It Takes A Village

Thailand's Buddhists have been brutalized by muslims lately:

Recent leaflets and word-of-mouth warnings in the south have called for all markets to shut on Fridays, Islam's traditional day of rest, or violators will be beheaded or have their ears chopped off. As a result, many businesses throughout the south have shut during the past several Fridays, either in fear or in sympathy.

A dozen people, mostly Buddhists, have been beheaded in seemingly random attacks in the south

And yet, it's that Christian Right we need to be worried about.

The latest atrocity demonstrates how whole muslim communities back this violence to impose their ideology; this is not just a fringe and it's worldwide:

BANGKOK - Suspected Islamist insurgents avoided capture after torturing to death two Thai marines by beating and stabbing the bound-and-gagged victims behind a human shield of defiant Muslim women and children, horrifying the government and plunging southern Thailand into a fresh security crisis.

Apparently hoping for a peaceful solution, troops did not attempt a forced rescue. The two experienced marines, armed with a US-supplied M-16 assault rifle and two pistols, were initially captured on Tuesday night when they stopped their vehicle near the village.

Throughout the stand-off, scores of shouting Muslim women dressed in traditional headscarves stood with children, blocking troops from gaining access to the hostages, and erecting banners that blamed the authorities, including one in Thai that read: "You are in fact the terrorists."

"If I could, I would drop napalm bombs all over that village," a distraught Captain Traikwan Krairiksh was quoted in the Bangkok Post as saying after he viewed the bodies of his former subordinates in a pool of blood. "But the fact is, I can never do that. We are soldiers. We must follow the law. We can only take revenge by using the law."

Well guess what, this will keep happening until you napalm those material accomplices back to Hell where they belong.

If only Thailand would change its "policies" towards Israel the Middle East, these chickens wouldn't come home to roost against their imperialism...

Hey, wait, that excuse doesn't work, does it?

Maybe it's islam that's the problem?

Nah, their desire to impose their religion has nothing to do with...their religion...

Oh.

Blair Buries Kyoto

A few weeks ago, my mother mentioned she heard somewhere Tony Blair had abandoned the ridiculous Kyoto treaty. I couldn't find any information about that, however, not being able to find that TechCentralStation article.

Well, it seems the MSM didn't want to touch the story at the time, but the persistent work of bloggers finally brought it to the surface. It is all the more obvious that they buried this, as Blair made his remarks at an important environmental summit that received press coverage -- that ignored his shockingly total break with the party line:

Interestingly, these words from Blair, addressing an audience of a thousand at the Sheraton just a few blocks north of Times Square, failed to get any pickup in the media. Even The New York Times, published just down the street, ran a story that dwelt on the star power in the room, including King Abdullah of Jordan, Jesse Jackson, and George Stephanopoulos. "Isn't this awesome?" said one participant, and those words seemed to reflect fully the Times' take on the event.

For its part The Washington Post offered this bland headline: "Clinton Gathers World Leaders Nonpartisan Conference Focuses on Global Improvement," making no mention of Blair's global warming remarks. As for TV coverage, there wasn't much of that either; on CNN Headline News, Christi Paul said, admiringly, "former President Clinton is still looking to get things done," noting that Clinton garnered "more than $200 million in pledges" to address world problems.

What Blair in fact said, on a stage flanked by Bill Clinton and Condi Rice, was rather remarkable for its clarity:

“We have got to start from the brutal honesty about the politics of how we deal with it,” he said. “The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem. To be honest, I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”
...
In his comments, Blair suggested he no longer had faith in global agreements as a way of reversing rising greenhouse gas emissions. Instead he appeared to place his faith in science, technology and the free market — a position that President George W Bush adopted when he repudiated the Kyoto treaty in 2001.

Not to mention the Senate unanimously rejecting it...And when do those folks agree on anything?

This is great because the fact is, and I say this as a physicist unconnected with the energy industry, and can report that all my colleagues have the same view, that human-influenced Global Warming is a bunch of hooey, to use a technical term. And the Kyoto treaty was a complete and utter foolish waste based on pernicious nonsense.

See here.

A pillar of the Kyoto Accord is based on flawed calculations, incorrect data and an overtly biased selection of climate records...

IPCC clearly identified two major global climatic events in the past millennium, as confirmed by thousands of papers written by quaternary geologists during the past century -- a "Medieval Warm Period" (MWP) from about 800 to 1300 A.D. that was as much as two degrees Celsius warmer than today, and a far colder "Little Ice Age" (LIA) from about 1300 to 1900 A.D. The effects of these events were felt worldwide with convincing evidence of both the MWP and LIA found in Europe, North America, Africa, the Caribbean, Peru and even in China, Japan and Australia. As part of our emergence from the LIA, scientists agreed there had been a gradual warming throughout the 20th century, although the reasons for this were hotly contested with increasing greenhouse gases (GHG) and changes in the output of the sun being leading contenders.

In recent years, however, the case for solar variations being the 20th century's major climate driver has become much stronger, much to the consternation of Kyoto supporters. After all, if long before human-induced GHG emission became significant, temperatures were considerably higher than today, there would be little reason to think today's temperatures were anything unnatural. This was especially true since long-term solar records indicated that both the MWP and LIA were closely correlated with changes in solar activity, and the output of the sun has indeed been increasing during the past century's 0.6C warming.

Got that?

Global Warming due to "greenhouse gases" is a myth.

The People Lead

...And the leaders follow.

After gathering tens of thousands of signatures, and the support of the Fire and Police unions, the politicians had no choice but to change their tune, and action happened rapidly, as Pataki pulled the plug on the IFC "museum" at the WTC memorial!

Take Back The Memorial says,

Every since June 8, 2005 when Debra Bulingame's op-ed, The Great Ground Zero Heist, appeared in the Wall Street Journal, we have fought together for the preservation of the dignity of Ground Zero. With your help, we have achieved a major victory toward that goal.

We will continue to monitor the plans for Ground Zero to ensure that a fitting and proper memorials is built; one that is respectful of the victims murdered that day, their families, the first responders, and the American people.

Thanks to all who signed the petition, this is an important victory in the Culture Wars!

Our Friends, the Saudis

LA Hospital Halts Liver Tranplant Program

LOS ANGELES - One of California's largest organ transplant centers has suspended its liver program after determining that doctors improperly arranged a liver transplant for a man not among the highest-priority patients, officials said.

Staff at St. Vincent Medical Center then falsified documents to cover up the alleged wrongdoing, hospital President and Chief Executive Gus Valdespino told the Los Angeles Times in Tuesday's editions.

The case involves a Saudi national who was 52nd on a transplant list that covers much of Southern California and is based on who is sickest and who has been waiting longest. St. Vincent officials said the liver should have gone to a higher priority patient.

The transplant was done in 2003 and the Saudi Arabia Embassy paid $339,000 for the operation — up to 30 percent more than what the hospital would normally receive from insurance companies and government programs, Valdespino said.

The suspension of the liver program at St. Vincent means that lifesaving transplants could be delayed for 75 patients who are on the center's liver waiting list.

And people scoff at suggestions that the State Department might be compromised by Saudi influence.

