the entire country opposes and it is trying to do so by silencing voices of protest wherever and whenever it can.

Consider what happened during Bush’s visit when three activists attempted to hand out booklets to reporters about Fatah's terrorist activities.

The detention of three activists during President Bush’s visit to Israel has sparked claims that Israeli police are intentionally targeting groups and individuals who oppose the push of Ehud Olmert’s government for a two-state solution.

The three activists — from the Israel office of the Zionist Organization of America and the National Council of Young Israel — were taken in by police in Jerusalem while trying to hand out booklets to reporters who were covering Bush’s trip. Israeli police said that the officer in charge initially suspected that the booklets, which criticized Palestinian leadership, might have contained “seditious material.”

Following that is the letter from the mother of a 14 year old girl, who is an American citizen, incarcerated without communication in an adult prison. The ZOA, one of whose activists had been handing out the booklets, has also issued a protest in regard to the 6 such girls who are still in prison.

The situation in Israel mirrors that in Europe where governments who are determined to sell out their own citizens to the Jihad pass laws and engage in police interrogations of anyone speaking out against it. Silence is the company policy and the graver the situation gets, the worse the crackdown becomes as governments become increasingly determined to silence anyone pointing out the disastrous course they are taking for their nation.

The press tends to be well in hand, staffed by reporters produced by liberal institutions and managed by editors who vote safely to the left. Conservative newspapers are kept in line through threats and intimidation and the inevitable to need to compromise in order to remain in business and prop up their "moderate" conservative parties.

The internet has changed the rules of the game. In America or in Israel or in Europe, the internet has become the main source of disseminating information about the rising terrorist and demographic threat from the forces of Islam. Governments who are determined to compromise with Islam are driven to find a way to silence those independent voices, by first creating laws and then using police harassment to silence independent websites and bloggers. The censorship sweeping the free world is meant to smother those few who are protesting against the dark wave of the Jihad approaching our shores.

Censorship though is no solution but a frustrated political and media elite will still try to do their best to "silence the extremists." It is our sacred duty not to permit their voices to be silenced, across the world and around the globe, ex-Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists, Hindus, Right, Left and anything in between. We confront the prospect of a new dark age that will drown all we love in darkness and slaughter and enslave our families and those we care about. Every voice that shouts, whispers or murmurs against the darkness is the voice of freedom.

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Congressman Mark Siljander From Believer toTraitor: A Congresman's Crooked Journey

This was the scene on November 2007 as Congressman Mark Siljander made his tour to promote his new book "A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide". As it turned out Congressman Siljander's idea for bridging that divide involved helping Al Queda terrorists raise money and he now faces an indictment for it.

"Toting his new book--A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, Congressman Mark Siljander explained how, according to his studies, the two religions aren't so different after all.

Jerry Dillon, who organized the event, told UTW that the ideas espoused by Siljander are needed to combat the ignorance and Islamophobia he said certain "redneck Oklahoma leaders" recently displayed in "rejecting the gift of the Quran,"

Siljander explained that his "spiritual journey" began 15 years ago at the National Prayer Breakfast, when he was a Republican congressman from Michigan. The self-deprecating former lawmaker recounted, "I was trained as an evangelical Christian; I was a poster boy for Jerry Falwell."

As such, Siljander was incensed when the Quran was read at the Breakfast, prompting him to fire-off an angry letter to the emcee, demanding, "How can you read the book of the devil at a prayer breakfast?"

It was also during this period that he met Nassim Matar, a Lebanese-born, Washington, D.C.-based real estate broker. To further explore what "cultural misunderstandings" he had regarding Christianity and its relationship to Islam, Siljander began to study... Siljander said he also began to study the Quran for the first time.

After days of discussions with Sudan's President Omar al Bashir, Siljander said the ruler introduced him to his religious and political advisors, who then invited him and his delegation to speak at the Khartoum Shari'a Law School."

Of course once in Sudan, Siljander called for lifting those mean sanctions on Bashir's brutal government, which had massacred hundreds of thousands, Christians and non-Christians.

"I believe there is a desire to find middle ground," Siljander told WORLD concerning the purpose of his visit to Darfur. "Did the Sudan government arm the janjaweed? Absolutely. No question they did horrific things. But now they realize it got away from them and they have announced that they aim to disarm the janjaweed. If they say they are willing to disarm them and protect workers, then let's come to some agreement."

Both Siljander and Beasley told WORLD they believe lifting U.S. sanctions would "incentivize" Khartoum to resolve the Darfur crisis and to increase economic development in a way that will benefit more Sudanese. "In the past we promised to remove sanctions but we then didn't. Our credibility is important here, too," said Siljander."

Interestingly enough Nassim Matar, whom Siljander cites as his influence in convincing him that Islam was just great, along with Siljander, was one of the few signatories in praise of a Fatwa issued by the Fiqh Council of North America condemning terrorism. This Fatwa is ironic considering the deep involvement of Fiqh council members in terrorism.

Back in 2005 Steve Emmerson described the Fiqh Fatwa as a lie

"the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda.

Another past trustee of the Fiqh Council, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for illegal financial dealings with Libya and immigration fraud, has admitted to his part in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince, and has vocally announced his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Additionally Alamoudi was just named by Treasury as having been a financier for Al Qaeda."

Suddenly Siljander's Al Queda ties stop being so surprising and it's likely that Nassim Matar was actually Siljander's link to figures in the Islamic pro-terrorist community. Nassim Matar is the Director of Bridges to Common Ground, which published the Thanksgiving Declaration that Siljander signed, which urges Americans to respect the beliefs of the Prophet Mohammed. The website also contains a lecture by Mark Siljander, which I will shortly cite, as well as links to the Islamic Society of North America, A Saudi funded organization which controls virtually all the mosques in America and Canada and promotes Wahhabism

"According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA "is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation"; "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred" (for instance, al Qaeda supporter and PLO official Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi was invited to speak at an ISNA conference); has held fundraisers for terrorists (after Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense); has condemned the U.S. government's post-9/11 seizure of Hamas' and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial assets; and publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that "often champions militant Islamist doctrine."

The Bridges website or as the organization is called "International Peace Organization" though the only NGO by that name appears to be based out of Pakistan, has the following in its mission statement;

"People of good will on both sides of the Divide need to come together on "common ground" found in the Qur'an and the original Aramaic Injil."

But what is there beneath the surface narrative of an intolerant man becoming tolerant, there is an extensive hidden narrative. What really drove a man who supposedly viewed the Koran as the Book of Satan into a willing tool for the genocidal regime of Omar al Bashir, who was responsible for the torture, rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of Christians?

The answer is likely that it was the same things that drove some prominent Americans to become Soviet apologists, money. The Former Congressman was also the President of Global Strategies Inc, a worldwide multiservice firm that handled imports, exports and a whole lot more.

At some point in time Congressman Siljander transformed himself into a willing prostitute for the Jihad, touring the world in order to build up his business. There are some interesting details to Global Strategies Inc. For starters the bookkeeping and accounting at Global Strategies Inc is handled by one Allison Siljandir, possibly his daughter but likely a family member. And a company that needs a family member to handle the books is often seriously dirty and has things to hide.

Now let's take a look at what else Global Strategies Inc handles. Under Immigration, Siljander's company offers services such as

Immigration

Strategize immigration categories for workers in; agricultural, high tech, nursing, corporate executives, etc.

Assist prominent individuals in securing visas

Yes one would imagine that terrorists might be interested in such services. There's also an extensive charity section, including a focus on areas of conflict, read Jihadi areas. Under Public Relations, GSI boasts of having advised lobbying teams from Liberia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Benin and Bangladesh. There is also the following cryptic reference;

"Aided a former First Lady (non US) regarding personal financial troubles"

Under Government Services, it only gets creepier.

Document production of driver licenses, passports, national ID’s, marriage and death certificates

Advised organizations with technical and political problems related to the US government

Any terrorist group would consider the above two a major bonanza. Meanwhile Mark Siljander was wandering around the Middle East boasting of his ties to the brutal regime of Al Bashir. Here are key excerpts from his Oxford lecture available on his website.

"Permit me to take you back to a hot night in August 2006. I had the opportunity to meet with the President of Sudan, His Excellency al-Bashir, a person I have courted friendship with over the last nine years. He is a man mostly recently known for saying “No” to a UN Force in Darfur...

The Sheik was flabbergasted. He said, “Do you mean to tell me that the statement of faith that makes us Muslims is both in the Torah and Gospel, and that it also contains a perfect definition of the ‘Religion of Islam’?”

“It seems so, Your Excellency,” I replied.

“Do these same witnesses to the One God also believe in the last days and the prophets of Allah?” The Sheikh wondered.

