Life Imitating Art

Couldn't help but notice the juxtaposition of these two neighboring headlines at Yahoo:

'War of the Worlds' tops $21M on opening day

and

Muslim nations face growing AIDS crisis

Perhaps life is imitating art?

Furthering this theme, note also the resurgence of polio, due to a rejection of Western concepts of "medicine" by muslim clerics in Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Egypt:

A day after Bihar launched the fifth round of a polio immunisation drive this year, officials admitted Monday that the campaign may come to a naught - with the state reporting the highest incidence of the disease.
...
According to a Unicef report, India is among the five countries of the world where total polio eradication is yet to be achieved, the others being Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt and Nigeria.

Note that we're talking about the backward, mostly muslim regions of India like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where insane atrocities are sanctioned by "islamic society" every day:

A young Indian woman allegedly raped by her father-in-law has been ordered by village elders to live with him as his wife, a report said on Wednesday.

Muslim clerics who serve as village elders in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh decided that the woman's rape by her father-in-law had "nullified" her marriage to her husband, the Asian Age daily said.

And the muslim regions of Nigeria:

LAGOS, June 28, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The Supreme Council for Shari'ah in Nigeria (SCSN) has urged all states applying Islamic Shari'ah to give the thumbs-down to a draft family law on the grounds of containing articles violating the tenets of Islam.
...
Twelve of Nigeria’s 36 states have gradually applied the provisions of Shari`ah since the return of democracy to the country in 1999, despite the fierce opposition from the federal government.
...
The SCNS objects to an article punishing a father who blocs his child vaccination with five years in jail, a fine of five thousand dollars or both.

A number of Nigerian scholars have last year triggered a controversy after issuing a fatwa urging citizens not to have their children vaccinated against polio, prompting four predominantly Muslim states to shun the vaccination campaign.

The islamic belief system is an evil blight and must be eradicated. These people must be freed!

I cannot abide this primitive savagery.

People in this Land of the Lotus Eaters are so utterly clueless about the true state of the world, and just how undeservingly and amazingly lucky they are to stand on the shoulders of philosphical, enlightened geniuses, the miserable little ungrateful dwarves.

Obsessed with meaningless trivialities such as the fake love life of Tom Cruise or Oprah's reading list, the fact that arabs are this very minute taking black slaves in the Sudan is ignored.

Or that children are still sacrificed to Kali in India.

Or that a 9-year-old girl was married to a dog to ward of an "evil spell" because her teeth didn't look right.

Or that hundreds and perhaps thousands (THOUSANDS!!!) of African boys have been murdered in Britain as human sacrifices to barbaric tribal cult gods, brought into Britain from Nigeria by organized human slavery rings:

'Adam', as he has been called by police officers, is believed to have been smuggled into Britain to be killed in a ‘religious’ ritual.

The ritual theory came about after the discovery of ground bone fragments in his stomach, indicating that he had swallowed a potion shortly before his death. The manner in which his head and limbs were removed and blood drained also suggested that a human sacrifice had ocurred.

Initially, the ritual was thought to be a ‘muti murder’ – a South African rite where body parts are used as ‘medicine’. However, certain indications (too gruesome to detail here) ran counter to what is known about muti customs.

Orange shorts, placed on Adam 24 hours after his death, provided another clue. The colour orange is associated with ‘Ochun’, one of the 400 ‘Orisha’ or ancestor gods of the Yoruba people, Nigeria’s second biggest ethnic group.

Note that:

There are no laws against human trafficking in Nigeria and it has an active and growing market in people. While the victims are mainly women, the International Labour Organisation has also identified an extensive trade in child labourers and, in some cases, in children for human sacrifice.

Though the traffic is most widespread within the African continent, police and immigration officials across Europe have reported a steady flow of Nigerian women and children across their borders. Most end up as domestic servants, market traders, child beggars and prostitutes. The only appropriate word for this business is ‘slavery’.

Scotland Yard complains of a "wall of silence" from the immigrant "community" they let infiltrate their country, and of course the also get tagged as racists and not being sensitive enough to other cultures.

So many are in deep denial.

Hussein's Pesticides

We still hear the "no WMD! Iraq war unjustified!" mantra.

Not that there are other key strategic reasons for the war other than the narrow issue of chemical weapons.

And nevermind his ballistic missile program -- which nobody denies! -- was just as much a material breach of the UN resolutions and the GWI cease-fire agreements as the chemical weapons would be.

But let's still review, as this straw-man will be a rallying-cry of scoundrels forever unless it's completely discredited.

Fact #1 is we KNOW Hussein had chemical weapons stockpiles, since he used them. And Clinton bombed them in 1998.

Fact #2 is we KNOW the UN inspections team STILL has not been able to account for several tons of nerve gas and other deadly biological agents that it believes Hussein produced. Somehow failing to find them is taken to mean they never existed, but the logic doesn't hold up.

Fact #3 is we KNOW, from the ISG report, that Hussein maintained programs to start up production as soon as he felt it would be feasible.

Fact #4 is we KNOW that Hussein KNEW that inspectors were popping in and out, so surely he wouldn't be so dumb as to leave big warehouses full of crates of chemical shells sitting around, would he?

Yet such warehouses are apparently the only thing that will satisfy the ankle-biters, since of course they know such athing would be an absurdity, so they can ankle-bite with impunity until kingdom-come (which may be sooner than they think, if they get their way...)

So if YOU were an evil dictator, what would YOU do to hide your program?

Hid it in plain sight, maybe, in the form of ambiguous dual-use chemicals?

Check out this story, from a year ago!

When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice.
...
In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed that the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents. The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged to Insight had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

In taking apart Iraq's clandestine procurement network, Duelfer said his investigators had discovered that "the primary source of illicit financing for this system was oil smuggling conducted through government-to-government protocols negotiated with neighboring countries [and] from kickback payments made on contracts set up through the U.N. oil-for-food program" [see "Documents Prove U.N. Oil Corruption," April 27-May 10].

What the president's critics and the media widely have portrayed as the most dramatic failure of the U.S. case against Saddam has been the claimed failure to find "stockpiles" of chemical and biological weapons. But in a June 2003 Washington Post op-ed, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus called such criticism "a distortion and a trivialization of a major threat to international peace and security."
...
Until now, Bush's critics say, no stockpiles of CW agents made with those precursors have been found. The snap conclusion they draw is that the administration "lied" to the American people to create a pretext for invading Iraq.

But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.
...
But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the "finds" Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam's chemical-weapons "stockpiles" look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble. "Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena," Hanson says. "In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the 'grandfather' of modern-day nerve agents."
...
When coalition forces entered Iraq, "huge warehouses and caches of 'commercial and agricultural' chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists," Hanson writes. "What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches."
...
At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large "agricultural supply" area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex" that was shown to reporters - with unpleasant results. "More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent," Hanson says. "But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into nonexistence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural-commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers 6 feet underground. The 'agricultural site' was also colocated with a military ammunition dump - evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG."

That wasn't the only significant find by coalition troops of probable CW stockpiles, Hanson believes. Near the northern Iraqi town of Bai'ji, where Saddam had built a chemical-weapons plant known to the United States from nearly 12 years of inspections, elements of the 4th Infantry Division found 55-gallon drums containing a substance identified through mass spectrometry analysis as cyclosarin - a nerve agent. Nearby were surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, gas masks and a mobile laboratory that could have been used to mix chemicals at the site. "Of course, later tests by the experts revealed that these were only the ubiquitous pesticides that everybody was turning up," Hanson says. "It seems Iraqi soldiers were obsessed with keeping ammo dumps insect-free, according to the reading of the evidence now enshrined by the conventional wisdom that 'no WMD stockpiles have been discovered.'"
...
The discoveries Hanson describes are not dramatic. And that's the problem: Finding real stockpiles in grubby ammo dumps doesn't fit the image the media and the president's critics carefully have fed to the public of what Iraq's weapons ought to look like.

A senior administration official who has gone through the intelligence reporting from Iraq as well as the earlier reports from U.N. arms inspectors refers to another well-documented allegation. "The Iraqis admitted they had made 3.9 tons of VX," a powerful nerve gas, but claimed they had never weaponized it. The U.N. inspectors "felt they had more. But where did it go?" The Iraqis never provided any explanation of what had happened to their VX stockpiles.

Iran's New President

Remember when Iranian islamists, backed by Khomeini, who had returned to Iran with the blessings of France, invaded the sovereign territory of the US embassy in 1979 and held Americans hostage for 444 days?