The rewards of becoming a highly-paid "consultant" after leaving Foggy Bottom if one has behaved as befitting a slave should not be discounted, if doctors could be persuaded to falsify documents to take a liver away from a sick American for a miserable princeling.

Prognostication

From an essay by John Connly Walsh in The American Spectator:

This group of officers (there were seven altogether) was in very close agreement on a number of issues and predictions. The first is that between now and the election at year's end, the level of violence and killing will be extremely high. All agreed that the violence will continue well into next spring. It will end only after one final, very bloody and convulsive explosion of death and violence. That explosion will have an incredulous "world watching in awe and wonder," as one of them put it. They all agreed this final bloody convulsion -- a remorseless and savage Shiite versus Sunni battle -- will be an absolutely essential part of the process of readying Iraq for a peaceful future.

These officers also agreed that the deciding element in settling the convulsion will be the new Iraqi Army. A growing number of well-informed observers are becoming convinced that the Americans are in the process of creating an army that will fight, an army that won't run, and an army whose main interests are secular. At present the new Iraqi Army is earning its spurs in the west, far from the prying eyes of the U.S. and international media who are not prone to leaving the creature comforts of Baghdad, such as they are. The Iraqi Army performed well the other week in Tal Afra. It will probably succeed in sealing off the Syrian border; something long in need of being done. It is becoming the tip of the spear, and, if the U.S. Army training officers have done their work well, we will be seeing more and more of these Iraqi soldiers all over the country.

Perhaps the most important lesson drawn from the meeting with the seven officers was that one can't simply fall into depression every time a car bomb explodes. What we have to do is to keep our eye on the "prize," which is the total achievement of our strategic goals in the Middle East. Those are the establishment of a powerful, long-term, military, economic, intelligence, and political presence in the entire area, with Iraq as its focal point and home base.

The Middle East has served as the cradle and fountainhead of every aspect of worldwide terrorism that Islam has attempted to impose on America and the West. No country in the Arab world is better suited to be the "headquarters" of the war against Islamic terrorism than Iraq. It is centrally located, inherently rich, and of all the Arab countries the least Islamist and the most secular. Militarily, it is a country of wide open spaces. It has an infrastructure of many military bases, particularly air bases, which are Saddam's legacy. Today, in Northern Iraq, which is distinctly friendly to the U.S., our military forces are settling in for a long stay. Bases in Northern Iraq will enable us to keep a very close eye on all those "friendly outposts of Islam" such as Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States.

Americans have to realize that we live in an incredibly dangerous world and that we have clearly been at war since 9/11. What many Americans, aided and abetted by the liberal media, try to believe is that this is not a war because there are no massed and uniformed armies, and no front lines to be seen on maps in the morning papers. Absent those features, in their opinion, this is not a real war.

The Islamist terrorists fight their war with car bombs, suicide bombers, airliners crashing into buildings, and the killing of tens of thousands of women and children in the name of Allah and Islam. Theirs is indiscriminate killing intended to terrify and coerce the political leadership to engage in massive acts of appeasement so that "the Islamist will go away and leave us alone!"

In the next two years, in my opinion, the U.S. will have established the kind of presence in Iraq and Afghanistan that will enable us to wage the long-term war on Islamic terrorism that George Bush had in mind when, right after 9/11, he warned about the need for the American people to be prepared to fight a very long war.

During the Cold War the U.S. ringed the Soviet Union with bases in countries all over the Northern Hemisphere. That encirclement drove the Soviet leadership to fits of apoplexy and, occasionally, to very foolish foreign ventures.

During this war we won't be on the fringes of Islam. We will be in Iraq. We will be right in the heart of Islam. Right in the midst of the enemy who would kill us all. And, when the realization of that sinks in, the American people will finally know why we went to war in Iraq.

Some of us have known all along.

The New Media

The New Media has great power. The fact that everyone, with cheap digital technology, can be a "reporter", or at least a chronicler of events in near real-time and get worldwide distribution for those who wish to look, is changing the world.

The Memory Hole of Orwell's Big Brother was slain by the internet.

As Wretchard has written,

The protester might have been on radio talk-show, while being snapped by photojournalists, who were in turn memorialized by citizens, one at least of whom was a blogger. The issue that interests Micklethwait is what happens in a communications-dense environment where everyone is potentially wired to everyone else, where everyone is a node on a graph. He has come to one conclusion: at the very least a wired society makes it harder for government to simply make things go away.

For example, "zombie", a photographer who posts frequently on LGF to expose the "story behind the story" at many political protests, has another interesting expose up that reveals how the MSM can slant the story no more:

The San Francisco Chronicle featured the original photograph on its front page in order to convey a positive message about the rally -- perhaps that even politically aware teenagers were inspired to show up and rally for peace, sporting the message, "People of Color say 'No to War!'" And that served the Chronicle's agenda.

But this simple analysis reveals the very subtle but insidious type of bias that occurs in the media all the time. The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn't tell you the whole truth.

Because the whole truth -- that the girl was part of a group of naive teenagers recruited by Communist activists to wear terrorist-style bandannas and carry Palestinian flags and obscene placards -- is disturbing, and doesn't conform to the narrative that the Chronicle is trying to promote. By presenting the photo out of context, and only showing the one image that suits its purpose, the Chronicle is intentionally manipulating the reader's impression of the rally, and the rally's intent.

Such tactics -- in the no-man's-land between ethical and unethical -- are commonplace in the media, and have been for decades. It is only now, with the advent of citizen journalism, that we can at last begin to see the whole story and realize that the public has been manipulated like this all along.

Make sure to see his whole photo-essay, Anatomy of a Photograph, to see for yourself!

But there is a darkside, as Wretchard elaborates,

I argued in the previous post on precision strikes against insurgents that within the context of our technological capabilities, information alone can kill. All the other stuff -- bombers, JDAMs, etc -- is already out there. Add information on the location of the Emir of Qaim and an emergent phenomenon comes into being: the precision strike. A new thing came out of the old things, which is not one of the old things but a consequence of their interaction.

Consider another example. Proposition. If you pump out enough hate ideas for long enough, two aircraft will materialize out of the clear blue over Manhattan and carry out the fantasy. Once again, in our affluent world, the materials were all to hand. All they needed was an idea with enough time to germinate to turn it into reality.

I've long suspected that some of the more disgusting perversions now reaching epidemic proportions have actually been created by some idea, formerly confined to the skulls of a few individuals, which are now free to propagate over the Internet and cross-fertilize with other memes to produce God knows what abomination.

If you think it, it will come.

This is particularly disturbing when one considers not only the people who eat roadkill, but the rest of their neo-Unabomber eco-primitivist ilk such as the self-proclaimed Species Traitors, the Coalition Against Civilization, and those who Visualize Industrial Collapse. From their own flyer,

Species traitor exists as a forum for spreading and developing theories and practical means to bring about the destruction of civilization and defend what wilderness remains. We feel that now more than ever, there is a need for a viable alternative to the mass death culture, and hope to widen the range of information available.

This cannot be clear enough, we embrace the goal of moving beyond civilization and will not settle for reform on any level.

Meanwhile, a disgraced Dan Rather weeps,

I think it's fair to say and again I just speak for myself but I believe it to be true of CBS and I think it was true of a lot of news organizations, unaware or not knowing enough of how quickly bloggers could strike.