I told him many if not most (Christians) not only accept the “witness” and the prophets and last days, but moreover would additionally believe in a broad sense, in the other four Pillars of Islam: 1) Salat, regular prayer; 2) Zakah, giving to the poor; 3) Siym, fasting; 4) Hajj, pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

I will never forget his look as he declared, “This is revolutionary.”

The question arises whom Islam considers as “infidels.” The militants argue that non-Muslims are infidels and therefore, worthy of death. Kafers (infidels) are those who do not accept the Shahadah.

Think of it, if those who follow Torah and Gospels would witness and believe in their hearts that God is one, could they be removed from the list of who are considered as “infidels”? This new common ground can help undercut the radical’s message of hate and their view of the glory of martyrdom through killing of infidels."

Or of course it can pave the way for describing Jews and Christians not as Infidels but as Reverts, heretics against Islam. While infidels may not necessarily be killed under Islam for no reason, heresy against Islam is itself justification for murder.

Now former Congressman Mark Siljander may have thought he was rather cleverly proving that Christians, Muslims and Jews believe the same thing, when he was actually making the case that the beliefs were similar enough to be considered a heresy... or he may have known exactly what he was doing, which was creating another theological basis for terrorism. And back in the West, the practical upshot of his argument is essentially a call to Islam.

Siljander becomes more explicit on this point as his Oxford lecture continues;

"This is one of the most painful misunderstandings among Christians. Polls indicate that the vast majority of Christians universally feel that Allah is not the same God as the God of the Hebrews, or Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Ishmael.

Many noted US Christian preachers have reinforced this idea by stating that "The God of Islam is not the same God.” Televangelist Benny Hinn also commented, “This is not a war between Arabs and Jews. It's a war between God and the devil."

I recall speaking to an assembly of seminary students in Lancaster Bible College in PA a few years ago. When questioned, their view, rightly or wrongly, was unanimous that Allah was a false god and in fact, derived from a Moon-god of ancient East.

The Apostle Paul faced similar challenges with the Greek pagans as described in Acts 17. Paul used an idol to reflect the true God. While “some mocked…many followed and surrendered” to God. The point being, that the origins of a name do not always reflect on the later application."

Here Siljander compares himself to Paul preaching a new gospel that fuses Christianity and Judaism into Islam. But his real gospel was likely much more bottom line, an ex-congressman with business interests in the third world who found another profitable venue, promoting and aiding the Jihad. But he is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

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The 2008 Presidential Race Will be Run Against Political Correctness

The 2008 Presidential race promises to be among the more grueling in American history because regardless of who wins either the Democratic or Republican primaries, there is little doubt that the Republican nominee will not be competing against simply a candidate but against political correctness itself.

Regardless of any myth that the race will be run on issues, the Republican candidate will actually be running against the "Historic Opportunity to Elect America's First Black/Woman President". Right now Obama and Hillary are busy sparring to see who wins the PC Olympics that are the Democratic primaries, whether gender will trump race or race will trump gender. Among the press and the cultural elites, race has always trumped gender which is why the wave of Islamic rapes tends to get swept under the carpet and Islamic oppression of women is the subject of numerous apologetics.

But matters didn't go so smoothly with the voting public in New Hampshire which lacks the kind of bland population that could be browbeaten into voting for Obama out of some misguided sense of fair play, as happened in Iowa. Instead New Hampshire became the perfect place for Bill Clinton to once again cast Hillary as the victim of something or other while Hillary deployed the crying game. Of course that was only Phase 1 of the Clinton machine's tactics. Phase 2 depended on the willingness of Conservative and even Conservative Democrat talk show hosts to fall into the trap by supposedly kicking her while she was down, generating a torrent of sympathy for a woman who plausibly has actual blood on her hands but managed to put on a show of emotion in order to generate identification with her as a victim.

Hillary Clinton became New York State's Eva Peron by supposedly being victimized during her 2000 debate when her opponent extended something for her to sign. In New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton did her best to try and become America's Eva Peron by showing a carefully calculated spot of emotion in her otherwise artificial facade and it worked. New Hampshire though should be a wake up call to Republicans that they have been taking a victory against Hillary Clinton for granted.

Yes most of America hates Hillary Clinton but most New Yorkers hated her too and she's well into her second term as New York's Senator. Underestimating the Clinton machine is a bad idea because it is extremely ruthless and extremely adaptable. In New Hampshire, the Clinton camp reacted to the Iowa backlash that came when the Obama camp successfully painted her campaign as "negative", studied all the data that showed that voters saw her as robotic and cold and rather than trying to do a 180 degree turn, they set up a chance for her to show the "woman" within while staging sexist incidents like the "iron my shirt" moment. The program achieved its results and Clinton solidly carried the female vote that she had lost to Obama in Iowa. So of course Obama's camp responded by generation a Martin Luther King related controversy for Hillary Clinton on the next phase of the campaign and the PC war went on.

What Republicans now need to understand is that a Presidential race against Hillary Clinton will be one "iron my shirt" moment after another and a Presidential race against Obama will be full of MLK moments. It will be a fundamentally cynical race run on strictly PC principles. If the Republican candidate fails to say anything damaging, somewhere the Obama camp will arrange to have some racist graffiti scrawled and the Hillary camp will arrange for some more hecklers to stop by, all in the name of maintaining the perception that their candidate is part of a historic moment that will allow Americans to absolve themselves of prejudice by voting for an official victim. Both Obama and Hillary are too subtle to come right out and say it but that is the that will be played.

This is going to be a tough race and a difficult one. It's also going to require balance. Gender and race will allow Hillary and Obama to play specific roles that when weakened will quickly allow them to morph into victims. The Clinton machine in particular is adept at making even people who hate them feel sorry for them, as the impeachment disaster should remind anyone. Plenty of conservative pundits are salivating at the idea of going after the Clintons again but those same kind of tactics can quickly turn self-destructive because Hillary is not just Kerry or even Bill Clinton and neither is Obama. The cult of victimology has been bred into the American public for over a generation and it will be a factor even on the Republican side, whether we like it or not.

The hate that many in the Republican camp have for Hillary is a weakness and it is one that she knows quite well how to exploit. New Hampshire and the backlash against John Edwards and Chris Matthews for comments that were factually accurate but came off as "insensitive" should be a reminder of that. Not falling into that trap again is important because the electorate is more dissatisfied and uncertain than ever, which means it's also much more pliable and manipulatable. Republicans rightly think of Hillary Clinton of as the "Bad Guy", but New Hampshire is a demonstration of how easily her critics can become the "Bad Guys."

Obama and Hillary Clinton have not won races on their records. They have won because their opponents either dropped out or were forced out or self-destructed. The 2008 Presidential race will be a repeat of that. The power of a politically correct candidate is their ability to turn weakness into a strength, incompetence and inexperience into an advantage and hostility into sympathy and identification. PC candidates represent the ultimate political form of asymmetrical warfare and the conventional attack rhetoric of political campaign only deepens the identification with them as oppressed and disenfranchised by people and groups who themselves feel oppressed and disenfranchised.

Defeating a PC candidate in turn requires understanding that frontal attacks can and will backfire. It requires understanding the root of the identification and countering it at the source.

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Is Bush Endorsing the Palestinian Arab Right of Return?

At Bush's press conference with Olmert, Bush stated the following;

"If you're asking me, am I nudging them forward -- well, my trip was a pretty significant nudge, because yesterday they had a meeting -- and by the way, the atmosphere in America was, nothing is going to happen, see, that these issues are too big on the ground; therefore, you two can't get together and come up with any agreements. You just heard the man talk about their desire to deal with core issues, which I guess for the uneducated on the issue, that means dealing with the issues like territory and right of return and Jerusalem. Those are tough issues -- the issue of Israeli security. And they're going to sit down at the table and discuss those issues in seriousness."

Now this statement might be innocuous but Bush said it again at his press conference with Abbas

See, the past has just been empty words, you know. We -- actually it hasn't been that much -- I'm the only President that's really articulated a two-state solution so far -- but saying two states really doesn't have much bearing until borders are defined, right of return issues resolved, Jerusalem is understood, security measures -- the common security measures will be in place. That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a clear, defined state around which people can rally.

Bush repeated this statement again in a Channel 2 interview

Meanwhile in Israel National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley agreed to it too

Q Just to follow up, is the President basically, then, in terms of his expectations, is he expecting that some of the core issues that you -- you know, Jerusalem, borders, right of return -- they would not be deferred, that they would be settled -- in his mind, they would be settled as part of this definition that he was talking about?

MR. HADLEY: Yes, and the parties, yesterday, said that, as much, that they have said all issues will be on the table, that the negotiations will be addressing all of the core issues. They listed those issues. So this is the objective that the parties have set for themselves, the target, if you will, the objective of negotiating those issues before the end of 2008.