This act of war went unpunished, and one can consider a state of war to have existed since then. We only finally noticed it a few years ago.

Well check out this interesting photo that has surfaced.

Now look at these photos of Iran's new "president", hand-picked by the Supreme Leader in a sham "election."

Same guy!

He was apparently one of the ringleaders, a security chief and observer of the interrogations of the hostages.

See stories here and here.

What does the MSM have to say?

After mentioning that 5 ex-hostages seem to think it might be the same man, they then do all they can to discredit the idea, quoting some other ex-hostages who can't remember, and noting that in 25 years memories will fade, especially for identifying people from another ethnicity (really?), and that well, Iranian spokespeople deny it.

Not everyone agrees. Former hostage and retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer said he doesn't recognize Ahmadinejad, by face or name, as one of his captors.

Several former students among the hostage-takers also said Ahmadinejad did not participate. And a close aide to Ahmadinejad denied the president-elect took part in the seizure of the embassy or in holding Americans hostage.

So, end of story! Move along!

NOT!

Just look at the photos!

So, Iran's president is a hostile invader of US territory, and violator of the most basic rules of civilized diplomacy, and thus should be made an example of.

Thank you, Jimmy Carter...WORST PRESIDENT EVER!!!

Killing with Kindness

Some interesting insights here about why Islamists really mean it when they pronounce they "love the koran more than their own families" (which is yet another disproof of the proposition they want to raise their families just like we do -- talk about projection and cultural imperialism!)

Two things explain the effectiveness of Koran desecration as a means of breaking Muslim morale. The first is that the Koran hosts Allah's incarnate presence, so to speak. The second is the peculiar importance of success to Islam. Unlike Christianity or Judaism, worldly success is the ultimate testimony of Islam; the muezzin calls, "Come to prayer. Come to success!", and its emblem is the crescent, a symbol of secular growth, as opposed to the cross, a symbol of renunciation of worldly things. As I wrote in Horror and humiliation in Fallujah (April 27, 2004),

The West cannot endure without faith that a loving Father dwells beyond the clouds that obscure His throne ... The Islamic world cannot endure without confidence in victory, that to "come to prayer" is the same thing as to "come to success". Humiliation - the perception that the ummah cannot reward those who submit to it - is beyond its capacity to endure.

Abusing the Koran is the equivalent of abusing Allah himself, and tells the Muslim prisoner that his god is powerless to avenge insults. Again, I do not condone such things, but merely observe that an effective weapon is more likely to be put to use. As I wrote in "Horror and humiliation in Fallujah:

Radical Islam has risen against the West in response to its humiliation - intentional or not - at Western hands. The West can break the revolt by inflicting even worse humiliation upon the Islamists, poisoning the confidence of their supporters in the Muslim world.

The ultimate in American condescension is the "Muslim World Outreach" strategy exposed by US News and World Report on April 25. [3] As David E Kaplan reported:

Although US officials say they are wary of being drawn into a theological battle, many have concluded that America can no longer sit on the sidelines as radicals and moderates fight over the future of a politicized religion with over a billion followers. The result has been an extraordinary - and growing - effort to influence what officials describe as an Islamic reformation.

Attempting to engineer an Islamic reformation may be the silliest initiative in foreign policy in the history of the world. The theological department of the Central Intelligence Agency will not persuade Muslims to loosen their grasp on the living presence of Allah on this Earth. In its tragic encounter with Islam, the West cannot help but inflict humiliation.

Isn't it ironic, that by completely misunderstanding them, we strike them with the most devastating weapon of trivialization of their deeply-held beliefs!

We may not understand them, and they may be fighting a different kind of battle than we're used to. But it works both ways: they don't truly understand us, and we're not fighting them how they expect to be, either!

The article above also goes into examples of medieval Christian violence, which is really totally irrelevant. What's the point? That doesn't explain or justify anything, and surely does us no good today. What, are we supposed to wait a few hundred years and hope a "reformation" happens? The structure of the koranic text pretty much precludes such an option anyway! Not to mention this notion that religions have to be around a certain amount of time before they "mature" is nonsense; they live in the world of today and had better learn how to live with it. And not to mention that islam is "supposedly" a perfection of judaism and christianity, and in fact is as old as they are -- according to their myths -- with Adam, Moses, Jesus, etc. all being good muslims. So they've had literally ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD for their "religion" to "mature."

It's not happening.

When the radicals are the purest muslims according to the unchangeable -- divine! -- text, there's nothing left to "reform" towards!

Radical islam IS the reformation!!!

Turning the Tables

Perhaps you have already seen the outrageous pronouncement by Andrew Jaspan, the editor-in-chief of one of Australia's dailies concerning the recently-rescued Australian hostage Douglas Woods:

"I was, I have to say, shocked by Douglas Wood’s use of the a---hole word, if I can put it like that, which I just thought was coarse and very ill-thought through and I think demeans the man and is one of the reasons why people are slightly sceptical of his motives and everything else.

"The issue really is largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive."

His motives?

INSENSITIVE???

This man was beaten and had several of his colleagues murdered in front of him by his captors, who forced him at gunpoint to make a plea for Australia to remove its troops.

It's just not possible to talk to people like Jaspan anymore. It's so offensive that the only rational response is a sharp knee to the groin.

Well, that's not the end of the story!

As I and others (such as Belmont Club) have pointed out, "non-state action" works both ways, bub, and I'd worry more about the effectiveness in the long run of the people who built the modern world's infrastructure rather than those who are merely parisitic to it:

A hostage held alongside Australian Douglas Wood in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to track down his former captors, promising to eliminate them one by one.

Swede Ulf Hjertstrom, who was held for several weeks with Mr Wood in Baghdad, was released by his kidnappers on May 30 ...

Now, he wants to find those responsible.

"I have now put some people to work to find these bastards,” he told the Ten Network today.

"I invested about $50,000 so far and we will get them one by one."

Wood: "The sooner the better!"

Hjertstrom: "These scum should be put out of business."

For example, have you heard of the case of Schapelle Corby, the Australian beauty therapist who was convicted in Indonesia for 20 years for having 9 pounds of marijuana in her luggage.

It is highly likely that it was placed there by a well-known smuggling ring that uses baggage handlers to place and remove drugs from the luggage of unsuspecting passengers, and that Corby was a completely random victim.

I mean, who in their right mind takes 9 pounds of marijuana to Islamic-law-ruled Indonesia? I don't know Corby, but from what I don't see in the news reports, she's apparently clean as a whistle. Occam's razor strongly points to innocence.

With luck, just maybe, she'll be "exchanged" for actual criminals held by Australia.

This has thus outraged Australia, especially after seeing that the reputed leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network operating in South-East Asia and mastermind of the Bali bombings there that killed 88 Australians was released after only a few months.

Well, that's how "Islamic Law" works against the infidel and for the jihadist.

But, private Westerners can grow Anthrax too. Indonesian embassies got several suspicious packages, forcing them to shut down, as the powder was some sort of biological agent.

All the powder turned out to be harmless.

This time.

Having an Impact

With regards to the Ground Zero memorial, at least word is getting out, though Pataki's comments have been criticized as sounding good but signifying little:

The debate over the International Freedom Center museum is playing out on talk shows, opinion pages and the Web. Victims' relatives protested the museum last week at ground zero, and more than 16,000 people have signed the Internet petition condemning it.

Critics say the institution is being hijacked by left-wing advisers who blame the U.S. for the world's wrongs — and will focus on events with tenuous connection to the terrorist attacks, such as segregation in America and the Holocaust.

Creators of the museum say it will offer inspiring stories of mankind's progress toward liberty, and the controversy will dissolve when people understand the museum's goal of highlighting great moments in the worldwide struggle for freedom.
...
"I don't think that there should be anything else there but a memorial to those people," said retired New York building inspector Edmund Caviasco, 75, whose daughter, Jean De Palma, died in the trade center collapse.

State officials overseeing the rebuilding process said this past week that the museum should present a patriotic affirmation of America's role in the world. Gov. George Pataki said he was demanding "an absolute guarantee" from ground zero cultural institutions that they would proceed "with total respect for the sanctity of that site."

"We're not going to let it turn into something anti-American, anti-freedom or questioning the values of New York, the values of America or the values of freedom," Pataki said.

Then pull the plug on this group, instead of just hoping for the best!

But academic advisers to the museum — who include the heads of the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First — envision something more complex and potentially controversial.