Get used to it.

Reality

It's been apparent for some time that the pessimistic "narrative" being sold by the MSM is becoming more and more divorced from reality. The readjustment, when facts on the ground are suddenly obviously directly contrary to what was expected, will be sweet indeed. It will come as a great surprise to many, but not to all.

We recall how the narratives went immediately into wishful fantasyland when "quagmire" was declared in Afghanistan -- it's brutal winter unbeatable -- oh, right about this time 4 years ago.

That is, within about 3 weeks of 9/11.

Other examples abound in recent history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, for example. Who saw that coming?

The stock market is like that too: valuations can get out of whack with reality, to either side, for quite some time.

Then, there's a sudden "readjustment."

And so it will be geopolitically.

Wretchard opines, in his own comment section,

The fight in Ramadi is being treated like the Hamas accident: in a most distorted way. The ongoing fight is actually part of an offensive by the US, but it is being portrayed as yet another insurgent victory. 'The number of US dead now passes ...'.

Because most news readers don't have the time to pore over details, if they are given a framework of belief any new fact will be slotted into it. The genius of the Left which has not been successfully countered by the conservatives is that they've created a narrative: there are a lot of innocent American boys wandering around aimlessly in Iraq and they are being picked off one by one. Whenever a soldier or marine dies, the datum gets fitted into this false but simple framework.

The DOD, through its briefings, tries to give the seemingly shapeless garment of events some form, but its narrative format is often long, filled with detail, insider terms, etc and presumes in the reader a kind of memory, which the reader often lacks, as those busy earning a living often do. For the million, a simple lie works far better than the complex truth.

The irony is that the Press was once viewed as society's bulwark against demagoguery, though demagoguery is by definition a form of yellow press.
...
What tempts every writer with a readership is the lure of substituting his own 'simple' narrative for the 'false' narrative of the demagogue. One fiction is opposed with another, everyone entertained but none the wiser. Because things ebb and flow, sometimes the US side takes a hit, sometimes it cleans up. It takes a certain self confidence to acknowledge an enemy success. The truth will never be a simple story, though there is simplicity in it.

That's why these formulaic Leftist narratives are so astounding. You would expect an intelligent Leftist to recognize that the US has to be winning a certain percentage of the time, if only out of sheer luck. Yet it's a mark of how mesmerizing the Big Lie is, excuse me, 'speaking truth to power', that people can go on swallowing one lie after the other simply because it suits their book and makes them feel better. True believers are always blindsided by outcomes. Communism was inevitable until it became history seemingly overnight. The EU was going to sweep all before it up to the moment when it vanished like a puff of smoke. The insurgency will be invincible until the instant it all comes crashing down.

Precisely because it seems so unlikely, I am going to predict that history will mark W as one of our most significant Presidents. Given the unprecedented degree of opposition, it's remarkable what's been accomplished in such a short time.

He's changing the world.

And it needed to be changed.

Here's a quick rundown of W's Axis of Evil World Tour:

Afghanistan -- Freed. Taliban routed. Free elections held.

Pakistan -- Flipped. Nuclear black market shut down.

Central Asia -- Infiltrated. New US bases in the 'stans a strategic coup.

Iraq -- Toppled. Perhaps the center of rippling change in the Arab world. Looming threats decisively ended.

Libya -- Capitulated. Abandoned secret nuclear and chemical programs out of fear.

Lebanon -- Freed. Syrian imperialists forced out after decades.

Egypt -- Stirring. Talk of freer government unavoidable.

United Nations -- Exposed. Told to reform, or else.

Europe -- Stirring. Starting to realize it has a big problem. May yet get their house in order.

PLA -- Outmaneuvered. Civil war likely. Gaza to become free-fire zone.

North Korea -- Contained. Agreed in principle to disarm via multilateral diplomacy, backed by a big stick.

That's really an amazing set of accomplishments.

And done with unbelievably low human cost, by any historical measure.

But wait, there's more!

Coming Soon:

Syria -- Doomed.

Saudi Arabia -- Desperate. Its double game is getting much harder.

Iran -- Surrounded. Time is running out, and W holds more cards.

OBL and friends -- Isolated. Like characters in cheap horror movies, could die suddenly at any time.

As Wretchard again puts it,

A lot of societies are living on borrowed time -- China, with its suicidal one-child demographics, Europe which is already there, the Islamic world with its Death Wish Cults, the Russian Republic of Vodka, and Africa, nobody forget Africa -- and all of these merry tunes are going to stop playing.

The US President doesn't have the power to alter history on this scale. Nor does the Left, for all its vanity, have any power to remake history on the scale it aspires to. The story of the world has a lot of stability. China, India, Egypt -- even Israel, and maybe America -- they all go on. But we don't. Our little existences are not similarly guaranteed. My job is to ensure that I survive, along with my family, for the next 30 years.

You might disgree, but I think the Jihadis are beaten already simply because the last four years has brought warning of them to every corner of the world. The ancient nations, the eternal bedrock of humanity, are wise to them now. Perhaps the greatest threat to the world wasn't Islam at all, but the soporific postmodern correctness that sapped the immune system of the world so badly that second rate bugs like Osama actually had a chance of becoming players. Osama was proof of how senile the West had become and the West nearly spread that senility around on the strength of its immense prestige.

Which brings me to my last point.

About that net-enabled warning?

There's now another faction in play:

The New Crusaders -- Awakened.

Communist Propaganda Writ Small

The brilliant Theodore Dalrymple, a British doctor who writes social commentary, in this interview covers a variety of important topics:

Frontpage: You make the shrewd observation of how political correctness engenders evil because of "the violence that it does to people's souls by forcing them to say or imply what they do not believe, but must not question." Can you talk about this a bit?

Dalrymple: Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

We must shake off the shackles of politically correct thought. That in itself is one reason I am delighted the new pope is living up to his old nickname of "The Hammer" and putting the hammer down on gay-overrun seminaries and non-chaste gay priests:

The agency said the new document would indicate that men with homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers."

In an apparently new element, the agency said the document would also say that already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies, would be "strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood."

The American prelate overseeing the evaluations, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, said earlier this month that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must "stay on the safe side" by restricting their enrollment. He stressed that the church was not "hounding" gays out of the priesthood, but wants to enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.

The simple fact that it's so incredibly un-PC for the church to do this, and yet do it they apparently will, and without consequence in spite of the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, will be of far-reaching importance.

Shouldn't we be tolerant of the Catholic church's views on who can be one of its own priests?

We must liberate our minds from Pre-Conceived (could that be what PC really stands for?) opinions.

I can feel the outrage over this already, but it doesn't have a logical leg to stand on, especially given the objective proof about the inappropriateness -- nay, the avoidable tragedy -- of allowing gay men to be in unsupervised close contact with teenage boys.

Which is the same reason the Boy Scouts are right to not have gay Scoutmasters.

And is the same reason why it would be ludicrous for me, a single man, to be allowed to be a Girl Scout leader.

It's the exact same thing.

Except that I'm not an approved victim or minority, so I am held to sane standards whereas gays, according to PC-logic, are not. Tolerance has become equated with being "more" equal, just to prove out virtue.