So is the Right of Return, aka the destruction of Israel now American policy? As Daniel Pipes has written;

The Palestinian “right of return” entered the lexicon of American policymakers in December 2006, when the Iraq Study Group Report urged the U.S. government to support Israel-Palestinian negotiations that addresses what it termed a “key final status issue.” That recommendation came as a mild shock, given that the “right of return” to Israel is transparently a code phrase to overwhelm Israel demographically, thereby undoing Zionism and the Jewish state, and so a notion never before a goal of official Washington.

A year later, White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino adopted the term, though without much notice. Out of seemingly nowhere, she informed journalists at a press briefing on November 28, 2007 that “The right of return issue is a part of the road map and it's going to be one of the issues that the Israelis and the Palestinians have to talk about during … negotiations.”

Pipes goes on to document the three times Bush mentioned it on his trip to Israel and elsewhere as well. As Linda at Something and Half of Something has pointed out, the Jerusalem Post ran a story on the Right of Return and then removed it from the actual site and replaced it with a story that claims the Right of Return is not an issue. The Jpost is of course an organ of the Olmert government and it's not too hard to imagine a sharply worded email or phone call telling the editorial staff to knock it off because the issue isn't ready for release.

Olmert himself is floating a 50,000 man return trial balloon. It's safe to say that the real proposal multiplies that by at least a factor of ten for at least half a million. Rachel Neurwith meanwhile has been chronicling a media blitz promoting a Right of Return just in time for the conferences.

This makes sense because the usual way of doing things on the Arab side is that when Israel makes one concession, the Arab side moves on to the next phase of its demands. Olmert has conceded withdrawal and Jerusalem, the next stage is the Right of Return.

The Voice of America along with other outlets is reporting that the "refugees" are on the agenda at the talks.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Queria met at a Jerusalem hotel to discuss the core issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - borders, the status of Jerusalem, the issue of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Note of course that nothing is being discussed that the Palestinian Arabs have to actually do, such as stop the killing.

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America Must Choose Between Islam and the West

Do you want to know why the price of oil is so high? In 1950 when the House of Saud threatened to nationalize Aramco, instead of backing Aramco, the government worked out a deal to give Aramco a tax break on all the money they would lose. It wasn't long before Aramco was all Saudi owned and the Saudis became the biggest backers of the Jihad.

In 1956 when England refused to roll over to Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal and went to war, instead of backing its allies, backed Egypt which was a Soviet client state, even introducing a UN resolution against Britain and France and attacked the British economy.

When Eisenhower heard about Israel’s invasion of Sinai, he exclaimed: "You tell ’em [the Israeli government] that, God damn it, we’re going to apply sanctions, we’re going to the United Nations, we’re going to do everything that there is so we can stop this thing".

The US offered a UN resolution against the operation. After his successful re-election on 6 November Eisenhower ordered economic sanctions against Britain. The US Federal Reserve orchestrated a run on the pound, and Britain’s gold reserves fell by a further £100 million in only a week (or by an eighth of their remaining total). Moreover, the US treasury made it clear it would block an IMF loan for Britain to stabilize the pound.

Eisenhower won and America lost. Nasser won and the Arabs won. The Arabs took control of the oil industry and used it to fund terrorism. The rise of the worldwide Islamic Jihad can be directly tied to America's willingness to back Arabs over its allies in Europe and Israel. Later in life Eisenhower admitted that Suez had been his greatest mistake, but by then it was much too late.

The British defeat at Suez shattered the American-British alliance and it also opened the dreaded power vacuum in the Middle East, a vacuum that the Soviet Union was more than happy to fill. For the next few decades, America would feverishly court and prop up Arab tyrants to keep them out of Soviet hands.

With the sunset of the British empire in the Middle East, a variety of coups followed. Iraq was overthrown by the Baathists, one of whom was a young army officer known as Saddam Hussein. The era of England and France as international superpowers ended and instead they fell back on following America's model by courting those same tyrants.

Today America applies that same model, substituting Islam for Communism and again it continues to fail. American must choose between its allies and the dictators and sheiks of Araby. America must choose between Islam and the West. America is the only country properly capable of leading the war against Islam but instead the US has bent over backward to accommodate a vicious ideology at the expense of its allies.

If America applies the energy it has expended on supporting the Arab dictatorships on instead supporting any country and political party combating the Jihad, they may yet undo Eisenhower's mistake and put the snake back in its nest. But to do that it must make the right choice and the difficult choice

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Bush in Israel: The Sun Sets on America's Relationship with Israel

President George W. Bush's visit to Yad Vashem could not help but remind you of President Nixon's visit to Yad Vashem.

Nixon like Bush had come to Israel in 1974 as a weakened President on his way trying to shore up some support for peace negotiations and create a legacy at Israel's expense. After the devastating Yom Kippur War when Nixon and Kissinger prevented Israel from repeating the preemptive attack that had brought Israel victory in 1967, Nixon arrived in Israel with a plan to offer Egypt a nuclear reactor and pressure on Israel to make concessions in the name of peace.

Nixon arrived to a shattered nation that he had helped to shatter. He came to a nation still mourning its young men and grumbling reluctantly he visited Yad Vashem. Heavy security cordons and bulletproof glass protected him against angry crowds. After following Kissinger's plan to "cut Israel down to size" by bringing it to its knees in a war and letting the Arabs have their victory, Nixon came pressuring Israel to negotiate with its enemies while promising them a nuclear reactor, the one method of deterrence Israel had left.

In private talks with Rabin, Nixon said that "the days when Israel felt very comfortable with a relationship . . . where we supported Israel . . . were going to be Israel's best friend... where your immediate warlike neighbors, Syria and Egypt were considered enemies of the United States, those days are over. I don't think that's a policy. I don't think it's viable for the future."

Rabin replied that "Peace had to be related to security... it could not consist simply of a series of Israeli withdrawals; there had to be reciprocity; Israel could not tolerate terrorist attacks." (Heroic Diplomacy - Kenneth W. Stern)

As in 1974 and as 34 years later in 2008 such statements by Israeli leaders went ignored.

At Yad Vashem Bush, like Nixon before him, stood in a place dedicated to the knowledge that there is an enduring global paradigm dedicated to the extermination of the Jews while on a mission to empower those who are dedicated to killing Jews today.

In 2008 Bush came to Israel, disdained addressing the Knesset as this might show partiality to Israel, brought a raft of armed military personnel to Israeli soil and delivered a list of conditions to Israel while praising Abbas as a good man and a man of peace.

For all the friendly facade, Bush came bearing the same message that Nixon had. Bush's statements clearly call for carving up Israel, dressed up as they might be in euphemisms.

Bush began his Palestinian tour with lavish praise from Abbas, leader of one of the world's largest terrorist organizations

Our people will not forget Your Excellency, your invitation and your commitment towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. You are the first American President that confirms and reiterates this right.

and indeed Bush had. It is a sad legacy to those Jewish conservatives who who argued that Bush would be friendly to Israel, only for Bush to wind up pleasing those Jews who voted for Gore or Kerry while spitting in the face of those who supported him.

Bush meanwhile spoke openly about applying pressure, not even bothering to hide it behind more diplomatic language

"Is it going to be hard work? You bet. And we can help support these negotiations, and will. I was asked yesterday at a press conference, you know, what do you intend to do; if you're not going to write the agreement, what do you intend to do? I said, nudge the process forward -- like, pressure; be a pain if I need to be a pain -- which in some people's mind isn't all that hard."

It of course only got worse from there with gems like Bush's emphasis on modernizing the same force that is continuing to participate in the murder of Israelis

And so my message to the Israelis is that they ought to help, not hinder, the modernization of the Palestinian security force. It's in their interests that a government dedicated to peace and understanding the need for two states to live side by side in peace have a modern force.

and of a contiguous Palestinian state, despite the obvious impossibility of a contiguous Palestinian state without cutting Israel in half, it would be like calling for a contiguous state between Mexico and Canada while pretending that you still intend to preserve the territorial integrity of the United States.

Now, the vision of the Palestinian state is one of contiguous territory. In other words, as I said earlier in my administration, I said, Swiss cheese isn't going to work when it comes to the outline of a state. And I mean that. There is no way that this good man can assure the Palestinians of a hopeful future if there's not contiguous territory. And we -- that position is abundantly clear to both sides.

In his statement Bush said;

I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns. I fully understand that finding a solution to this issue will be one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace, but that is the road we have chosen to walk.

and of course the "hard solution" will not involve the Arab side abandoning its demand for Jerusalem, we know that ahead of time. It will instead demand more Israeli concessions to the terrorists in exchange for nothing.

All this revealed Bush's statement at Olmert's conference to be a blatant lie

It's essential that people understand America cannot dictate the terms of what a state will look like. The only way to have lasting peace, the only way for an agreement to mean anything, is for the two parties to come together and make the difficult choices.