WHY is the ACLU involved in this at all? Are they experts in terrorism and/or museum-building, or are they merely opportunistic critics of the whole GWOT?

Bernstein's presidency of Human Rights First, which has sued Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld over alleged mistreatment of U.S. military detainees, has drawn fire from Burlingame, who says his role shows that the museum will be anti-American.

Duh.

But, it seems they've gone too far, and the counter-attack is on the roll:

Reeling from a House effort to cut its funding and a series of attacks over perceived political bias, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting faces a set of difficult challenges in coming weeks that could determine the nature and financial strength of stations around the country.

...CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, an outspoken critic of PBS' content, seems determined to force changes at PBS and NPR including pushing for a former Republican Party leader to head CPB.

They're screaming bloody murder over this. Ha ha!

But that's what it takes to bring back some semblance of balance.

Anderson Cooper

I had the misfortune of being a captive audience on a treadmill while CNN was on the overhead tv, and Anderson Cooper was interviewing Franklin Graham, who is the Rev. Billy Graham's son.

Or should I say, rather than interviewing, but taking him to task for having stated that allah is not the Judeo-Christian God, and that Islam is a vile thing, demanding its adherents prove their submission to it by killing others in the course of killing themselves for jihad.

Which are just objective facts.

As brave apostate Ali Sina points out, islam is the only major belief-system that does not embrace a form of the "Golden Rule", which states essentially to treat everyone with the same consideration one would wish for one's self. islam specifically reserves such consideration only for other muslims, and instructs that the infidels should be exploited or killed.

This little fact puts islam in the company with Satanism and the explicitly racist fringe group, the World Church of the Creator!

But Anderson would have none of it.

He trotted out the usual tired, totally discredited retorts and challenges.

For example, he pointed out that "Christians" have done bad things too -- which is a dumb argument in the first place, as it doesn't address the underlying philosophy, but merely demonstrates people are fallible, which we already know. That misses the point entirely about judging the utility of the philosophy.

But worse, he used the example of "Christians performed the Holocaust." And Graham didn't correct his historical error.

Hitler was not a Christian. Nazis were not Christians!

Why do people always think they were?

Naziism embraced a crackpot pagan mysticism drawn from Teutonic pre-Christian myths.

(BTW, who freed the slaves? The most ardent abolitionists were those who were most serious about their Christianity. And who were the slavers? Mostly Arab muslims. Who keeps slaves to this day, even when they're in this very country? Our friends, the Saudis. And that's the second case we've heard of recently! Why? Because islam not only doesn't stand against slavery, but it endorses it. You'd think that would be enough for the civil-rights-era liberals to get angry!)

Then Mr. Cooper let loose this whopper, having bought the propaganda whole-heartedly, saying that maybe those who believe in killing for jihad are "twisting" islam and being "un-islamic."

What a fool! He clearly knows nothing about anything.

What CAIR tells you, Anderson, is nothing but taqqiya: calculated lying for strategic advantage.

Here's an example of how ridiculous that "observation" is.

It would be like saying, well sure, the last 100 Popes have all said XYZ, because they believe Jesus supported XYZ; and the policy XYZ had been standard practice for 2000 years; but there's this priest we found running an underground church in China, and he says XYZ is wrong. Maybe that priest represents "true" Christianity! How dare you slander the church for holding opinion XYZ, when clearly only inauthentic so-called Christians believe it!

And then Mr. Cooper, you were suggesting Nazis represented authentic Christians when it suited your argument, when they were even non-Christian pagans!

Why aren't you directing your investigative journalistic power into exposing the terrible social evils promoted by islam, such as slavery?

Slavery in this country, under your nose, Mr. Cooper! Why aren't you making this a scandal half as big as when someone stubs their toe at Gitmo???

SLAVES, people!!!

ThoughtCrime

First they took away the guns.

Now they take away their freedom of religious-based speech:

A Christian pastor found guilty of vilifying muslims says he is prepared to go to jail in protest over Victoria's racial tolerance laws.

That's funny, I didn't know "muslim" was a "race". I thought it was a belief-system.

Apparently, no matter how heinous its tenets may be, it cannot be criticized. I guess we can't even inquire, if we live in Australia, about what those beliefs may be.

Two pastors involved with the Catch the Fire Ministries were last year found to have vilified Muslims at a Christian conference, and on a website, by suggesting the Koran promotes violence and terrorism.

Well if you read it, that's exactly what it promotes, in black and white, straight from the mouth of the prophet.

The tribunal says an apology is appropriate.

The Tribunal is inappropriate!
It has ordered the pastors to publish a statement acknowledging their legal breach and has requested an undertaking the comments would not be repeated.And as others pointed out, who will judge if the apology is good enough? Will they have to keep doing it until every muslim overlord is satisfied?

Is this not the stuff of nightmarish, kafkaesque show-trials?

Outside the tribunal Pastor Daniel Nalliah said the legislation is flawed.

"I will do everything I can, even if I have to go to prison, to make sure the vilification laws, the religious part of the vilification laws, be removed from the state of Victoria," Pastor Nalliah said.

"Right from the beginning we have stated we will not apologise, we will go to prison for standing for the truth."

Well, for once, a Christian minister who isn't an appeasing namby-pamby.

However the Islamic Council of Victoria has welcomed the ruling.

No doubt.

Keep pushing.

Push push push.

The backlash will be all the stronger.

We hold all the trump cards.

Freedom on the March

You wouldn't know it from the defeatist media, but Freedom is on the march, and it's directly tied to the actions of the Bush administration in ousting Hussein.

For example, one news story today is attempting to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory:

"Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."
...
Indeed, there are signs that the politics of the Iraq war are being reshaped by the continuing tide of bad news.

That "tide of bad news" that the media is reporting on, of course, is generated entirely by the media itself!

You'd never go to a hospital (100,000 accidental medical deaths a year) or get in a car if they reported on that carnage like they report on Iraq.

Objectively, however, Syria has been ousted from Lebanon, with anti-Syria forces winning control in historic elections.

Note that the only reason this result is being allowed to stand is because Syria felt it had to withdraw its troops from its (now freed) occupied colony, instead of implementing the brutal measures it took on the city of Hama, for example.

It felt it could no longer resort to those tactics with a battle-hardened US Army next door and a President willing to use it.

Without that lesson in force, Lebanon would still be under Syria's boot. Which was a real occupation, that somehow the media and the Euro-elites never talked about.

And they surely won't ever, EVER give the Bush administration any credit.

They'll say it was all internal. The impetus was surely internal to Lebanon, but it would have been snuffed out by external influences had not OUR additional military influence been in the region:

TRIPOLI, Lebanon -- A pro-Syrian leader acknowledged a major defeat for his allied candidates in parliamentary elections today in northern Lebanon that will decide whether Damascus' domination of Lebanon's political life will continue now that it has withdrawn its army.

The comments by Suleiman Franjieh, a Christian former interior minister, came as an anti-Syrian opposition official said the ticket's unofficial results indicated a near sweep in the contest for 28 seats in northern Lebanon.

Sunday's vote ended Lebanon's first free elections in three decades.

Franjieh, a close friend of the family of Syrian President Bashar Assad and one of his greatest defenders in Lebanon, said: "We bow to the will of the people.''

When their grandkids ask the Democrats, RINOs, and "celebrities" what they did during the Great Liberation of the Middle East in the first decade of the 21st century, they'll wish they were merely like the poor bastards in WW2 who didn't get to ride in Patton's 3rd Army and would have had to respond, as the great general put it,

"I shoveled shit in Louisiana."

No, they'll have to say,

"I was a useful idiot, an obstructionist tool of a Marxist ideology whose anti-Americanism had me deep in its grip like a zombie that would not die, and I did everything I could to weaken the morale and resolve of those who sought to make our world a safer, more decent place, because humiliating George Bush was more important to me than liberating millions -- especially women -- from primitive, savage oppression, and it fed my little ego to appear to be a snarky post-modern intellectual at the cocktail parties of the popular by demeaning my civilization and inverting all standards of morality."

History will not be kind.

No Rest For The Wicked

A moving historical account at Belmont Club underscores why I've always despised the disloyal Vietnam-era peaceniks, and why their treason must be uncovered and punished:

The assassin of Col. James Rowe, the "political prisoner" Danilo Continente, is scheduled to be freed from prison on June 28th after serving his maximum sentence.
...
The left-leaning Philippine Daily Inquirer has started a countdown to the blessed moment.