Dalrymple continues, apropos of this recent on the roots of Suicidalism,

Frontpage: You discuss the horrifying suffering that women endure under the vicious and sadistic structures of Islam's gender apartheid. You touch on the eerie silence of Western leftist feminists on this issue, noting "Where two pieties -- feminism and multi-culturalism -- come into conflict, the only way of preserving both is an indecent silence."

To be sure, the Left has long posed as a great champion of women's rights, gay rights, minorti rights, democratic rights etc. Yet today, it has reached out in solidarity with the most fascistic women-hating, gay-hating, minority-hating and democracy hating force on the face of the earth -- Islamism.

What gives? It's really nothing new though is it? (i.e. the Left's political pilgrimages to communist gulags etc.)

Dalrymple: I think the problem here is one of a desired self-image. Tolerance is the greatest moral virtue and broadmindedness the greatest intellectual one. Moreover, no decent person can be other than a feminist. People therefore want to be both multiculturalist and feminist. But multiculturalism and feminism obviously clash; therefore, you avoid the necessity to give up one or the other merely by disregarding the phenomena. How you feel about yourself is more important to you than the state of the world.

And also,

Frontpage: Your observation about humans' thrill for danger and how this interrelates with humans' pattern of self destruction and the voluntary choosing of misery is very profound. Could you share your thoughts with us about this?

Dalrymple: It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or without frustration.

I think it was Dostoyevsky who said that, even if the government were 100 per cent benevolent and arranged everything for our own good, as judged by rational criteria, we should still want to exercise our freedom by going against its dispensations.

One reason for the epidemic of self-destructiveness that has struck British, if not the whole of Western, society, is the avoidance of boredom. For people who have no transcendent purpose to their lives and cannot invent one through contributing to a cultural tradition (for example), in other words who have no religious belief and no intellectual interests to stimulate them, self-destruction and the creation of crises in their life is one way of warding off meaninglessness. I have noticed, for example, that women who frequent bad men - that is to say men who are obviously unreliable, drunken, drug-addicted, criminal, or violent, or all of them together, have often had experience of decent men who treat them well, with respect, and so forth: they are the ones with whom their relationships lasted the shortest time, because they were bored by decency. Without religion or culture (and here I mean high, or high-ish, culture) evil is very attractive. It is not boring.

Frontpage: You mention that your dad was a communist. Tell us about his world view and how this affected your family and your own intellectual journey.

Dalrymple: My father was a communist though he was also a businessman. Our house was full of communist literature from the 1930s and 40s, and I remember such authors as Plekhanov and Maurice Hindus and Edgar Snow. It was always clear that my father's concern for humanity was not always matched by his concern for men, to put it mildly, for whom (as individuals) he often expressed contempt. He found it difficult to enter an equal relationship with anyone, and preferred to play Stalin to their Molotov. We had The Short Course in the house, incidentally, and one of my favourite books (which I used to leaf through as a child) was a vast picture book of the Soviet Union in 1947.

I think the great disjunction between my father's expressed ideas (and ideals) and his everyday conduct affected me, and made me suspicious of people with grand schemes of universal improvement.

Know Thy Enemy

In the previous post I mentioned the ACLU. I just wanted to point out some of the history of those who shaped it.

One of its key founders was Roger Nash Baldwin, who was its first Executive Director from 1920 until 1950.

He was a communist and member of Industrial Workers of the World, an organization of socialists and radical anarchists. Its constitution preamble states currently:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. ... Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work', we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the wage system'.

Marxists to the core.

Those damn subversive folk singers such as communist Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie were associated with the IWW's penchant for revolutionary and subversive songs.

But back to Baldwin. An ardent pacifist (a position which Orwell correctly describes as "objectively pro-fascist"), Baldwin in 1927

visited the Soviet Union and published a book, entitled Liberty Under the Soviets, which contained extensive praise for the country he later denounced.

Denounced for technical reasons of the Nazi-Soviet pact, most likely; I doubt he gave up marxist, anti-American beliefs.

I mean come on, Liberty under the Soviets?

You'd have to be a lunatic to write something like that.

And this guy shaped the ACLU.

And populated it with like-minds.

So we're supposed to believe it is some benign, mainstream organization?

One critic writes,

From its inception, the ACLU has worked to create a new America. To do so, the ACLU found it necessary to achieve two main things: first, the abolishment of Constitutional barriers to governmental power and second, the enervation of man’s soul to make him weak and dependent on government. Both of which move America towards a progressive state and, according to Dr. Krannawitter, are advanced by “removing God from the American mind.”

In order for the ACLU to tear down constitutional barriers to governmental power, they must extinguish America’s fundamental belief in God, since such a belief is an essential denial of the supreme power of government. Rights come from God, not government.
...
In addition to the emphasis on the source of rights and governmental power, the ACLU has worked to make people needy and dependent on government. Alexis de Tocqueville warned of those like the ACLU who wished to exacerbate the malignant tendencies of democracy. He explained that the government, if people allow it to do so, will create an incessant dependency of the people on the government as it expands its power under the guise of utility, finally reducing “each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” The ACLU seeks not only to create a people that are dependent and needy, but also a government that “little by little extinguishes their spirits and enervates their souls” by giving them all they want, so that they will be naively content without hopes, dreams, or a will of their own. This is a sort of despotism unlike any other.

Their pro-atheist crusade, their anti-gun stance, their support of radical unionization and anti-capitalism, all are consistent with such an agenda.

Suicidalism

We have been baffled by the bizarre behavior of the Left these last few years. How could they not see the same threat from the islamists that we do? How can so-called "social progressives" apparently ally themselves with the worst social reactionaries on the planet that would stone them to death in a moment?

Aided by the MSM, it has been bewildering how they seemed to be cutting their own throats just to spite George Bush.

Armed And Dangerous describes this cult of suicidalism, otherwise known as the modern leftist/progressive movement:

The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.

But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western intellectual life.

Consider the following propositions:

-- There is no truth, only competing agendas.

-- All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

-- There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

-- The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

-- Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

-- The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

-- For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But “oppressed” people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

-- When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

These ideas travel under many labels: postmodernism, nihilism, multiculturalism, Third-World-ism, pacifism, “political correctness” to name just a few. It is time to recognize them for what they are, and call them by their right name: suicidalism.

Read it all, and find out such gems as the connection of Existentialism to suicidalism.

As an aside, I recall getting the the "existentialism" unit in high school English class, and though I couldn't put my finger on it, I rejected with rage the stories we had to read, finding something about their espoused worldview deeply wrong. I felt vaguely as if I were being told a cunning, malicious lie by the existentialists, that sought to tear down all that I held to be good of our Judeo-Greco-Christian heritage.

The essay concludes:

The Communist atheists of Department V understood that Christian self-abnegation tends to inculcate a cult of self-sacrifice even among Westerners who are themselves agnostics or atheists. All the propagandists had to do was make the case that the value of self-abnegation applies to culture as well as individuals. By doing so, they were able to entrench the idea that suicidalists are morally superior to non-suicidalists.