After all Bush was busy dictating exactly what that state would look like. And once again pushed the idea of pressure...

But we'll help, and we want to help. If it looks like there needs to be a little pressure, Mr. Prime Minister, you know me well enough to know I'll be more than willing to provide it. I will say the same thing to President Abbas tomorrow, as well.

Bush repeatedly equated the idea of Israeli settlements and Palestinian Arab rocket attacks as if people living in a place is equivalent to murder.

You know, one of the concerns I had was that -- whether it be the unprovoked rocket attacks or the issues of settlement, that the leaders would be so bogged down in the moment that they would lose sight of the potential for a historic agreement.

and of course we wouldn't want to get so bogged down in the war being fought against us that we fail to recognize this "historic moment" which seems to come every few years when a President flies over to Israel and promises that everything will be hunky dory once the terrorists get more land and more guns to play with.

Much has been made of Bush's widely publicized statement at Yad Vashem wondering why America didn't bomb Auschwitz. That statement is an obscenity and an abomination. It would be the equivalent of FDR turning his backs on the Jews of Europe while asking why America didn't intervene in the Russian Pogroms of the early 20th century. It is not Auschwitz that needs to be bombed today but Gaza and Tehran and yet again an American President is selling out the world's most persecuted people to cater to its enemies and America's enemies as well.

Nixon lied when he claimed that some sort of magic time had ended when America and Israel were on the same page, because that time never existed. For all of Israel's existence, America has been hoping to win over the Arabs, supporting Israel only because the United States does not have a single reliable ally in the Arab world it can actually count on.

America's role in Israel's creation was lukewarm at best and the pressure for territorial concessions began from day 1 when Israel took the Negev and has never let up through all those years. As long as America continues catering to the Arabs in the hopes that the devotees of Islam will eventually learn to love America, any alliance with Israel is built on the same shaky legs.

Since Suez, American administrations have placed the Arabs first and their allies, whether it be England and France or Israel, second. That has not changed under Bush and will not change under any President. If the sun is setting on Israeli-American relations it is only because America is pushing Israel even closer to the brink than it did under Nixon presenting it with a choice between survival and following American dictates.

Israel cannot survive the growing cancerous expansion of a terrorist state within its borders, a terrorist state president after president is determined to fund, arm, train and implement. For too long Americans and Israelis have grown comfortable with the illusion of a close relationship in what is actually a frustrated abusive relationship in which America is certain that if it slaps around Israel hard enough, the middle east will somehow be stabilized. That route is a dead end for both America and Israel. Unless both countries wake up to that, neither country will survive the Jihad.

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Friday Afternoon Roundup - A Real American Hero

On a lighter note, the War on Terror wasn't any easier back when GI Joe was fighting Cobra, they had to deal with the ACLU too.

Via LGF, MS Magazine rejected a neutral ad emphasizing the role of women in Israel. An ad featuring Livni emphasizing the role of women is somewhat ironic, considering the "promotional campaign" she conducted for Israeli tourism involving Israeli women not exactly being appreciated for their achievements.

But putting that aside, this is a symptom of the growing delegitimization of Israel in liberal circles that begins to extend into formerly neutral areas. After Shabbat Debbie Schlussel will probably update the story further with details of Ms. Magazine's prior history on Israel or Islamic terrorism. Now Kathy Spillar who edits Ms. Magazine was a member of the Feminist Majority Foundation which apparently does not include Israeli women.

Mystical Paths meanwhile continues its great coverage of Bush's visit to Israel along with Esser Agorot, Cosmic X and Yisrael Medad disturbing highlights include the following;

Jerusalem Update

On entry to Jerusalem this morning, every single car was closely searched. By men, in black, with machine guns. They opened the doors, pointed the gun right at me and my daughter, and ran the barrel up and down our sides (checking for weapons, or just intimidating). For my daughter I objected to the rather inappropriate treatment. They offered to prevent me from going in, or to shoot me if I'm any more trouble.

and Bizzare, not Bazzar

There is a select group of security forces here who are specifically trained to divorce themselves from the population, see themselves as elite servants of the government, and they are actually trained to brutalize. This was instituted by Rabin, and ramped up to a much higher level under Sharon.

Two groups clash with them regularly. The national religious / settlers, who are targeted at times and continue to push into expanding into the Land (the mitzvah of yishuv ha'aretz, settling the Land) and get beaten back. The other is the charedim, the ultra-orthodox, who minimally recognize the civil government. They (we) get beaten up whenever the government crosses religious lines or community boundaries, and since they (we) aren't going to reduce their (our) commitment to Torah values, you get repeated confrontations in these areas.

This was not the work of the US government, this was the work of the ISRAELI government. You even have the Israeli courts (which are very very left wing) turning free people arrested on trumped up charges now. The executive government is divorcing itself farther and farther from the people.

Hot Air meanwhile has video from the Republican debate



and Ron Paul fans have a plan to make women vote for them by seducing them

We are losing big time with all these women voting for Huck/Mccain/Romney. What the hell these women thinking? Look at all the CNN exit polls. Ron only gets few percent of the women votes!! This is outrageous! All people here mostly guys?! Are meetup group people mainly guys?! Our men have no girlfriends/spouse/mistress?? Start talking to girls! Make them fall in love in Ron Paul by telling them the message of liberty! If that does not work, make them fall in love with Ron by falling in love with you. There are millions of desperate housewives, young girls, hillary girls waiting to hear our message of liberty!

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The Conscience of a Ron Paul Supporter - Learning to Love Big Brother

Ever wonder what goes on inside the head of a Ron Paul supporter who isn't a giant racist and actually has to rationalize supporting a blatantly lying candidate? Here you can have a look at how a Ron Paul supporters off the Ron Paul forums reacts to the revelations about the newsletters, tries to cope with it and adopts a "party line" which he doesn't really believe himself.

It's an instructive look not only inside the Ron Paul campaign but inside a mind warped by propaganda and finding no choice but to "learn to love big brother" in the form of Ron Paul.

It's a story told in screenshots of how the human mind adapts to believing in lies. Since it's graphic intensive, it's rendered in a separate screen.

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Israel, Olmert and Rabbi Wolpe: Questions of Justice and Madness

In Israel Rabbi Wolpe at a rally stated that if the government was properly run, Olmert and his gang would be hung for aiding the terrorists. The tabloid press immediately seized on this accusing Rabbi Wolpe of calling for vigilante justice and setting up the usual cry of "Right Wing Extremist" and "Yigal Amir". But what Rabbi Wolpe had called for was something much more 'disturbing' than mob violence, he had called for the country to be run according to its principles and its interests, rather than the corrupt whims of its politicians.

For the last decade and a half, the political and media elite of Israel have been propounding that peace is better than war and warning Jews outside Israel to respect Israel's democracy. Today Israel has neither peace nor democracy, it has an illegitimate political class bargaining away the nation's dearest treasures to terrorists.

The peace process has been an auction in which Israel has been constantly raising its bids while the Palestinian Arabs have been taking more and more items off the table. No one in Israel seriously believes there will be peace anymore but the negotiations and the settlement talks continue. Where Israel started out by offering an autonomous area inside Israel in exchange for middle eastern peace, today Israel is offering a country complete with Jerusalem itself up on the altar in exchange for the faint possibility of an end to the constant violence.

Israel has no democracy anymore. It is ruled by a man supported by less than ten percent of the country and by a party illegitimately put into power by a dead man. This same government ruthlessly suppresses dissent and bribes its coalition partners. Non-violent protesters are kept detained for months. Ruthless brutality is practiced along with ethnic cleansing of Jews by the will of this government.

Without democracy, the Olmert government has no right to exist. Without peace, every single politician that has made peace his policy has failed and must acknowledge that and resign. Without peace and democracy, this government has no right to exist.

The political class insists that their whims should override the principles and the interests of the state. They are wrong. Not only have they betrayed the principles on which the State of Israel was founded, they have betrayed the interests of the state and finally they have abandoned democracy and the rule of law. Their occupation of the government is a crime against the state and the nation. That is why Rabbi Wolpe is correct and his critics at the OU, which made nothing more than a feeble whimper in response to Amona and Gush Katif, are wrong.

A state must punish treason. If Ehud the man gives a terrorist a gun, he is a criminal and a traitor. If Ehud the Prime Minister gives the terrorists 10,000 guns, can there be any doubt that he is a criminal and a traitor? If anything as Prime Minister he is more subject to being held to account than as a private citizen. A citizen's treason is only a treason against his citizenship. A Prime Minister's treason is a treason against his duty in public office.

The same government which has no problem locking up 14 year old girls indefinitely for standing silently at an intersection has a problem with being held to account for its own crimes-- but most tyrannies do. Political corruption and military failure mark this government for removal. Treason and usurpation of public office mark it for trial.