In just nine days, Donato Continente becomes a free man. And for him, freedom means becoming a full-time father to his 6-year-old son. Continente, 43, one of two men convicted in the killing of US Army Col. James Rowe in 1989, is set to be released from the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa on June 28. Bureau of Corrections records show that he has served the maximum sentence of 16 years.
...
The Left always kept the faith with Continente, who at the time of the murder was a staff member of the Philippine Collegian, the student newspaper of the national university, famous for its radical politics. Ever and again they clamored for his release as they are even now doing for terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
...
In contrast, Colonel Nick Rowe's fate has always been to be forgotten, though he didn't seem to resent it. When Rowe was held captive as a POW in Vietnam, during which he suffered from dysentary, beri-beri and fungal attack -- diseases unknown in Durbin's Guantanamo -- he protected his fellow prisoners by concealing his identity as a Special Forces Officer, which if revealed would single them out for special cruelty. His deception worked for months. But the Left did not forget.

Acting on a request from the North Vietnamese, students in a so-called anti-war organization in the United States researched public records and formulated biographies on Americans captured in Vietnam. After reading Lt. Rowe's biography, his Viet Cong captors became furious. They marched him into a cramped bamboo hut and forced him to sit on the damp clay floor. Several high ranking Viet Cong officials were staring down at Lt. Rowe. They held out a piece of typed onion skin paper.

"The peace and justice loving friends, of the National Liberation Front, who live in America, have provided us with information which leads us to believe you have lied to us," they informed Lt. Rowe. "According to what we know, you are not an engineer . . . you have much military experience which you deny . . . You were an officer of the American Special Forces."

Lt. Rowe sat dumbfounded, unable to comprehend that his own people would betray him. He felt it was over. He had lied to the communists for five years. Worse in their eyes, the Viet Cong had believed him. They had lost face and, for that, he would be punished. Soon after, the Viet Cong Central Committee for the National Liberation Front sent orders to Rowe's camp ordering the cadre to execute the uncooperative American prisoner.

Let us not forget that John Kerry, who almost became President, was an operative in similar anti-war groups that met with communist agents of the Vietnamese to coordinate their anti-war propaganda activities.

On the day Lt. Rowe was being led to a destination for execution, he and his small group of guards were caught on the edge of an American B-52 saturation bombing raid. The guards scattered, leaving Lt. Rowe with only one. Lt. Rowe knew he had nothing to lose. He bided his time until the remaining guard carelessly moved to Rowe's front, whereupon Lt. Rowe bludgeoned him with a log and escaped. Not only did Lt. Rowe survive his ordeal as a POW, he escaped and emerged stronger than before his capture, more committed to the American ideal and more convinced than ever that what the communists had planned for Vietnam and the world was a blueprint for tyranny and human suffering. Nick Rowe frustrated the communists. They never broke him. They never shook his faith in the American system. He was the quintessential American fighting man, unable to be broken mentally or physically.

The communists, however, never forgot Lt. Nick Rowe. They never forgot the threat men such as he posed to them and their view of world domination. Shortly before 7 a.m. on April 21, 1989, a small white car pulled alongside a gray, chauffeur-driven vehicle in a traffic circle in the Manila suburb of Quezon City. The barrels of an M-16 rifle and a .45-caliber pistol poked out the window of the white car and spit out more than two dozen shots. Twenty-one of them hit the gray car. One of the rounds hit Col. James "Nick" Rowe in the head, killing him instantly. The hooded NPA killers had ties to the communist Vietnamese, Rowe's old enemies in Vietnam. It took the communists nearly 25 years, but they finally silenced Nick Rowe.

His killer will be free in 9 days.

How many were tortured (for real, not by changing settings on an air-conditioner!), how many were murdered, from the information provided by these seditious "student" groups?

Their members need to be found and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Iran Votes

Iran just had a sham election. The outcome will change nothing concerning the actual power of the unelected real rulers.

Interestingly, despite some calls for a boycott to make a mockery of the proceedings, turnout appears to be rather high, maybe around 70% or so.

What they may be showing is that, inspired by Iraq's elections, people want to vote.

But we're also treated to some really funny stuff:

"I picked Ahmadinejad to slap America in the face," said Mahdi Mirmalek after attending Friday prayers at Tehran University. Religious conservatives like Mirmalek are upset about the liberal trends among the country's young.

"Many Iranians sacrificed their blood to preserve the rule of Islam and not allow women [to] appear heavily made up in public with their hair out of headscarf. Ahmadinejad is the answer," said Jamal Ataei, another member of the congregation.

Let me tell you something Jamal.

If Iranians are sacrificing their blood to keep women's hair in a headscarf, you've got a real noble cause there. Keep sacrificing that blood all you want. You're doing allah's work.

But don't be surprised if you're among the first against the wall when the counter-revolution comes.

At Tehran University, the leader of Friday prayers, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, told worshippers that voting "strengthens the pillars of the ruling Islamic establishment." Followers then joined in with the common chant of "Death to America!"

They've been chanting that every Friday for 25 years.

But their nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful, we're told.

President Bush had this to say just before Iran's exercise in futility:

The Iranian people are heirs to a great civilization [ed. note: as Persians, that's very true, unlike the conquering Arab barbarian hordes] - and they deserve a government that honors their ideals and unleashes their talent and creativity. Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.

The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record. Iran's rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.

The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest - and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around.
...
Today, the Iranian regime denies all these rights. It shuts down independent newspapers and websites and jails those who dare to challenge the corrupt system. It brutalizes its people and denies them their liberty.

America believes in the independence and territorial integrity of Iran. America believes in the right of the Iranian people to make their own decisions and determine their own future. America believes that freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul. And to the Iranian people, I say: As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you.

That is, unless the obstructionist and pacifistic Democrats and media elites get in the way.

More Hot Air

Look at the stupid people!

They will grind down our prosperity based on hysterical junk science:

Domenici is prepared to co-sponsor a provision that calls for a mandatory 2.4 percent annual reduction in the growth of so-called greenhouse gas emissions if he becomes convinced it will not scuttle a broad energy bill, a Domenici aide said Friday.
...
Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has been convinced that the Bingaman proposal, fashioned after a report last December by a bipartisan private group of energy experts, represents a middle ground on the climate issue.

In recent days, Domenici has been lobbying other GOP senators — as well as the White House — on the merits of the proposal, carrying in his suit pocket a recent letter by science academies from 11 countries including the United States urging nations to take "prompt action to reduce the causes of climate change."

What grandiose morons! What, you're going to make the Sun change its energy output? You're going to change the precession of the Earth's axis of rotation? You're going to change the water vapor content of the atmosphere?

Because human-produced Carbon Dioxide is neither a "pollutant", nor a significant contributor to global warming. Our temperature is normal for an inter-glacial period -- thank goodness!

No, they're going to crush the economy, so we'll have less wealth to take on the challenges of the future.

Good for you!

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., are expected to offer a proposal that would require that heat-trapping pollution — mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels — be capped at 2000 levels in five years.

McCain is such a disappointment. He's a nut. Why more people aren't outraged at his McCain-Feingold legislation that muzzles your political speech to protect his prima-donna ego is beyond me.

McCain's a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.

Don't ever forget it.

Reviving Hate

Gates of Vienna raises an important topic.

PC has attempted to make hate unfashionable, with limits on "hate speech" and new special categories of Thought Hate Crimes.

This has been a natural outgrowth of the self-loathing of the left, as well as the creation of that fake "right", the "Right to Not be Offended (unless you're white, male, and/or Christian)."

Because then the balkanized victim-groups can whine for handouts, and there's no defense against them because any questioning of motive leads to cries of racism etc.

But you know what? If you banish hate, then we also have no defense against true evil. How can anyone be motivated to take a dangerous, unpopular stand against something very scary unless they can truly hate the evil?

So instead, it creeps in, and society feels paralyzed against it, because we'd have to hate it to fight back.

For example, if you can stomach it, see the faces of these women in Pakistan who have been burned with acid for "offending" islamic customs -- these at least are some who survived this common, quaint cultural practice.

You know what? I HATE the savages that did that.

Dehumanizing and hating the enemy is an ugly thing, but it's also absolutely necessary to muster the will to win. And if we can't muster it, we will lose. The media and the Democrats will see to that!

You also know what? For example, Marines fighting in the brutal Pacific campaigns of WW2 -- the "good" war -- after incinerating japs with flamethrowers, would take their charred skulls and mount them on the front of their tanks.