They did this so successfully that at least one major form of Western self-abnegation seems to have developed as a secondary phenomenon: “deep environmentalism”. I can’t find any sign that this traces back to the usual Stalinist suspects, but it is rather obviously a result of generalizing suicidalism not just to culture but to species.

I think it’s important to understand that, although suicidalism builds on some pre-existing pathologies of Western culture, it is not a native or natural development. It is an infection that evildoers and their dupes created and then spread as part of a war against the West; their goal was totalitarian control, and part of their method was to talk the West into slitting its own throat.

Al-Qaeda’s goal is the restoration of the Caliphate and the imposition of shari’a law on the West so that the Dar al-Harb is abolished and absorbed into the Dar al-Islam. In other words, totalitarian theocracy. Western suicidalists have transferred their allegience from Communism to Islamofascism without a hitch. They’re doing their best to see that we lose — and their best is rather more effective than any bombing campaign.

Thus, to defeat al-Qaeda, stopping the suicide bombers is not sufficient. We must recognize, condemn, and reject the suicide thinkers as well.

So don't fall for it!

We're still fighting the commies. The author rejects the kneejerk claim that this is all just conspiracy theory nonsense, citing this source on the Seduction of the Liberals. I'd also include the previously secret Venona Project that decoded soviet messages in the 1940s, showing that indeed communist agents had infiltrated the government just like McCarthy claimed and that Alger Hiss was guilty guilty guilty.

Who was behind the peace movement and the nuclear freeze in the 70s and 80s? The KGB. Who is behind the anti-war effort now, funding International Answer? The World Workers Party, which is a front for the remnants of the KGB.

Remember that thing called the Cold War that threatened to blow up the world? It wasn't a fiction.

It was real.

And those commies didn't just vanish in 1989.

They made their Long March into academia, the media, and other mainstream powerful institutions such as the ACLU.

(How else to explain, for example, the ACLU's incoherent positions of crusading militantly for atheism under a twisted deliberate misinterpretation of the 1st Amendment, while simultaneously ignoring completely the 2nd Amendment to bear arms? They are not honest actors, but have a definite anti-American agenda.)

As I've tried to explain before, leftists wish to create a utopia by exerting powerful social control via a collective over the individual. This leads inevitably to mass murder and oppression.

History is clear on that point.

What the leftists have done is hijacked social progressive causes, getting the so-called "liberals" on board, and in fact conflating the two concepts. Therefore leftism has acquired a patina of virtue, by being associated with progressive thought.

But it was a Faustian bargain. Liberals succumbed to the lure of expedience, in that the state power wielded by leftists promised to bring about the social change -- the social justice -- they desired. Others, like Noam Chomsky, just wished to get their "hand on the lash" when the New Order came about.

For example, not long ago, I discovered someone had posted one of my articles about Nazis being leftists (that drew from here; see sidebar there) to another message board, but commenters dismissed it, pointing out Hitler wasn't very socially progressive. They missed the point entirely! It has provided great camouflage to the movement that wishes to destroy our Western culture by being associated with civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, animal rights, environmentalism, and so on.

But that's all just a pose, as their alliance with islamists, who are against all those things (but for collective social control), proves decisively.

And those "deep environmentalists" mentioned above -- they are deeply disturved, evil people. I've personally heard some of them actual wistfully wish for some natural disaster -- preferably of our own making -- to kill off about 5 billion people, so the rest could live in harmony with Gaia.

That's just staggering! The coolness with which they wish to destroy not only all of civilization as we know it, but billions of innocent lives...just for the benefit of their deranged fantasies about how the apparently-sentient Earth would be happier!

Apparently they imagine they'd be among the survivors. Actually, scratch that, some of them wish to die for the sake of the environment and hope we will joing them: The Voluntary Human Extinction Project!

This is truly a disease that we must cure.

Liberals must be rescued from leftism and communist propaganda.

This suicidalism must be stamped out!

A Political Philosophy

As I mentioned below, this Eric Raymond is hard to classify. As he explains here:

A minor SF writer of radical Marxist political convictions recently uttered a rather incoherent rant in which, among other things, she accused me of “simple-minded right-wing” views. I’m not going to name her because I don’t dislike the woman enough to want to add to her troubles. But I’ve heard this song before from other Marxists, and I can’t resist commenting on why I find such accusations darkly amusing.

A commenter named Chris Byrne left this interesting bit of political philosophy, which makes an awful lot of sense:

It will never cease to amaze me how so many intelligent people can be so utterly stupid.

There are only three political philosophies:

1. The collective has rights, and those rights are superior to the rights of the individual

2. The individual has rights, but also responsibilities to the members of the collective. The collective has no rights, and those responsibilites owed to it’s members are at best equal to the rights of the individual.

3. The individual has all rights which are superior, and no responsiblities

Fundamentally, that’s all there is to it. I personally believe that if YOU believe in 1, or 3, no matter how smart you are, you’re an idiot.

Anarchy and collectivism (3 and 1 respectively) are fundamnetaly wrong. Collectivism requires the subjugation of human freedom to the will of the collective in all things. I believe that this is objectively evil. Anarchy inevitably results in the total subjugation of the weak by the strong, which is also objectively evil.

If you believe in a “balance” between 1 and 2, you’re wrong as well, because there is no balance between the two. Collectives do not have rights. Individuals have rights, and responsiblities are owed by individuals to the members of a collective. There are no collective rights.

If you believe in a balance between 2 and 3 you’re wrong, there is no balance point. Either you owe responsibilities to the members of the collective, or you don’t.

And no, I’m not going to softpedal this and say “this is my opinion”. I believe that what I have said is objectively true, and not subject to opinion. My first principle is that the unwilling subjugation of human liberty is always objectively evil; unless it is to prevent an individual from transgressing upon the fundamental liberties of others.

I cannot comprehend how any other first principle could be correct.

If you are arguing from a different first principle, stop right now, because no useful discussion can occur between individuals who share different first principles on a subject; except as relates to those first principles themselves.

These ideas were apparently influenced by the works of Robert Heinlein, if I read followup comments correctly.

Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

Via USS Clueless' archives, via Ed Driscoll, via The Anchoress, I came across something a three years old from a (defunct) blog I was unaware of: Armed and Dangerous by Eric Raymond.

The current version of that blog is now found here, and seems to have lots of good stuff. Mr. Raymond seems rather complex, and I wouldn't presume to pigeonhole him, especially after such a cursory skimming of his material, but he claims to definitely NOT be a Republican and is probably more of a libertarian. He also seems to be an important force in the Open Source Software movement.

Which is a little ironic, because he's asserting copyright on the Manifesto, so I'm not going to post the whole thing, so please follow the link to read it.

Anyway, he published an Anti Idiotarian Manifesto about 3 years ago, and it's worth another look.

It went through several revisions as comments came in. I like the original one best; the later ones may have greater specificity, but that dilutes the message's power a bit.