Those who have a problem with Rabbi Wolpe's statements should ask themselves, what is the greater outrage to arm the enemy or to call for the trial and execution of those who arm the enemy. Those who find his statements impolitic, should ask themselves how far moderation has gotten them. For a decade and a half five corrupt Prime Ministers have labeled anyone who opposed them as extremists. But it is their policies that are an extremist betrayal of the founding and defense of the state. Their extremism has cost thousands of lives on both sides and betrayed the sanctity and security of its borders and citizens. They have piled treason on treason and deception on deception. Their crimes call for justice, not random violence but the organized mechanism of a restored state punishing those who betrayed it.

The best way to confront extremism is not with moderation but with opposing extremism. Not in random rhetoric or unfocused violence but in drawing the rhetorical and political lines further and further, rather than pulling them back. Moderating your positions is a form of surrender. The way to deal with extremism is to confront it by pushing it to the limit. If politicians choose treason, then you must not only condemn it as treason but speak of punishing it as treason. Ideological victory can never occur based on half-hearted positions, but only occur in the full clash of ideologies.

Why does treason prosper? Because when treason is successful none dare call it treason.

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Shhhh Quiet, Censorship in Progress (The Coming of the Indoctrimemes)

How do you keep nearly a billion people quiet while everything they value about their countries and their civilization is torn apart, sold off and gradually destroyed?

The traditional method involves the old carrot and stick routine. The carrot provides you with incentives to ignore what is going on. The stick is there for anyone too stubborn to take the carrot and keep his mouth shut.

The carrot comes in the form of the manifold benefits of the nanny state that promises to feed, clothe, educate, heal and otherwise take care of everyone from cradle to grave. To get these things you of course have to accept the rise of an increasingly authoritarian social and political system and despite swallowing the bulk of your income, the nanny state has trouble delivering decent results and its bureaucratic arrogance inevitably makes life unpleasant-- but the carrot offers benefits in exchange for compliance and complacency.

The stick is censorship.

The first tier of censorship is self-censorship, in which a person censors himself and is careful to avoid saying or even thinking what is 'outside the lines'.

The second tier of censorship is indoctrinational censorship which covers the range of institutions from school to university to the media to the government's press agencies which set the tone for "acceptable" and "unacceptable ideas. This indoctrination usually involves repeating and promoting a simple concept or idea.

For example the following Indoctrimeme has been broadcast at full volume since 9/11 by every one of the above mentioned institutions;

"Islam is a religion of peace. Terrorism is practiced by a small number of extremists."

Modern indoctrinational methodology is extremely sophisticated and diverse, the same message can be repackaged and delivered in any number of ways, from documentary to comedy to leaflet to blog to press conference to history textbook to op ed page. In successful indoctrinational censorship, every single possible format and outlet is exploited to promote a message. The "Islam is Peace" Indoctrimeme can be found across the full spectrum media from music to sitcoms to movies to books to newspaper articles to sermons to billboards. Thus elements as diverse as Aliens in America, the evening news, a Spider-Man comic book and the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon combine to broadcast the same idea.

Indoctrinational censorship so successfully blankets every medium with a single message that there is no longer any room for opposing points of view. Any opposing point of view that does get through must compromise itself to acclimate to the Indoctrimeme. Indoctrinational censorship is seemingly passive but it sets the stage for the third tier of censorship.

The third tier of censorship is social censorship, the goal of indoctrinational censorship is to create and enforce the social consensus of what the acceptable view is. When indoctrinational censorship is successful, social censorship crystallizes by making it impossible to say certain things out loud.

After the indoctrimeme that Islam is a religion of peace and terrorism is only practiced by a small number of extremists has reached critical mass, expressing the view that Islam itself is the cause of terrorism becomes a view that most people have coded and modeled as "false", "ignorant", "objectionable" and so on and so forth.

The popular entertainment subset of the indoctrinational phase teaches this modeling and coding by in our example

1. Identifying people who hold a "Wrong' view and aligning them with a negative stereotype, e.g. Rednecks, Flag Waving Patriots, Ignorant

2. Teaching people to model 'Right" behavior by rejecting their views as bigoted and ignorant using a fuzzy rote response that has no real meaning

Wrong Thinker: "I think the roots of terrorism may be inside Islam."

Right Thinker: "It's wrong to hate billions of people for what only a few extremists did."

The goal of social censorship is to create a high barrier to expressing unacceptable ideas.

The fourth tier of censorship is police censorship. Despite social censorship, some people will have contrary opinions. The approach to managing unacceptable opinions is the steel behind the velvet glove, the stick itself, censorship by law enforcement and legal action. Currently British blogger Lionheart has been targeted but he is merely part of a larger situation.

In times of crisis and chaos, both the carrots of the nanny state and the velvet glove of social censorship will begin to prove insufficient without real fear behind them. The response of the authorities is to actively intimidate and terrorize dissenters using police and the courts.

In Israel boys and girls as young as 13 and 14 have been indefinitely detained for participating in peaceful protests against the government surrender to terrorism and the ethnic cleansing of Jewish populations. Across Europe the laws are tightening on dissenters on everything from home schooling (resistance to the second tier of censorship) to a grab bag of laws against inciting hatred that are never used against Muslims but only against their critics. In America, far more non-Muslims were jailed after 9/11 than Muslims for expressing various forms of outrage against Islam, little was heard about those cases except backpatting by public officials at their success in restraining the backlash.

It is axiomatic that the worse the failures of government become, the more ruthless the abuses of judicial and police censorship become in order to silence any public outcry against them. That in part is why Europe and Israel are the scenes of a much harsher crackdown on opposition to the Jihad. If the Jihad bears down more severely on the US, expect America to go the same route.

Finally we come full circle to the fifth and the first tier of censorship, self-censorship. The end result of this Orwellian tangle of indoctrinational, social and legal censorship is to induce self-censorship, to keep people from not only speaking out but to prevent them from even thinking about those things. To create an atmosphere of fear and guilt at the very thought of dissent itself.

The greatest victory of evil is in the silencing of the truth. Keep speaking out.

Labels: Important Posts

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Proof: Ron Paul Lied About Not Being the Author of the Newsletters

After quotes and copies from Ron Paul's newsletters appeared in The New Republic, Ron Paul once again trotted out the old tale that he had no idea the newsletters had any racist and crackpot conspiracy theory material in them and that a mysterious person had been responsible for writing racist things in them without him knowing about them.

Now let's look at the extracts from the newsletters that have been released, specifically let's look at December 1990, image files follow below.

The newsletter calls Martin Luther King a Communist pedophile, Ron Paul has countered that he has a great deal of respect for MLK. And then we scroll down the newsletter to discover the mysterious author of this newsletter at the very bottom as he writes;

My wife Carol and our children and grandchildren join me in wishing you and your family a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. May we start to confound the plans of the Trilateralists and other big government types making America freer, and thus truer to her own heritage in 1991.



Now either the "mysterious stranger" writing this had a wife named Carol and lots of grandchildren, or Ron Paul is a liar and is the actual author of the newsletters. The medical reference under the teenage girls sex piece also suggests Ron Paul is the author. There is no break between this section and any of the others. It contains the same sort of loony ranting about conspiracy theories that the rest, disproving Andrew Sullivan's claims that "it just doesn't feel like Ron Paul".

The January 1991 newsletter features the author mentioning another congressman as "my successor" and talking about his experience as "a flight surgeon in the air force" and then afterward launching into another tirade about Martin Luther King. Again this is Ron Paul's record, not someone else. The author is clearly Ron Paul



In that same newsletter the author writes about his time running for President in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket. Ron Paul ran for President in 1988 on the Libertarian Party ticket. Here it is completely unambiguous that the author is Ron Paul and that he is expressing his own views about Martin Luther King.



In Feb of 1991 the author writes that he voted against "an expensive federal holiday for this man" referring to King. Of course Ron Paul famously voted against recognizing MLK day as a holiday.



It appears that not only is Ron Paul a racist but he just issued false statements during a Presidential campaign. That alone should disqualify him from public office.

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

Update: If there is any further doubt in this regard, Ron Paul himself has contradicted his own story. via Captains Quarters and Reason Magazine

Dr. Paul, who served in Congress in the late 1970s and early 1980s, said Tuesday that he has produced the newsletter since 1985 and distributes it to an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 subscribers. A phone call to the newsletter's toll-free number was answered by his campaign staff. [...]

Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]

"If someone challenges your character and takes the interpretation of the NAACP as proof of a man's character, what kind of a world do you live in?" Dr. Paul asked.

In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.

"If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them," Dr. Paul said.

May 22, 1996 Dallas Morning News:


Some blogs, some in the LGF comments section and AllahPundit at HotAir are saying that it doesn't matter who the author is. I counter that it does. If Ron Paul lied about authorship, then he's made a false statement during a presidential campaign right now, rather than having published a newsletter with racist statements two decades ago. Considering the evidence, he has to disprove his authorship before getting a pass on it. If he proves he is not the author, then we can begin examining what degree of knowledge and control he had.