And they were proud to do so.

And the nation was proud of them.

And nobody in the media raised a peep about how awful and insensitive it was.

Because we knew the horrors of war had to be endured to get to the desired end of Victory, because ultimate decency and the betterment of humanity depended on us winning. And so we did not shrink from the terrible deeds required.

Good thing, too.

But today, too many seem to think they can live in some kind of la-la-land bubble of unreality where if we'rejust nice and obsequious enough and apologize for our past sins enough, then history will leave us alone and life will be all moonbeams and cat's whiskers.

How many innocents will these ignorant cowards and moral pipsqueaks get killed before they get out of the way?

Gates of Vienna has a great post on this topic:

What article in the Constitution forbids an American to hate? Which one of the Ten Commandments says, Thou shalt not hate?

The question is: Are there people or things worth hating?

Let’s just start a little free-lance hater’s list.

I hate the fanatics of the Great Islamic Jihad, the ones who brought down the Twin Towers, the ones who behead people on video and kill innocent women and children without compunction. I hate the brutal totalitarian dictatorships that enable the Jihad, the regimes like those in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.

I hate those barbaric bastards in Muslim societies who terrorize, mutilate, and brutalize women, and do it all with the blessing of their religion.

I hate the fellow-travellers in the West, the dhimmis and the wannabe jihadis, who facilitate the terrorists, who interfere with and pick at and ankle-bite the efforts of our brave soldiers in the war against the Great Jihad.

I hate the fact that our common language has been so debased that words like “gulag” and “holocaust” no longer have any meaning. I hate the fact that we all must dance around what we really want to say, cloaking our intentions with circumlocutions and euphemisms. I hate the fact that objectively considering who our likely killers might be is called “racial profiling”.

I hate the feminist bullies who had an attack of the vapors and emasculated the president of Harvard for daring to suggest the existence of genetic differences between men and women. And I hate Larry Summers for being a coward and rolling over for them, instead of telling them where they could stick their “gender equity”.

I hate the leftist pedagogues in our schools and universities who teach our impressionable young that America is a bad place, run by racist, sexist, and homophobic bigots. I hate the peddlers of discredited ideologies who infiltrate our culture at every level.
...
I hate people who wear Che Guevara T-shirts.
...
And above all I hate socialists of all kinds — Fascists, Nazis, Communists, Fabians, Greens, you name it — because they made all the rest of this mess possible by poisoning the well of our political discourse so that their degraded ideology has leached into the soil of the larger culture. I hate the fact that their smug, self-righteous zeal has undermined and threatened the very existence of Western civilization.

So do I.

UPDATE: I stand corrected. There IS one group of people that Democrats, in the words of DNC chairman Howard Dean, have mustered the strength to admit they hate: Republicans.

Clear Thinking

Once again, I find someone else who has already blogged what I've been feeling, and it would be pointless for me to attempt to improve upon it.

Democrats have become the party of traitors and they don't care that they are objectively helping to support the morale of our nation's enemies, and thus will get more Americans killed.

Dirty Harry has the proper response:

If this were a real country What-a-Dick Durbin wouldn't be asked to apologize, he'd be shot. Along with the the editors of The New York Times, Newsweek, and those punk bitches in Congress demanding a withdrawal date.
...
We are at war and these son of a bitches are lying. These son of a bitches are blatant propagandists for the enemy. These son of a bitches are doing everything they can to give aid and comfort to the enemy. These son of a bitches are encouraging and emboldening the enemy. These son of a bitches are working overtime to kill the patience and determination of the American people because these son of a bitches know that's how you lose a war of attrition. The How We Lost In Vietnam playbook is out, open, dog earred, and well-thumbed. It's time for us to stop screwing around and start responding with lead.

Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media have turned a single out of control unit on the night shift at Abu Ghraib into a propaganda victory Stalin would be proud of. They've turned car bombs into a "War We're Losing" in a way only Tokyo Rose and Jane Fonda could envy. And liberal civil rights groups *ahem* and their allies in the media (who defended Christ in piss) have turned a splash of pee on the Koran (and why do terrorists have access to the Koran again?) into a racist fuel for the enemy only Hitler could truly appreciate. (And yeah, I'm comparing them to Hitler. And no, I won't apologize. Blow me.)

Like Vietnam we cannot lose this war over there -- we can only lose it here. And lying about Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Koran abuse, and how good or bad things are going in Iraq is a blatant flanking move to assure we lose. Why else would they lie either blatantly or through context.

The Anchoress has more about these obscene comparisons of our troops to Nazis. It is obscene for a variety of reasons. First, it defames our military. Second, it debases the memory of what really happened to the victims of the Nazis. Be sure to see the photo of Nazis in action here. And third, it gives encouragement to the murderous terrorists to hold out a little longer, thinking they'll be rescued if the Democrats (who were just holding their "mock impeachment trial" of Bush) take over.

Many of the Democrat bigwigs were there, spouting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories like madmen.

They're useless lunatics.

They must be removed from office, now.

I can't understand how anyone can ever vote Democrat again, the whole party has become such a disloyal disgrace.

See for example this disturbing photo-essay comparing Gitmo to the real victims of the evil murderers that Senator Durbin (D-Ill.) is comparing our military to.

He stands by his comments.

In a just world, his black heart would finally seize up tomorrow.

Or see here (WARNING: graphic!), where Jawa Report takes on Democrat rising star "Kos" Zunigas, who is defending Durbin and proclaiming we're torturing people just as terribly as Hussein did. See for yourself.

You can go to hell, Kos.

The Anchoress continues,

Dick Durbin should resign from his office. He is unfit for it. And serious Democrats (and moderate Republicans) who want to maintain some level of respectability and credibility need to denounce his scandalous, extreme, untrue, distorted and disgraceful charges.

As did John Kerry during Vietnam, when he testified about the “Jengis Kahn” behavior of US Troops, Dick Durbin has given our enemy headlines, and fodder to promote more hate, more mis-understanding, more distrust, more rabble rousing. For people who say they want the war to be over, Durbin and the Democrats seem to be doing all they can to fan the flames that will keep it going and going.

And just think, all of this…ALL of it…is coming about as part of the “circle the wagons for Newsweek” efforts of the press and the left.
...
But for now, there is a Republican in the White House, and the worldwide machines of the left can only focus on one issue; how to hurt America and the American President, for daring to DO. And to BE.

Clearly, when the American President is a Democrat, every inhumane action in the world will cease to take place, and the rest of the problems of the world will be seen to. North Korea. AIDS in Africa. Islamofascism. Eurabia. Terrorism. Tribal warfare. Homelessness. Just like it was allllll taken care of LAST time.

Do you remember, after 9/11, the videotape of the “west bank,” which showed us Islamofascists dancing in the streets at the sight of the WTC falling and the Pentagon burning? Do you remember the woman in the black hijab, who shoved her face into the camera, ululating in obscene joy? I remember her. [ed. note: see her here!]

I was worried, once upon a time, that if John Kerry made it to the White House, with his foggy, unclear (or at least poorly articulated) idea about what the “War on Terror” meant, we might have to see that woman again.

I worry that the overplayed and exaggerated “horror” of the Democrats, on the subject of GITMO, may end up causing us to have to see that woman again, as our enemies, emboldened and encouraged by the reckless rhetoric of Dick Durbin and others, find inspiration where they should instead be finding a respectful sort of fear.

I'm going to have to get me one of these.

Hugh Hewitt has a roundup of how other prominent Democrats aren't disavowing any of it and how the the MSM is avoiding talking about it. For example,

"Several Democrats ducked the furor yesterday.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, declined to comment, saying she had not heard Mr. Durbin's speech. When a reporter read the passage to her, she declined again.

The offices of Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut did not answer calls for comment."

Unfit, every last one of you!

More Primitive Savagery

From a link found on LGF. It's always funny when a do-gooder celebrity runs smack-dab into harsh reality:

Bono shocked by Muslim women's reaction to breastfeeding

15/06/2005 - 17:35:52

U2 frontman Bono was horrified during a visit to Ethiopia, when he saw local women pelting a breast-feeding aid worker with stones.

The American woman was oblivious of the offence she was causing, and had to escape the angry onslaught from female Muslims who had no qualms about injuring her or her baby.

How...quaint...the natives are.