And now, the Manifesto:

WHEREAS, the year since the terrible events of 9/11 has exposed the vacuity and moral confusion of all too many of the thinkers, politicians, and activists operating within conventional political categories;

WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding squalid theories of moral equivalence; and by blaming the victims of evil for the act of evil;

WHEREAS, the Right has failed us by pushing `anti-terrorist' measures which bid fair to be both ineffective and prejudicial to the central liberties of a free society; and in some cases by rhetorically descending to almost the same level of religious jihad as our enemies;

WHEREAS, even many of the Libertarians from whom we expected more intelligence have retreated into a petulant isolationism, refusing to recognize that, at this time, using the state to carry the war to the enemy is our only practical instrument of self-defense;

WE THEREFORE ASSERT the following convictions as the basis of the anti-idiotarian position:

There follows a clear laying out of the situation we face. It demands war to remove dictators like Hussein, calls for profiling while maintaining libertarian civil liberties, and contains such sections as:

WE FURTHER AFFIRM that the `root cause' of Islamo-fascist terrorism lies in the animating politico-religious ideas of fundamentalist Islam and not in any significant respect elsewhere, and that a central aim of the war against terror must be to displace, discredit, and destroy those animating ideas.

It ends on the rousing note:

WE ARE MEMBERS OF A CIVILIZATION, and we hold that civilization to be worth defending. We have not sought war, but we will fight it to the end. We will fight for our civilization in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.

WE HAVE AWAKENED. We have seen the face of evil in the acts of the Bin Ladens and Husseins and Arafats of the world; we have seen through the lies and self-delusions of the idiotarians who did so much both to make their evil possible before the fact and to deny and excuse it afterwards. We shall not flinch from our duty to confront that evil.

WE SHALL SHED the moral cowards and the appeasers and the apologists; and we shall fight the barbarians and fanatics, and we shall defeat them. We shall defeat them in war, crushing their dream of dominion; and we shall defeat them in peace, using our wealth and freedoms to seduce their women and children to civilized ways, and ultimately wiping their diseased and virulent culture from the face of the Earth.

THIS WE SWEAR, on the graves of those who died at the World Trade Center; and those who died in the Sari Club in Bali; and those who died on the U.S.S. Cole; and indeed on the graves of all the nameless victims in the Middle East itself who have been slaughtered by terrorism and rogue states;

YOU SHALL NOT HAVE DIED IN VAIN.

Three years on, this is an important reminder. He overly bashes Christian religiosity in an attempt to remain balanced, but otherwise I thoroughly concur.

Reinventing the Wheel Militia

Oh, how I remember being mocked for pointing out to people (on message boards or letters to the editor, for example) years ago that the militia still served a useful purpose.

The "organized" militia is of course the National Guard. Most don't realize there's also an "unorganized militia" which is the body of armed citizens, and is a resource that can be drawn upon in times of need, and that can self-organize in extremis. The latter is the militia referred to in the 2nd Amendment; if you're an adult citizen, you're already in it!

(though apparently if you're over 45, Congress will give you a pass, according to US Code Title 10 sec. 311)

I would warn that civil disorder could break out at any time, especially after some natural disaster.

Oh, how they laughed!

Well well well:

After the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is questioning whether changes are needed in disaster-response policies, including repealing a law that prohibits the use of federal troops in domestic law enforcement.

The law dates to the 1870s. It was a reaction to the deployment of federal troops to former Confederate states to supervise elections and maintain law and order, known as Posse Comitatus. It was a practice that many in Congress were uncomfortable with because of the potential for abuse.

Well duh.

What, we're supposed to have soldiers read Miranda rights? The army kills things. Let's not be so hasty to declare martial law. I think they passed Posse Comitatus for a reason, and not on a whim.

But that was just one idea:

Some policy analysts say the active-duty military or National Guard should create a rapid-response force whose job is to deploy immediately. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says the National Guard is better suited to deal with domestic emergencies than the active-duty military.

They got that right.

And now the funny part:

James Carafano, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says it's time to create National Guard units that can be called to an emergency in a matter of hours.

Oh, I know, we could call them Hourmen or something.

Or maybe we could get some guys who'd be ready in mere Minutes.

Hmmm, wonder what we might call them...

Mediate This!

This arrived in my inbox, with the actual subject "Mediate This!"

Like I said below, people are getting fed up.

This time it's about the plans to dilute the memorial at the World Trade Center by including a museum to oppressed peoples worldwide, in order, in effect, to show we had retribution coming to us.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 15, 2005
Contact: Anthony Gardner
Coalition of 9/11 Families
amg@wtcufg.org
(973) 216-2623

15 Major 9/11 Family Groups Reject LMDC Mediation Plan

...
If anything, the LMDC has once again demonstrated that it does not understand the difference between having meetings and actually listening to the public.

The LMDC appears not to understand that the objection, in principle, to the presence of the IFC on the World Trade Center site is no longer a matter that can be resolved by 9/11 family groups alone. They have been joined by the 22,000 members of ‘New York’s Bravest”–the Uniformed Firefighters Association– which lost 343 of its active members and three of its retired members in the 9/11 attacks, as well as the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, the state’s largest firefighter organization consisting of 110,000 volunteer firefighters, many of whom participated in the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero. These organizations are also joined by more than 46,000 people from all over the country who have signed an online petition calling for the LMDC to remove the IFC and the Drawing Center from the memorial site. We anticipate that the growing list of organizations joining this fight for a proper memorial will increase these numbers exponentially in the coming days.

The LMDC’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge this wider rejection of the IFC mirrors its denial of other critical problems with the larger memorial and memorial museum plans. Constantly fuzzy and, curiously, always reduced projections on the millions of people per year who will visit the memorial do not add up when compared to other major memorials around the country such as the Statue of Liberty.
...
By creating yet another deaf and redundant ‘process” from which they are removed, the LMDC and Governor George Pataki are simply delaying resolution of an issue which has been clearly laid out before them, as well as wasting time and resources that could be better spent addressing other compelling problems that must be solved before the first shovel is sunk into sacred ground. The time is long overdue for civic and political leaders to act. The IFC must go.

Advocates for 9/11 Fallen Heroes (rjtallon@cs.com, jalel31@hotmail.com, l59e85@aol.com)
Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund (www.cantorrelief.org)
Coalition of 9/11 Families (www.coalitionof911families.org)
Fix the Fund (www.fixthefund.org)
Give Your Voice (www.giveyourvoice.com)
Margie Miller 9/11 Support Group (WTCFamilyCenter@aol.com)
9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America (www.911familiesforamerica.org)
9/11 Families for a Secure America (www.911fsa.org)
September 11th Families Association (www.911wvfa.org)
September’s Mission Foundation (www.septembersmission.org)
Skyscraper Safety Campaign (www.skyscrapersafety.org)
Voices of September 11th (www.voicesofsept11.org)
W. Doyle 9/11 Support Group (www.joeydoyle.com)
WTC Families for Proper Burial, Inc. (www.wtcfamiliesforproperburial.com)
World Trade Center United Family Group (www.wtcufg.org)

Take Back The Memorial!

A Changing World

The world is changing radically, though in ways largely unrecognized by mainstream opinion. Blogging is easy when I just have to copy the cogent observations of others.

First, we have some observations in this article:

Analysts believe that Assad canceled his New York trip for two reasons: U.S. officials couldn't guarantee his entourage immunity from arrest if Mehlis and the Lebanese government issued a warrant, and, more important, he feared the risk of turmoil in Damascus if he were to leave now.