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Gaza Hospital Ambulance Fuel Looted by Hamas

Ramallah – Ma'an – The Palestinian health ministry of the Ramallah-based caretaker government said on Thursday that "Hamas militias" have looted the fuel stores destined for hospital vehicles in the Gaza Strip.

A statement released by the health ministry said that fuel from the European hospital in the Gaza Strip had been stolen by the director of the hospital drivers to supply the Hamas-affiliated Executive Force.

The statement explained that the fuel reserve had been supplied by the ministry to enable the hospital to continue working for as long as possible.

The desperate shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip has meant that gas stations have shut down and most cars are off the road as Israel continues its reduction of vital fuel supplies.

Remember that next time Hamas spokesmen complain about the humanitarian toll of the blockade, it isn't the humanitarian part of it that interests them.

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Why Neither Conservatives nor Liberals Will Stop Immigration

Immigration can be a blessing or immigration can be a curse. The difference is often a question of selectivity. It's a question of who those immigrants are and what their values are. Most nations have been shaped by migrating populations, for the better or the worse.

Sometime around the 19th century American Democrats discovered that immigrants were more than just a useful source of cheap labor, but that they were ideal for farming out and creating a power base. Aaron Burr, who would go on to become the Democratic Vice President under Jefferson, kill Alexander Hamilton and plot a Northern secession and a takeover of Mexico, got his first taste of power when he used a fraudulent ice company funding scheme to open up New York voting to non-property owners. By the 19th century Democrats were legalizing immigrants right off the boat with two witnesses on hand to swear to the status of every newly arrived immigrant, even if he didn't speak English.

The problem was that most of those immigrants tended to get jobs, produce a second generation, move on and become socially or politically conservative. Unions provided a temporary stopgap for Democrats trying to hold on to the working class vote but Reagan beat them there. Race and religion proved to be somewhat more enduring methods of plantation politics, but in the end those were far too feeble bases. To perpetuate the Democratic vote, perpetual immigration was and is required. New immigrants feed the Democratic party which is based around catering to the supposedly disenfranchised. Of course that requires disenfranchised people which requires constant immigration.

In Europe, liberal parties discovered the same thing late in the 20th century, that the flow of immigrants who were there as cheap labor if given the vote, would be certain to vote for them. These parties were forced to make the same transition that the American liberal Tammany Hall party machine had made when it went from keeping the Irish out to inviting them in, once it was clear that harnessing immigrants meant a seat of power for liberal politicians.

One might imagine that conservatives would see things otherwise, but that is too naive. Conservatism is the flip side of liberalism, conservative movements often require some progressive movement to be reactionary toward, just as some clergymen need violent movies and pornography to denounce, many conservative politicians need immigration to create a constant flow of change in order to secure their own place with a traditional constituency.

Consider Tancredo's endorsement of Romney, a candidate best known for campaigning on immigration endorsing a candidate with nearly no immigration credibility whatsoever. But what a politician appears to value is not what he always really values.

Politicians are often lawyers and often think the way lawyers do. To remain in demand, you need a problem that appeals to a certain segment of the public, which also requires that the problem continue being a problem. If divorce ended, divorce lawyers would be out of business. If murder rates dropped, what would criminal defense attorneys do. There are plenty of conservative politicians that campaign against immigration but would not remotely want the problem to go away.

Beyond them of course, American conservatives have come to represent free enterprise, which in its distorted sense places the interests of corporations above the interest of the nation or the public. And corporations want cheap labor above all else. Big businesses in the 19th century in the supposedly anti-slavery North were willing to embrace slavery to keep the international trade going. Those same businesses promoted the importation of immigrants in order to feed the machine of Industrial slavery that took in 7 year olds and spat out disfigured and blinded 9 year olds. Not as much has changed as people like to think. Politicians face a business climate in which businesses demand that either a blind eye is turned to their illegal labor practices or they'll move on to Mexico or China. And so the blind eye gets turned regardless of who is in office because in the end politicians protect the jobs and businesses in their district and every politician has such businesses to protect.

Finally both liberal and conservative politicians are dedicated to government spending, which requires an expanding tax base which requires an expanding population of workers. With birth rates dropping across the West, that expanding population can only come from immigration. Neither liberal nor conservative politicians are genuinely committed to cutting entitlements or cutting pork or cutting budgets and to keep the flow of spending going, more workers must be taxed, more corporations must be appeased with cheap labor and the great river of immigration must continue.

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Ron Paul Campaign Runs a Neo-Confederate Leader's Endorsement

Most people won't spend too much time poking through the list of obscure figures listed on the Ron Paul 2008 website as endorsing Ron Paul for President. The Ron Paul campaign has carefully sanitized the list excluding notorious racist Ron Paul supporters like Pat Buchanan, Larry Pratt or David Duke or burying them in the Acclaim section (itself a dishonest list that includes Ron Paul opponents like Giuliani and dead figures like Ronald Reagan who aren't remotely endorsing Ron Paul's Presidential campaign), though they clumsily did leave in Don R. Griffin, Buchanan's Missouri campaign chairman.

But that is a typical example of the list being sanitized when it comes to the more famous or infamous figures, but camouflaged when it comes to the less famous ones. Case in point under Pastors and Clergy, the Rev. Jacob Bogle listed on the nomination only as "Rev. Jacob Bogle FAS". The Rev writes;

“It is my honor to endorse Rep. Ron Paul for president in 2008. His message is one which transcends all barriers, political, socioeconomically, religious ad nauseam. For more than 20 years Dr. Paul has proven himself to be not only a true patriot and Constitutionalist but also a real friend of the people. His flawless voting record and strength of character proves that he and he alone is the best candidate for president. The nation has lost its way but praise be to Providence we have a man who has the message, know-how and drive to help show us back to our once glorious days.”

Of course that message is so wonderfully camouflaged and politically correct you might never think to ask what those "once glorious days" involved. If your guess involved plantations, well let's just say you're getting warmer, because the Rev. Jacob Bogle FAS is no retired minister sitting by the fire.

Jacob Bogle is actually the Chairman of the Southern Party of Tennessee, the Tennessee Division Commander of the Southern Confederate Front, the former Vice Chairman of the Southern Independence Party of Tennessee and oh yes, the creator of the Jefferson Davis Fan Club. In other words he's a neo-confederate and he does not appear to be a working minister.

That sure provides a whole other context to those "once glorious days", as does this badly misspelled essay on The Law of Natural Segregation on his website or this charming little poem on his party's website

The only way to move at all
Is to tear it down and watch it all fall
And from the ashes of a government torn
Can liberty be resurrected and freedom reborn
But not until this dead limb is removed
Can the so-called “American Legacy” be disproved
That dream is but a battle cry away
And tomorrow we could be singing God Bless the CSA!!!

The CSA by the way is the Confederate States of America. It's an interesting endorsement for a man running for the office of the President of the United States, but perhaps not so surprising considering that Ron Paul counts plenty of neo-confederates as his friends. Ron Paul has even appeared as a spokesman at a neo-confederate conference on the theme of "The Once and Future Republic of Texas".

None of this can be too surprising for anyone watching Ron Paul's shameful appearance on Meet the Press with Tim Russert where he insisted that the civil war was wrong and that the whole matter should have been settled by buying up all the slaves. Now this was typical neo-confederate propaganda because it concedes the premise that millions of human beings were property to be paid for and that the United States was at fault.

The fact of the matter though was that the Civil War was not fought because the government refused to pay for the slaves, like the Cold War it was a collision between two economic systems, the individual initiative of American settlers and the slave system that was fought out in places like Kansas before erupting into civil war. Slavery was an economic system, one that enslaved millions of black people and reduced millions of whites to the bottom of the economic ladder. It began with indentured servants and ended with people like Jefferson breeding and owning their own wife's half-sister. It was backed both by big business in the North and the South and it was not going to go away on its own for decades if not longer.

Of course Ron Paul knows this and he knows quite well that he's reciting neo-confederate propaganda. Just as his policies are not about the Constitution, neo-confederates have of course always used the Constitution as a cloak, but they are about dismantling the United States, pruning down the Federal government and replacing it with a Confederacy under the guise of States Rights, also the key rallying call of Neo-Confederates.