Adult Stem Cell Successes

This comment someone left on my recent Stem Cell posting deserves front-page viewership. It just underscores how a political agenda is pushing the less-fruitful avenue of embryonic stem cells, to the detriment of all humanity, because of a fear that budging will amount to some kind of victory for the evil "religious right", and we can't let them get their way even if it happens to be helpful to everyone!

Hi,I am working at a company (Vescell) that is currently treating no-option heart disease patients with adult stem cells (We've treated several patients from the US this year). These are not trials! Our adult stem cell therapy works! We draw about 250cc of blood from the patient's arm and in about one week, expand enough Endothelial Progenitor Cells to be able to treat the patient via catheter implantation into the coronary artery, thoracoscopic implantation into the heart, or direct implantation during a CABG procedure. These cells are not rejected by the body because they are the patient's own cells!Dr. Amit Patel from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was just in Thailand using our therapy to treat one of his patients from America but for some reason, all this news falls upon deaf ears in the States. This treatment is proven and effective unlike embryonic stem cells which as of right now seem to have no practical uses only this "potential" that everyone keeps talking about. When will the US media wake up and smell the coffee? It is frustrating that many lives can be improved and many lives can be saved, but nobody knows about us or similar companies like us.

Gee, think maybe "global warming" might be a political fiction as well?

About Those Deficits...

So, how about those record deficits that are going to be the death of us if Bush's evil tax-cuts are made permanent? As the economy stagnates and dies due to misguided Republican policies. That was a big campaign issue, wasn't it, how the economy was in terrible shape? The media kept saying it was awful, awful, awful.

Oh, wait, the government is taking in RECORD REVENUE.

Even more than during the dot-com boom times.

The deficit is shrinking again.

Tax cuts stimulated the economy to new growth, ultimately raising tax collection.

WASHINGTON - The government has hit a financial milestone — taking in more money in tax revenue in a single day than ever before.
...
The government's coffers have been swelling this year as tax receipts from both individuals and corporations have been on the rise, reflecting an improving economy. Because of those increases, this year's federal deficit is expected to fall to around $350 billion, down from the $413 billion record in dollar terms set in 2004.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said the new record in tax revenue was "good news for our efforts to reduce the budget deficit" and further evidence of the strength of the economy.

Democrats however would like to raise taxes, and kill this golden goose.

Because it feels so good to take money from the rich, and then dole it back to special interests to make them beholden.

Schiavo Autopsy

Surprising no one, reports today are that the Terri Schiavo autopsy indicate she had no chance of recovery. The spin I saw on the news shows about this have completely missed the point.

They seem to have taken this as justification for the court-ordered murder.

As if "recovery" were ever the issue, or the extent of her brain damage, or the level of her awareness.

Those are incredibly dangerous arguments to make.

To even consider those as the issues immediately puts us in the real of assuming that yes, there is SOME level of impairment or disability at which point society will make the decision to terminate you for its own convenience, all the while proclaiming it's for your own good.

Once we're arguing about where that line is, we've already agreed to banally bureacratize evil.

I had no expectation Terri would recover.

I may have had an ethical disapproval with a hospital that wanted to cut off care and refuse to treat her any more, but I had no legal or procedural opposition to that.

What was fundamentally WRONG with this case, the real outrage, was a JUDGE who went beyond merely allowing treatment to be discontinued -- which is fine -- but then went on to ORDER that NOBODY be ALLOWED to attempt to feed or hydrate her!

This was then nothing but mean-spirited court-ordered murder.

Why not let her parents take her home then, and give them their chance to moisten her lips and feed her with a thimble if they had to, and just see what happened? And then just let nature truly take its course?

Had the judge just done that, then surely Terri would have soon passed on, but the whole situation would have been defused. There would be no controversy.

Instead, the death lobby wanted to arrogantly make a point they could order someone killed.

Where's the due process in that? Especially since the "guardian", the husband, clearly had a conflict of interest.

I mean, the pro-death people, after this autopsy, surely can't be making the argument that attempting to keep her alive would be to cause her to SUFFER, now, could they? So how would it be merciful? Instead, they're hysterically (and probably inaccurately) projecting.

The interests of a defenseless, innocent person were trampled, when the greatest caution should have been exercised by the authorities.

For society is measured by how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable.

UPDATE: I"m actually seeing some calling this a "vindication", and that they "smiled" at the report. Just like your typical out-of-touch armchair marxist to treat this as a "gotcha"-type game, where little dishonest debating points are more important than the big picture. The Anchoress has more, e.g.:

What the Autopsy of Terri Schiavo tells us with enormous lucidity is that the Deatheaters appetites have been whetted. With the release of this report which - as I say - tells us almost nothing we didn’t know, the Deatheaters are not simply feeling vindicated, they are feeling victorious…not just victorious but…gleeful.

It seems to me that when an innocent life has been snuffed out, that is not, perhaps, a time for glee. Quite possibly it is a normal thing, in some circles, to celebrate the destruction of life and then move on to the next battle or party or “pressing issue.” To my way of thinking, when a world has ended, respectful silence is in order, as are time for remembering, and prayers for regretting where we have fallen short.

The news of this woman’s deplorable brain damage makes her death seem right and justified to them, they are all but dancing about it. For them, this is a defeat for the president, for Christians, for pesky right-to-lifers.

It is a “win” for…personal autonomy, supposedly. If, by personal autonomy, you mean being unable to speak for yourself and at the mercy of a husband who suddenly recalls what you supposedly wanted…maybe…and is more willing to see you die than err on the side of life and maybe let your family take care of you. If that’s what you mean by personal autonomy and personal choice, well, then…yes, it’s a win.

But it is a win by which we all lose.

There is little new in Terri Schiavo’s autopsy report. But the salivating, overt, belly-shaking glee of the Deatheaters, that might be new.

Or…it might be old as hell.

Gasbags

The Inuit smell a handout:

OSLO (Reuters) - Inuit hunters threatened by a melting of the Arctic ice plan to file a petition accusing Washington of violating their human rights by fueling global warming, an Inuit leader said Wednesday.
...
The Inuit hope that the commission will agree that climate change is tantamount to a U.S. abuse of their human rights by thinning the ice on which hunters depend and by threatening species ranging from polar bears to seals.

I suppose the US is also responsible for hair loss, old age, and eczema.

But...one little problem...Carbon Dioxide is HARMLESS!

Claims it has ANYTHING to do with the natural, mild warming we've (thankfully!) experienced from a local cold spell around 1600 due to increased solar activity are BASELESS!

CO2 emissions are not a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect.

Kyoto is based on junk science pushed by those who hate our capitalist society and want to reduce our use of energy and transfer our wealth to undeserving nations through the forced purchase of "carbon credits".

See this interesting site by some Canadian scientists:

Myth 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

Fact: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. The CO2 increase was only 0.4% over the last 50 years, rather than the 5% per 100 years quoted by Kyoto. However, as measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the result of, not the cause of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this. There is solid evidence that as temperatures rise naturally and cyclically, the earth naturally produces more CO2 as a result.


Myth 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

Fact: Water vapour or clouds, which makes up on average about 3 % of the atmosphere, is the major greenhouse gas. CO2 makes up only about 3% of the greenhouse gases, or about 0.03% of the atmosphere. Moreover, because of its molecular weight and absorptive capacity, water vapour is 3000 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.


Myth 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

Fact: Glaciers have been receding for hundreds of years; that’s because we are still coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating.
It’s normal.

Check out the whole site, it's very informative.

"Infidel" is a Compliment!

The MSM tries to lull us to sleep. They can't hide the inherent bigotry of islam anymore, so attempt to sweep it under the rug. Consider this amazing statement:

Everyone has a wish at this Al-Qaeda cemetery.
...
The shrines show the logic of some people in the new Afghanistan, particularly those in the south and southeast, where the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has been strongest. Those who come here do not necessarily support terrorists. Many say they do not hate the Afghan government or the U.S. forces. They welcome the upcoming elections and do not want war.

But these people are often desperate, for whatever reason, and they believe the dead men might help them. The visitors call the dead "martyrs" and the U.S. forces who killed them "infidels." But they mean that in the nicest way.

And what exactly is the "nicest" meaning of infidel?

That when they follow their prophet's orders to saw off your head, they'll use a sharp knife?

I can just see the author of this piece writing that with an earnest expression of confident self-delusion.

Nothing to see here, go to sleep...

Stem Cells

There's lots of dishonest criticism of Bush for "stopping stem cell research" or somesuch. This just isn't true.