What an invigorating spectacle, to watch as the rule of law squeezes the arrogant men who treated Lebanon as their private fief. Some of them are in jail; others are trying to cut deals; still others are said to have defected to other countries. Credit goes to Lebanon's new government, which was tough and united in making the surprise arrests, at dawn on Aug. 30, of the security chiefs. Rumors are spinning in Beirut and Damascus about which members of the Assad regime are ratting out their friends. A Paris-based newsletter, Intelligence Online, wrote that a Syrian intelligence colonel had defected to France with information about the Slovakian-made explosives that allegedly killed Hariri.

Follow the chain of events. Why did Syria withdraw from Lebanon in the first place?

Purely because it knew it could not use brutal military force, as it did on the former town of Hama, to repress the Cedar Revolution.

And the reason for that was surely not because of the UN. But rather because there were battle-hardened US combat divisions in Iraq.

I mentioned before how that situation also changed Qadaffi's mind about the wisdom of pursuing nuclear weapons. To those who wish to dismiss such thoughts, let us recall we have the evidence directly from his own mouth; Italy's Berlusconi reported that Qadaffi called him on the phone, saying,

I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid.

Amazingly, many still claim the Iraq war had nothing to do whatsoever with Libya's unilateral capitulation!

Wretchard of Belmont Club elaborates,

If you listed out all the things that have happened in the four years since 9/11 it would be an astoundingly long ennumeration. Afghanistan, AQ Khan, Iraq, Libya, UN, Indonesia, Indian alliance, fall of the EU, reelection of Howard, Bush, Blair, Araft, Gaza and Lebanon. You could extend the list much further if you wish.

Yet despite that, there's a sense that President Bush has lost his sense of urgency and mission; that he is acting too PC. There's some truth to that, but part of the reason I suspect, is that the War on Terror has grown so broad and acquired such a momentum that it can no longer be steered by direct action.

But that does not mean it can be left to drift. The quiet surrounding the White House can either mean it has brought the wheel amidships or it is thinking through the next move. I don't know which it is.

Aristides adds,

If you haven't done so already, you must watch Bush's speech to the UN delivered yesterday. Watch it as from a distance and feel the enormity of American power; listen to the words and hear something great and unknown. You can watch it on Cspan.org if you missed it.

It is something that must be watched. Watch his eyes, read his body language. The leader of the free world threw down the gauntlet yesterday, to allies and enemies alike, and by doing so he has exposed his agenda. He is still moving forward, and the UN will be his vehicle. Last chance, it seems, for that austere body to substantially affect the foreign policy of the new United States imperium.

I would very much like to have a seating chart of the assembly. Bush seemed to punctuate his strongest statements with his eyes, and I would love to know who it was that drew them.

Aristides must be referring to this main speech and this shorter one. An excerpt:

The United Nations and its member states must continue to stand by the Iraqi people as they complete the journey to a fully constitutional government. And when Iraqis complete their journey, their success will inspire others to claim their freedom, the Middle East will grow in peace and hope and liberty, and all of us will live in a safer world.

The advance of freedom and security is the calling of our time. It is the mission of the United Nations. The United Nations was created to spread the hope of liberty, and to fight poverty and disease, and to help secure human rights and human dignity for all the world's people. To help make these promises real, the United Nations must be strong and efficient, free of corruption, and accountable to the people it serves. The United Nations must stand for integrity, and live by the high standards it sets for others. And meaningful institutional reforms must include measures to improve internal oversight, identify cost savings, and ensure that precious resources are used for their intended purpose.

The United Nations has taken the first steps toward reform. The process will continue in the General Assembly this fall, and the United States will join with others to lead the effort. And the process of reform begins with members taking our responsibilities seriously. When this great institution's member states choose notorious abusers of human rights to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, they discredit a noble effort, and undermine the credibility of the whole organization. If member countries want the United Nations to be respected -- respected and effective, they should begin by making sure it is worthy of respect.

Taking them to the woodshed!

Aristides continues,

After reading "The Terrorist Network", it struck me how much we can blame communism and its fellow travelers for the age of terrorism. Terrorism in its first instance is an attack on liberal democracy; it is dangerous because it turns our strengths against us and makes the virtuous society untenable. The communist revolutionaries of the 70's knew that democracies were highly impotent against terrorism. People want safety more than liberties, and governments that could not supply the former would end by taking away the latter. Once the society is militarized and oppressed, the patient communist can find the fodder he needs to feed the beast of revolution. Start by stealing from the rich to feed the poor, and eventually the wind and the people are at your back. With such justification is tyranny and fascism embraced over democracy; this is the reason far-Leftists cheer dictatorship and abuse. Abuse and oppression are necessary preconditions of revolution, and revolution is what they fight for. If democracy is two steps away from the Worker's Paradise, tyranny is but one.

Thus, the Tupamaros could celebrate their accomplishment of fascism, though it was much different than what they desired, because their biggest enemy had been discredited and defeated. They had pushed society down the slippery slope to communism, and the end would justify the means.

Galloway makes common cause with fascism, but he is not for it. Both Osama and Galloway believe the same thing. To rebuild, you must first tear down. To create, you must destroy.

The War on Terrorism is a final insult added to communism's injurious defeat. Instead of devolving our liberties at home, America took it upon herself to change the world. The revolutionary narrative was incomplete; nobody ever thought what might happen if America pushed back. The price of that omission is now being shouldered by our erstwhile enemy Osama, and his unfortunate allies the Baathists and the Taliban. As an Emperor once said, he has paid the price for his lack of vision.

The power and influence of America has now reached every state on this planet, by necessity and by right. Something great and unprecedented is underfoot, a unique story our enemies did not predict and cannot believe. America has become an Empire of the Mind, and she is pressing her advantage. In her vanguard are the real true believers.

You might say the revolutionaries are dreamers, but they are not the only ones. Not by a long shot.

Still time for lefties to get on the "right" side of history -- but they won't. Because, as commenter Ignatius points out,

Iraq is a liberal war. The war against Islamofascism is a liberal war. True liberals support it.

When it broke out, liberals were given the choice of remaining true to their principles or maintaining their sense of superiority to George Bush.

For most, the choice was so easy they didn't even realize they'd made a choice. Because most liberals today don't have principles, they have poses.

Sadly, what Dissent Magazine used to call "the liberal who cannot be taught" has come to dominate the left side of the political divide.

Is it April 1?

I have a vague sense that things are coming to a head. Anger is growing to incredible levels at the media and the left as they become even more unbelievable brazen and detached from reality.

For example, look at these "news" photos from al-Reuters. I'm not going to post the photos themselves, so you can follow the link and see that these are indeed real Reuters photos at Yahoo News.

Does Reuters even pretend to be a professional organization anymore? They're just making things up and don't seem to care if anyone knows.

Look at this.

And this!

How can they live with themselves? If it's real, it's shameless -- and how'd they get that shot? Or is it totally faked? There was a day when the media wouldn't dare show Roosevelt in a wheelchair. Whatever they thought of the man, the Office of the Presidency was too important to disrespect.

They are an enemy propaganda organization, nothing more.

In Britain, insanity reigned, as the "advisers" to Blair on how to confront islamic extremism made their recommmendations, namely to eliminate Holocaust Memorial Day because it's offensive to muslims:

The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims.