Take a look at this apologetic for the Confederacy on the Lew Rockwell website and its emphasis on the Constitution and the rights of States. It's of course virtually identical to Ron Paul's themes and not only does the author support Ron Paul but Lew Rockwell was Ron Paul's former Congressional Chief of Staff who authored Ron Paul's infamous newsletter claiming that 95 percent of black men are criminals. Lew Rockwell itself featured outright racists like Sam Francis who openly endorsed slavery. And while Sam Francis is dead, Ron Paul supporters continue quoting him in defense of Ron Paul. Neo-Nazi leader Bill White listed Sam Francis along with Joe Sobran and Pat Buchanan (both current Ron Paul supporters) as the founders of a regular dinner later taken over by Council of Conservative Citizens aka David Duke and the KKK, writing;

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Now Ron Paul has the right to believe whatever he wants and to run for public office. He has the right to accept the endorsements of neo-confederates though it isn't legal for him to act on them. But at the bare minimum, he needs to be honest about it. Instead his campaign clumsily tries to camouflage his ties with the far right as they keep trying to put lipstick on the pig. The problem is that underneath it all the Emperor of the Racist is naked.

For bonus points, the clergy list of endorsements contains Bill Barnwell, another Lew Rockwell contributor, whose obsessions are the evils of the Jews, Israel, the War on Terror and conservative Evangelical Christians in that order.

Update: The Ron Paul campaign has accessed this post and are aware of it. The ball is in their court.

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Friday Afternoon Roundup - Meet the 2008, Same as 2007

Weekend viewing - See the documentary of Israel's raid on Saddam's nuclear reactor

The old year goes, the new year comes and very little has changed. 2000 seemed like a banner year for a new world, as I wrote once but that is water under the bridge. We live in an increasingly uncertain world in a sliding state of decline.

My story on Anisa Abd el Fattah is getting a lot of attention and I don't want to make a big deal out of this or whine about credit, I'm glad the story is getting out, I do want to point out that I first referred to this on December 21st after mentioning it in the LGF comments section and elsewhere. I did a post on it on the 27th. Patrick at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism picked it up on the 31st and properly credited me, but his post was essentially my post with the Anisa Yahoo messages fully laid out. Atlas picked up his post and briefly referenced me, most other blogs linking in haven't even bothered to do that much. I have no complaints against Patrick whose post mentioned me several times and I'm not going to rant about credit. In previous years when I discovered something, it might as well have gone unwritten, so as I said I'm glad the story is getting picked up regardless of attribution, but if the anti-jihad blogsphere wants to see original research get done on blogs, it helps to support the people doing it. Whoever those people are. Sultan Knish

Shalom International is organizing rallies in New York City, Washington D.C. and Miami on January 10th at 12 noon to protest against Annapolis and the division of Yerushalayim. The New York rally will take place outside the Israeli consulate between 42nd and 43nd Street. The D.C. rally will take place In front of the White House and the Miami rally next to the Torch of Friendship.

Michael Totten has another great piece from Iraq, A Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet that documents the tremendous improvement that has come to Fallujah.

The Anti-Racist blog has an update Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Investigation into anti-Semitism at UC Irvine

Elder of Ziyon has a good post on Purifying the Arab Lands

The idea of an Aryan-like "purification" of "Arab land" is not assumed to be objectionable or controversial; it is a given that the Yemen Times readership will, in total, agree with that aim. The existence of a Jewish state is considered a pollution of the great Arab nation, something that must be excised completely. Almost certainly, all Arabs would prefer to see the entire country uninhabited than to have Jews control it. It is not a political issue nor an issue of putative "justice" - one doesn't use the word "purification" in a political or judicial context. It is Arab shame that drives their thinking, and everything else is a smokescreen to justify what is in the end a visceral hatred.

The National Post has a piece on Imams refusing to use Bhutto's name in their mosques

Ms. Bhutto had not yet received a proper burial before the attacks on her character started appearing. The vice-president of the Canadian Arab Federation circulated an article lambasting Ms. Bhutto, mocking her as stooge of the West. It did not end at that level. Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star dedicated an entire column to attacking Ms. Bhutto's legacy and labelling her as corrupt and, God forbid the thought, pro-West. As if her being pro-Western was somehow anti-Canadian.

The Taliban Commanders appear to be turning on each other

A key Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan has been dismissed for disobeying the militant group's rules, a Taliban spokesman said Saturday. Mahajir said that Mansoor Dadullah had interrogated some "spies" and found that some Taliban commanders were involved in Mullah Dadullah's death.

"That's why some of these commanders who were involved in the killing of Mullah Dadullah have made a conspiracy against us," said Mahajir, a spokesman.

Over at the Yemen Times, (via Religion of Peace) an excellent example of the faux-civilized psychosis of the muslim mindset

This title may sound strange, but it’s actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic because I really do mean what it indicates. Violence is a broad term, especially when used regarding women. In this piece, I want to shed light on those instances where violence against women is a must.

Some human rights organizations recently have attacked violent acts against women, standing against any type of violence – even that between a father and daughter – and citing the cases of some women as examples. One such case involved a woman whose husband allegedly had beaten her. Without revealing the husband’s reasons for doing so, such human rights organizations immediately urged the wife to complain to the police and the courts, while at the same time generalizing the instance and other similar solutions to any type of violence.

Despite such instructions, beating is considered a type of violence, according to human rights organizations, which urge women to complain to the police. I just wonder what kind of families our societies would have if Muslim women started doing this regarding their husbands.

Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.

And on that note, we have a new honor killing in the United States by a Muslim father of his two daughters after a recent honor killing in Canada by a father of his daughter.

Over at the Keli Ata blog, she writes on Gagging Jews at the Temple Mount

British blogger Lionheart expects to be arrested on his return to the UK for speaking out against the British Jihad.

Lemon Lime Moon writes on suspicions about the Bhutto murder

Latest reports from her assistant said that she was "seeping fluids" while being cleaned for the grave. Well dead bodies don't seep fluids.

Mrs. Bhutto had her own brother murdered while she was in power and later her mother said that she had nursed a viper at her breast. Indeed she did. But vipers are created after the viper kind are they not? Now they will keep this corrupt, evil family in power by hook or by crook(literally) by running her 19 year old son as their puppet for leader of Pakistan. The next generation of corruption wil begin. No one can possibly think this 19 year old can run a nation which is mainly disparate warring tribes and never should have been a nation at all anyway. Pakistan was another creation of Britian that would come to haunt them and others. Before Britain went on a nation making spree, Pakistan was part of India and was made up of many different races of people with different tribal backgrounds. The only "glue" that held them together as a nation was Islam. But Islam cannot long hold anything together as it in itself contains more tribal warfare and is doomed to disintegrate over time. The only thing that holds Islam together is a common enemy and war.

US News and World report meanwhile says that two thirds of Muslims in 4 countries want a Caliphate. Sultan Knish

Finally a word of advice for anyone using a wireless router at home, make sure that it's secured. I've only recently discovered that my router was unsecured after making several calls to discover why my internet speed seemed to drop at certain times of the night and day. It appears that someone living near me was piggybacking on my internet connection for quite a while and considering the security issues involved, that's hopefully all he or she was doing.

If you use a wireless internet router, it's important to keep your connection secured. There are useful tips here at Microsoft's site and a video over at Cnet on how to do that, If like me you had your wireless router set up by a company, they may not have secured it and it's something you need to do yourself, especially if you live in a residential building or have neighbors close by. Take some or more of these steps to get additional security.

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Palestinian Arabs Mark Saddam's Death

In the West Bank town of Halhoul, just days after two Israeli hikers were murdered by Fatah terrorists nearby, Palestinian Arabs held what is becoming an annual event to commemorate Saddam's death. This was the scene a year ago in Halhoul;

Arabs across the Palestinian Authority continued their demonstrations Monday mourning the death of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was hanged Saturday in Baghdad. Some 500 people attended a rally mourning Saddam in Halhoul, near Hebron in the southern part of Judea

and now a year later the crowd has only grown and the scene has become more elaborate

The demonstration in this southern town in the occupied West Bank opened with the silent tribute for the former Iraqi president who was one of the most popular Arab leaders among Palestinians.

Holding Saddam portraits and gripping Iraqi and Palestinian flags, rally participants recited poems praising the dictator who was hanged on December 30, 2006 in Iraq after a court sentenced him to death for his role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of ethnic Kurds in 1988.

After a sketch parodying Saddam's trial by an Iraqi court, the demonstrators burned Israeli and American flags.

The Halhoul commemorations are no rogue gatherings, similar events continue to occur all across the West Bank. Nor are these events isolated. President Abbas, whom the US government insists on calling a moderate, issued the following statement just a year ago after Saddam Hussein's execution.

Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas has publicly praised the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, in a statement read on PA television and radio, saying, “Saddam Hussein has entered history as a symbol of state nationalism and Pan-Arab nationalism who helped the Palestinian revolution.”