All that was done was to restrict taxpayer funds from being used in the creation of NEW embryonic stem cell lines, as that requires the destructino of an embryo.

Federal funds can, and are, being used to study the EXISTING embryonic stem cell lines.

Federal funds can, and are, being used to create and study adult stem cell lines.

As far as I've heard, so far, adult stem cell research is very promising, with some actual successes in disease treatment. There are clinical trials underway at this moment.

Current work with embryonic stem cells hasn't gone so well, as they tend to turn to cancer instead of into the regenerated, functional cells we'd like them to. Thus, this line of research has not progressed yet to clinical trials.

From the Whitehouse webpage, someone asks:

1)Why do you stand against Stem-Cell research when it has greatpossibilites for health?

2)Why can't you at least give a chance?

Margaret Spellings, assistant to the President on Domestic Policy, answers:

President Bush is not opposed to stem cell research. To the contrary -- he is the first President to support Federal Funding for embryonic stem cell research.

There are many different kinds of stem cell research, all of which are important to studying disease. Last year, the NIH provided over half a billion dollars for all forms of stem cell research. He has asked NIH to establish Centers of Excellence for stem cell research, which give scientists in this area extra support, and his Administration is establishing a Stem Cell registry, to make sure that scientists can get access to embryonic stem cells quickly.

In fact, more than 500 shipments of eligible stem cell lines have been sent to researchers for this important work. 3,500 shipments, from 22 different genetically distinct lines, are still available.

The President has said only that researchers using taxpayer funds cannot use the funds for research that requires the destruction of an additional human embryo. Researchers can use private funds for any form of stem cell research.

Moreover, many scientists focus on stem cell research that does not require the destruction of a human embryo because it uses cells from placental tissue or bone marrow. This type of stem cell research has already produced treatments for disease, and there are clinical trials underway on new treatments for diseases like parkinsons, multiple sclerosis, and leukemia.

I should also note that stem cells are just one of the many areas scientists are studying for possible cures and treatments for diabetes. Since President Bush took office, funding for all forms of diabetes research has increased by $336 million dollars -- a 49% increase.

But, yous till get celebrities and pundits using the stem cell issue to bash the administration because religious conservatives hate crippled people or something.

Due to biased reporting, voters favor funding embryonic stem cell research, to the tune of $6 billion in California, for example. It's a boondoggle.

Anti-Bush partisans are afraid if they admit there might be a teensie-weensie ethical issue with destroying a viable embryo, that suddenly abortion will be outlawed.

So, they lie and mislead:

"This is only a political sidestep. Adult-stem-cell research holds no real promise that I can see. It's not usable."

That is from Steve Brozak, who is not a scientist, but rather

is running for Congress in New Jersey as a Democrat.

But recently, there may have been a breakthrough they can't ignore:

Scientists at Australia's Griffith University have engineered a breakthrough in the field of adult stem cell research that's so significant, say experts, that it could render the debate over embryonic stem cell research moot.

The results of the four-year research project showed that olfactory stem cells can be turned into heart cells, brain cells, nerve cells – indeed, almost any kind of cell in the body – without the problems of rejection or tumors forming, a common side effect with embryonic stem cells.
...
The breakthrough, first announced two months ago, has been largely ignored by the U.S. media, which has focused on embryonic stem cell research as the only option to cure debilitating ailments like Hodgkin's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

As a result of the lopsided press coverage, California voters passed a $6 billion referendum to fund embryonic stem cell research last November, with similar programs proposed around the U.S. - though embryonic stem cell research has yet to show any significant medical progress.

In Australia, however, the medical community is excited over Mackay-Sim's adult stem cell breakthrough.
...
Unlike embryonic stem cells, which reportedly can trigger tumors in one in five cases at the point of injection, adult stem cells grow in a controlled fashion and don't revert to their original tissue form.

Another significant benefit: Because adult stem cells can be harvested from the patient, there's no risk of the body rejecting them as alien, eliminating the need for immune system-suppressing drugs.

Still, two months after Australia's adult stem cell breakthrough was first announced, it has played little or no role in the ongoing U.S. debate over government funding for embryonic stem cell research.

"One of the complicating factors is that a lot of people have a lot of money tied up in embryonic stem cells," noted Australia's Catholic Archbishop George Pell, who helped secure funding for the Mackay-Sim project.

Talk about being ignored, here's a discussion of the adult stem cell initial breakthroughs in New Scientist, three and a half years ago!

The media are such useless, biased fools.

The EU Vote

Although many on the conservative side were happy to see France and the Netherlands vote "no" on the monstrosity known as the EU "constitution", some lamented that the French did so for "the wrong reasons." That is, it was defeated there by socialists who didn't want to lose their subsidies and easy work weeks. Whereas in Holland, the issue was mostly over islamic immigration/invasion.

I think that misses the bigger point. The symptomatic, idiosyncratic reasons for the "no" vote both stemmed from the same underlying motive: the preservation of national character.

And that's a good thing.

France wanted to preserve what it had created for itself (however untenable itmight be in the long run), and Holland worried about staying uniquely Dutch.

It would be a pure fantasy to expect France to suddenly think like America on political and economic issues. Therefore the fact that the reasons they used to vote no don't please an American conservative is of little consequence; France will never please an American conservative!

But when the moment of truth came, they still had enough spirit to not allow their country to be gobbled up into a homogenizing super-bureacracy of unelected elites.

The dysfunction we've seen emanating from Europe stems in part to a self-imposed lack of strengh and degradation since the World Wars. We here will have trouble understanding jus thow damaging those wars were to all of Europe. Seeing the destruction caused by, it seemed, nationalism, the post-war environment sought to downplay ideas of nation-states and to stamp out patriotism. It was seen as leading to fascism. Some have pointed out that a "conservative" political movement doesn't exist in Europe like it does here; they don't understand it. Instead, you're either a left-wing communist, a center-left socialist, or an outright neo-nazi fascist. Which may help explain their fear and loathing (due to a lack of proper home-grown analogy) of the Bush administration.

I recall visiting with exchange students in Germany in the mid-1980s. The Wall was still dividing Berlin, and the Soviets were poised on border to invade. Reagan was moving short-range nuclear missiles into Germany. The German students remarked how when they visited us here, they were AMAZED to see American flags all over the place, and not just on government buildings, but from many, many private homes. That JUST ISN'T DONE in Germany.

"We are not patriots", one student said.

That sad sentence is part of Europe's problem.

If they don't love their country, they won't stand against cultural invaders.

Instead, you get cases like Dutch boys being forbidden by their schools to put patches on the their bookbags of the Dutch flag, because that might offend islamic immigrants at the same school! You see, only nazi fascists wear flags and love their country!

What kind of madness is that?

So to see some spark of national will rising again is good.

I have a book on my shelf called "Painted in Blood: Understanding Europeans." The basic idea is that due to history, Europeans are really rather xenophobic and when given the chance will violently assert their ethnic indentity. This book was written in 1987, pre-dating the bloody collapse of the historically unnatural entity known as Yugoslavia, but explaining it perfectly. With that book, it would not have appeared so surprising to happen in the heart of Europe in modern times.

By extension, this whole "EU" concept is also unstable and unnatural. As its countries are forced more and more to give up their national identity to both invading islamic immigrants from below and an unaccountable ruling elite in Brussels from above, expect finally a vicious backlash across the continent.

Some, like Sweden, may be too depressed and too embracing of a deathwish to do anything about it, but their demise will serve as a powerful object lesson to the others.

The contradictions, as in the soviet union, will eventually become too great to bear.

Cultural Differences

So a while back I was watching some show sci-fi adventure show, probably "Stargate SG-1", while on the treadmill at the gym, and a plot situation came up that is absolutely ubiquitous. Our heroes, upon meeting the representatives of some new, less-advanced alien culture, as they try to form bonds of friendship, are confronted with some odd or bizarre cultural practice of the aliens, and feel they must imitate it to be accepted.

The scene usually happens at a meal, for example, when some gross foodstuff like eel mucous in motor oil is served as a great delicacy, and as they hesitate, the chieftan starts to ggrumble, and so they choke it down and everyone is happy.

Or, in a less sci-fi setting, perhaps they're expected to belch to show their appreciation.

And I wondered, why is it always us that is portrayed as having to conform to the norms of the other culture? Can't the other group be expected to hold to a standard of understanding and tolerance itself, to realize that well, yes, we appreciate you like this thing, but from where we come from, it's really gross, and so we respectfully decline.