The Palestinian Arabs of course have a long love affair with Saddam and their deluded belief in his greatness could only die with great difficulty. Consider this look back at how they took Saddam's defeat in 1991

The Palestinians tell their own version of the war. An Iraqi Scud missile slammed into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, killing 400 Soviet Jewish immigrants just off the plane. Thousands of Israelis were slaughtered by the Scuds, and the Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev lies in ruins. The Americans lost 100,000 soldiers in battle. Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait was only tactical, designed to lull the allies, while Saddam Hussein waited for the right moment to incinerate the Jewish state. "Every Palestinian knows that Saddam will emerge victorious," said Abdul Majeed Shahin as he discussed the war with a dozen others gathered in Jerusalem's Muslim quarter last week. "You see, he's got a secret weapon."

Such wild fantasies are remarkably widespread among Saddam's Palestinian supporters, who simply cannot accept that they have once again backed a loser. Even after the Iraqi leader cavalierly jettisoned their cause during last- ditch peace negotiations with the Soviets, many Palestinians refuse to believe they have been abandoned by yet another Arab leader

Palestinians blame everyone but themselves for their latest setback, failing to acknowledge that the enormous political and financial damage they are suffering is largely self-inflicted. By siding with Saddam, they lost sympathy and support among the allies, both Western and Arab...

But so far the reaction on the streets of the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan is defiant. "Maybe he lost the battle, but that doesn't mean he lost the war," said Faisal al Afghani, whose Amman souvenir shop sells miniature Scud missiles. "We haven't had a leader like Saddam since Saladin." Unable to digest Iraq's defeat, many sought refuge in elaborate rationalizations. "The surrender of Iraqi troops," declared Stawri Khayat, a 30-year-old linguist from Jerusalem, "was staged by the Zionist-controlled media."

This capacity for denial even in the face of manifest evidence may strike Westerners as absurd, but it is deeply rooted in the Arab psyche's mixture of bravado, rhetoric and religious conviction. Arabs denied Israel's existence for decades and believed that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had a trick up his sleeve when his air force was destroyed in the first hours of the 1967 war. Fouad Subhi, a butcher at the Baqa'a refugee camp near Amman, still puts his faith in Saddam: "After he rebuilds Iraq, he will try to liberate Palestine again."

The clandestine leadership of the intifadeh ordered Palestinians to tune in to Jordanian television, which offered a rosier version of events. Many Arabs avoided the news altogether. Said Thalji Shwaiky, a vegetable seller from the West Bank village of Halhoul, "I can't stand the humiliation."

And that is at the root of it all, pride and shame, not in any accomplishment but gained from tyranny, brutality and murder.

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Why the Jihad Keeps Rolling or Lenin's Noose

The War on Terror may be one of the most unique conflicts in history because it is a conflict in which the nations under attack continue to provide money and logistics, sometimes even training and weapons, to their attackers.

Lenin famously said that "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them", except these days it's more a matter of capitalism buying the rope over and over again and hanging itself.

The Jihad needs money and logistics. The West has been providing money in the forms of oil purchases and foreign aid to the tune of billions of dollars annually. The logistics of moving Jihadis and Jihad supporting populations to the "front line" in Western nations has been handled by an open door immigration policy. It has been consistently easier to travel from Saudi Arabia to America than from just about any other country. As Joel Mowbray wrote;

"Three Saudis who were among the last of the Sept. 11 homicide hijackers to enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their visas; they went to a travel agent, where they only submitted a short, two-page form and a photo. The program that made this possible, Visa Express, is still using travel agents in Saudi Arabia to fill this vital role in United States border security. Most Saudi applicants never come into direct contact with a U.S. citizen until stepping off the airplane onto American soil."

Under pressure from tech companies and colleges, HB-1 and student visas continue to import Muslims in large numbers into the United States where some promptly vanish out of sight while others settle down and contribute their part to the Jihad. Never before in history has a country imported its own enemies at such a rate and never before has any enemy had the convenience of shipping its soldiers on enemy airplanes to enemy soil with the full cooperation and permission of its target.

Meanwhile the money continues to flow out as gas and oil purchases feed the Muslim regimes of the Middle East and Putin's revived Russian tyranny that is arming and encouraging them to fight the United States. Russia's latest R&D weapons programs benefit America's enemies and they're paid for by petrodollars. The Russian weapons provided to Saddam might as well have had Made in the USA stamped on them.

The bottom line is a capitalism run amok. Healthy free enterprise is the product of the citizens of a free nation. When free enterprise becomes disconnected from honest labor, personal ownership and national identity, it becomes runaway globalism and corporatism. A healthy system of free enterprise neither sells nooses nor buys them. An unhealthy one will buy and sell anything.

An economy built on debt and credit is fundamentally unstable. A system of companies built on the perception of value and on making money from the rise and fall of that perception, rather than on actual profits and losses builds castles in the sky and permitted the utter insanity that led to the dot com crash. Companies that succeed or fail based on the perception of their value play host to an endless parade of CEO's with no real stake in the life of company whose only mission is to raise the perceived value of the company a few points before bailing out with a golden parachute.

As American companies outsource their work abroad to gain cheaper labor, those companies become foreign companies, as Haliburton moving their headquarters from Houston to Dubai demonstrates. Haliburton is simply the tail end of a longer trend because much of the Arab oil industry began life as an American oil industry. Consider that Aramco began as an American corporation until the Saudis threatened to nationalize it. With Texaco and Shell Oil, Aramco already runs three gulf coast refineries under the Motiva name. Meanwhile Putin's Lukoil has already consumed Getty and over 700 Mobil stations. In effect America is selling off its own oil industry to fuel the Jihad.

Immigration and oil provide everything the Jihad needs, it transports the soldiers of the Jihad into the heart of our towns and cities and funds the regimes that encourage and motivate them. Lenin's noose is closing around our necks drawn tight not by the dead hand of history but by our own hands.

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2007: The Year the Democrats Lost It

If 2006 was the year that the Republicans lost it, 2007 was the year that the Democrats lost it snatching legislative and political defeat after defeat out of the jaws of victory. For twelve long years the Democrats had struggled to regain congress. For six years of the Bush Presidency the Democrats had been driven to hysteria and desperate measures to try and regain either congress or the Presidency and eventually losing hope decided to just wait until the Republican President and congress screwed up badly enough to open the door for them to return.

In 2006 that finally happened, the Democrats took Congress and then seemingly having forgotten how to run it, they spent the remaining time until today losing it. It's not entirely possible to blame the Democrats for sticking with what worked. Claiming that Bush had stolen the election, being pro-war, embracing the anti-war movement had all failed. The one thing that had worked was waiting until the Republicans screwed up badly enough and walking in to their seats. And they kept doing that all through 2007, the problem was that the public had already elected them and expected them to actually fix things.

The Democrats congress wrangled with itself and generally did nothing. By late 2007 Bush was back at the wheel and slapping Congress around, something that should have been politically impossible for a lame duck President with low approval ratings and a hostile majority in both houses, but by then congress itself had approval ratings that were nearly as low and no sense of direction. The Surge had worked and the Bush Administration seemed to have some sense of direction, meanwhile Congress was engaging in freelance diplomacy with trips to Syria and Pelosi and Reid were overshadowed by Obama and Clinton. It was a disaster all around.

The Democrats had based their election hopes on losses in Iraq. Their own experts had told them that a turnaround wouldn't happen, fortunately for American troops and unfortunately for the election prospects of the Democrats, a turnaround did happen. Had the Democrats been capable of any political courage, they might have stuck to being anti-war, instead they began waffling all over again, outraging the radicals at MoveOn.org that had helped pay for the election while annoying the people that had actually elected them with their indecisiveness and general uselessness.

The Democratic victory in 2006 had come at the cost of admitting many conservative Democrats into their ranks, particularly to pile up wins in Southern and Western states. The price of victory was a divided party that was even less capable of presenting any kind of united front. Reduced to a weird fusion of the Democratic party of the 20's and the Democratic party of the 80's, Congress became overshadowed by its own Presidential candidates and its failure to expect success in Iraq and deferred to its default mode of waiting around for Bush to fail and for a Democrat to take the White House. The public punished that indecisiveness with low approval ratings and general disgust.

The Democrats had managed to alienate both their mainstream base and their radical supporters, trapped between the two, they had simply frozen like deer in the headlights of history. While the Republicans were hardly in good shape, the Democrats had managed to dissolve into jello and squander their victories in a little over a year, something that took the Republicans the better part of a decade. It was certainly one area where the Democrats had accomplished more than Republicans, but not quite worth the bragging rights.

On the Presidential campaign trail meanwhile, the likeliest Democratic presidential nominee is a woman that more than half the country is polled as saying they won't vote for, whose politics are far left of center and yet is actually the conservative compared to her closest rival, a first term Senator with no political experience.

As before the only hope for the Democratic party is that the Republicans screw up badly enough for them to take power and with a chaotic Republican field of candidates, filled with liberals out of touch with Americans, that might well happen. 2007 was the year the Democrats lost it but 2008 might be the year the Republicans lose it.

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