But somehow, the aliens or natives are always assumed to be completely unable to respect OUR differences, in a kind of "soft bigotry of low expectations." Pair that with a self-loathing of all our culture stands for, and it's a recipe for civilizational decline.

Sure, I understand "when in Rome, do as the Romans do."

But we even do it, in real life, right here in our own home country! Surely at least here, we should expect the "aliens" to conform to us, rather than twist ourselves into something we're not, for their convenience?

For example, a recent proposal in Dallas that school principals be required to speak Spanish, so they can talk to the parents of their majority-Spanish speaking populations.

If that's not handing the keys to the invaders, I don't know what is.

If the parents, living here in the US, want to talk to the school, they can damn well learn English themselves or get the hell out.

We're a melting pot, not a patchwork quilt! The former leads to solidarity and assimilation; the latter to weakness and division.

Save the WTC Memorial!

The WTC Memorial has been hijacked by self-flagellating namby-pamby terror apologists, according to Debra Burlingame, who

is a member of the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of American Airlines fight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Online,

When those Marines return in 2010, the year it is scheduled to open, no doubt they will expect to see the artifacts that bring those memories to life. They'll want a vantage point that allows them to take in the sheer scope of the destruction, to see the footage and the photographs and hear the personal stories of unbearable heartbreak and unimaginable courage. They will want the memorial to take them back to who they were on that brutal September morning.

Instead, they will get a memorial that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the yearning to return to that day. Rather than a respectful tribute to our individual and collective loss, they will get a slanted history lesson, a didactic lecture on the meaning of liberty in a post-9/11 world. They will be served up a heaping foreign policy discussion over the greater meaning of Abu Ghraib and what it portends for the country and the rest of the world.

And if you think that's a good thing, talk to the fist.

The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom" -- but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere -- anywhere -- else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend -- people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.
...
The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:

There follows a Rogue's Gallery of people who are trying to get us to lose this war. Among them is the evil mastermind,

• George Soros, billionaire founder of Open Society Institute, the nonprofit foundation that helps fund Human Rights First and is an early contributor to the IFC. Mr. Soros has stated that the pictures of Abu Ghraib "hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself."
...
The so-called lessons of September 11 should not be force-fed by ideologues hoping to use the memorial site as nothing more than a powerful visual aid to promote their agenda. Instead of exhibits and symposiums about Internationalism and Global Policy we should hear the story of the courageous young firefighter whose body, cut in half, was found with his legs entwined around the body of a woman. Recovery personnel concluded that because of their positions, the young firefighter was carrying her.

The people who visit Ground Zero in five years will come because they want to pay their respects at the place where heroes died. They will come because they want to remember what they saw that day, because they want a personal connection, to touch the place that touched them, the place that rallied the nation and changed their lives forever. I would wager that, if given a choice, they would rather walk through that dusty hanger at JFK Airport where 1,000 World Trade Center artifacts are stored than be herded through the International Freedom Center's multi-million dollar insult.

Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?

How?

Start by writing a polite but direct letter to:

Governor George E. Pataki
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Then, via LGF, we have:

The board of directors of the International Freedom Center are:

Tom A. Bernstein (Chairman) - President of Chelsea Piers, President of the Board of Human Rights First

Paula Grant Berry (Vice-Chair) - Member of the Board, World Trade Center Memorial Foundation

Stephen B. Heintz - President of the Rockefeller Bros. Fund

Daniel T. Tishman - President of Tishman Construction Corporation

Tom Bernstein is an avowed liberal; I suggest calls to Daniel Tishman (212-399-3600). The International Freedom Center was selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to be at the 9/11 memorial, and the chairman of the LMDC is John Whitehead (212-962-2300). The LMDC board was appointed by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg (311 in NYC or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC) and New York Governor George Pataki (518-474-8390). These people probably aren’t aware of what travesty is about to take place on hallowed ground, so let them know.

And don't forget, this whole "Freedom Tower" has to go; rebuild Twin Towers II!

See the site plan and sign the petition here.

Hitchens on Galloway

Reformed leftist Christopher Hitchens completely obliterates Galloway in this expose.

It is a delight to read.

Some excerpts:

Moreover, I knew a bit about Galloway. He had had to resign as the head of a charity called "War on Want," after repaying some disputed expenses for living the high life in dirt-poor countries. Indeed, he was a type well known in the Labour movement. Prolier than thou, and ostentatiously radical, but a bit too fond of the cigars and limos and always looking a bit odd in a suit that was slightly too expensive. By turns aggressive and unctuous, either at your feet or at your throat; a bit of a backslapper, nothing's too good for the working class: what the English call a "wide boy."
...
loway says that the worst day of his entire life was the day the Soviet Union fell. His existence since that dreadful event has involved the pathetic search for an alternative fatherland. He has recently written that, "just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq's own Great Leap Forward." I love the word "scale" in that sentence. I also admire the use of the word "plotted."
...
TO THIS DAY, George Galloway defiantly insists, as he did before the senators, that he has "never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf." As a Clintonian defense this has its admirable points: I myself have never seen a kilowatt, but I know that a barrel is also a unit and not an entity. For the rest, his defense would be more impressive if it answered any charge that has actually been made. Galloway is not supposed by anyone to have been an oil trader. He is asked, simply, to say what he knows about his chief fundraiser, nominee, and crony. And when asked this, he flatly declines to answer. We are therefore invited by him to assume that, having earlier acquired a justified reputation for loose bookkeeping in respect of "charities," he switched sides in Iraq, attached himself to a regime known for giving and receiving bribes, appointed a notorious middleman as his envoy, kept company with the corrupt inner circle of the Baath party, helped organize a vigorous campaign to retain that party in power, and was not a penny piece the better off for it. I think I believe this as readily as any other reasonable and objective person would. If you wish to pursue the matter with Galloway himself, you will have to find the unlisted number for his villa in Portugal.
...
There are only two ways this suffering could have been relieved. Either the sanctions could have been lifted, as Galloway and others demanded, or the regime could have been removed. The first policy, if followed without conditions, would have untied the hands of Saddam. The second policy would have had the dual effect of ending sanctions and terminating a hideous and lawless one-man rule. But when the second policy was proposed, the streets filled with people who absolutely opposed it. Saying farewell to the regime was, evidently, too high a price to pay for relief from sanctions.

Let me phrase this another way: Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam! This is repellent enough in itself. If the Saddam regime was cheating its terrified people of food and medicine in order to finance its own propaganda, that would perhaps be in character. But if it were to be discovered that any third parties had profited from the persistence of "sanctions plus regime," prolonging the agony and misery thanks to personal connections, then one would have to become quite judgmental.

The bad faith of a majority of the left is instanced by four things (apart, that is, from mass demonstrations in favor of prolonging the life of a fascist government). First, the antiwar forces never asked the Iraqi left what it wanted, because they would have heard very clearly that their comrades wanted the overthrow of Saddam. (President Jalal Talabani's party, for example, is a member in good standing of the Socialist International.) This is a betrayal of what used to be called internationalism. Second, the left decided to scab and blackleg on the Kurds, whose struggle is the oldest cause of the left in the Middle East. Third, many leftists and liberals stressed the cost of the Iraq intervention as against the cost of domestic expenditure, when if they had been looking for zero-sum comparisons they might have been expected to cite waste in certain military programs, or perhaps the cost of the "war on drugs." This, then, was mere cynicism. Fourth, and as mentioned, their humanitarian talk about the sanctions turned out to be the most inexpensive hypocrisy.

George Galloway--having been rightly expelled by the British Labour party for calling for "jihad" against British troops, and having since then hailed the nihilism and sadism and sectarianism that goes by the lazy name of the Iraqi "insurgency" or, in his circles, "resistance"--ran for election in a new seat in East London and was successful in unseating the Labour incumbent. His party calls itself RESPECT, which stands for "Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community, Trade Unionism." (So that really ought to be RESPECTU, except that it would then sound less like an Aretha Franklin song and more like an organ of the Romanian state under Ceausescu.)
...
And now...there struts a little popinjay who defends dictatorship abroad and who trades on religious sectarianism at home. Within a month of his triumph in a British election, he has flown to Washington and spat full in the face of the Senate. A megaphone media in London, and a hysterical fan-club of fundamentalists and political thugs, saw to it that he returned as a conquering hero and all-round celeb. If only the supporters of regime change, and the friends of the Afghan and Iraqi and Kurdish peoples, could manifest anything like the same resolve and determination.

If only!