A member of one of the committees, made up of Muslims, said it gave the impression that “western lives have more value than non-western lives”. That perception needed to be changed. “One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national Genocide Memorial Day.

“The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others.”

These "advisers" went on to seriously assert that

Tony Blair decided to wage war on Iraq after coming under the influence of a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, a Muslim barrister who advises the Prime Minister has claimed.

You got a real brain trust behind you there, Tony. Maybe it was a mistake to put jihadists on your muslim outreach committee.

Also joining Blair's team of advisers is Yusef Islam, aka Cat Stevens, who supports the death fatwa against Salamn Rushdie, having once replied, when asked to comment on it, "whoever defames the Prophet must die."

But in Canada, Sharia law was rejected in Ontario. Whew, that was a close one!

And the Germans have suddenly realized there are at least 5,000 potential suicide jihadists in their midst.

France is actually taking the lead in kicking muslims out. Interior Minister Sarkozy said:

"The [French] republic is not a weak regime and it does not have to accept speech which on the pretext that it is happening in a place of worship calls for hate and murder.

"Those who persist in this way will systematically be the object of an expulsion procedure...I know of only one policy against these people - firmness, arresting them, punishing them, penalising them, in Madrid, London, New York, everywhere."

Backing this up, several thousands have been deported with more thousands to follow.

Also today, we were treated to dual debates between Arianna Huffington and Victor Davis Hanson on the one hand, and the vile, despicable George Galloway and Christopher Hitchens on the other.

The first was painful, like seeing a naughty puppy getting kicked.

The second was a grudge match, a clash of titans, with nazi demagoguery losing to the wit of Oscar Wilde on steroids.

It got personal from the start. Responding to attacks from terrorist-supporter Galloway, member of parliament, who should be hanged for sedition, Hitchens explained:

He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a "popinjay" (true enough, since its original Webster's definition means a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest). In a recent interview he made opprobrious remarks about the state of my midriff, which I will confess has—as P.G. Wodehouse himself once phrased it—"slipped down to the mezzanine floor." In reply I do not wish to stoop. Those of us who revere the vagina are committed to defend it against the very idea that it is a mouth or has teeth. Study the photographs of Galloway from Syrian state television, however, and you will see how unwise and incautious it is for such a hideous person to resort to personal remarks. Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs.

By the end of the "debate", Galloway was reduced to sputtering at Hitchens,

Damn you and all your works!

We were also treated to retorts of "sinister piffle" and "Zoo noises"!

Galloway is so evil, even actor John Malkovich wants to kill him:

In May 2002, at the Cambridge Union, American actor John Malkovich stated that he would like to shoot both George Galloway and the journalist Robert Fisk.

To ice the cake today, it was announced that the horrible islamic "red crescent of jihad embrace" (that happens to point to mecca) that would have been the Flight 93 Disgrace Memorial will be changed.

The architect last week said no design changes would be made, but now has been forced to cave.

Why? Because of the blogosphere. I can't remember all the links to these, but I gathered these snippets over the last few days in which "we" inundated the Secretary of the Interior and the National Parks Service so much that their servers crashed. Then people started faxing and calling. Then the faxes were jammed. The pressure was enormous. Congressman "nuke mecca" Tancredo got in on the action. The issue became known to the White House, which had "no comment." The military's Special Operations forces are said to have gotten vocal about it as well.

People are fed up.

Urban Warfare

As an example of the media focus mentioned below, consider how much the heinous attacks in Baghdad got airplay today. They are a desperate response to vigorous military operations we are carrying out with our Iraqi allies near the Syrian border.

The successes there are not getting much attention, but for those following the real reports, the action is significant. Our operational tempo just keeps increasing: one operation after another, with the ground already prepared to deny the enemy sanctuary.

And this is the "urban combat" that we were told would be so costly to us. But we're killing and capturing jihadists by the hundreds. The only media mention of it tried to stress that the terrorists got away from Tall Afar via secret tunnels. However a quick bit of math indicates we got just about all of them thought to have been there.

The population is turning in terrorists right and left. Iraqi tribes are fighting al-Qaeda elements themselves. 80% of the jihadist network in NW Iraq seems to have been wiped out.

And the Iraqi security forces are carrying a much bigger load in this operation than before, which bodes well.

It is truly inspiring to read this press conference by Col. McMaster of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment -- a heavily armored but nimble combined-arms force, supported by light infantry elements of the 82nd airborne division.

Read it all, but here are a few excerpts:

The enemy in this area is -- this is the worst of the worst in terms of people in the world. The enemy here was drawn to Tall Afar for a couple of reasons.

First of all, Tall Afar is positioned along routes that lead from Mosul into Syria. So it was important to the enemy to have freedom of action, not only in Tall Afar, but in western Ninevah province, so they could access sources of external support in Syria.
...
To protect themselves here, what the enemy did is they waged the most brutal and murderous campaign against the people of Tall Afar.

I'd like just to briefly characterize the enemy, describe who we're fighting here. This is an enemy, who when they came in, they removed all the imams from the mosques, and they replaced them with Islamic extremist laymen. They removed all the teachers from the schools and replaced them with people who had a fifth-grade education and who preached hatred and intolerance. They murdered people. In each of their cells that they have within the city has a direct action cell of about 100 or so fighters. They have a kidnapping and murder cell; they have a propaganda cell, a mortar cell, a sniper cell -- a very high degree of organization here.
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The enemy conducted indiscriminate mortar attacks against populated areas and wounded scores of children and killed many others. The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine, in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents. Beheadings and so forth. [These are Michael Moore's "Minute Men" and George Galloway's "Freedom Fighters"! --ed.]

So the enemy's grip over this population to maintain the safe haven was based on fear, coercion, and these sort of heinous acts. And not only were they targeting civilians, brutally murdering them, torturing them, but they were also kidnapping the youth of the city and brainwashing them and trying to turn them into hate-filled murderers.

So, really, there could be no better enemy for our soldiers and Iraqi army soldiers to pursue and defeat and deny the enemy the safe haven in this area.
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The result of those operations were that Iraqi security forces and armed forces killed large numbers of the enemy in those engagements, 30 to 40 of the enemy at a time. So the enemy realized this tactic isn't working, so they went back into harassment attacks -- IEDs, roadside bombs, mortar attacks, sniper attacks against our forces, and attempted to do sort of hit-and-run operations against us.

But our troopers were very aggressive in maintaining contact with the enemy. We have an air/ground team here, so our aerial scouts were able to maintain contact with the enemy as they tried to move into the interior of the city. So we pursued them very effectively.

And we were able to gain access to intelligence here by a very good relationship with the people, who recognized this enemy for who they are and were very forthcoming with human intelligence.
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They conducted more sniper attacks against innocent civilians, more mortar attacks.

And in response, we targeted their mortar teams. We killed four of their mortar teams and captured two. We killed about 12 of their sniper teams. And we relentlessly pursued the enemy until the enemy realized that a lot of our power was building now toward Tall Afar because we wanted -- as we were figuring this enemy out, we were preparing for operations to destroy their safe haven in a particular neighborhood of the city.
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And the enemy then moved into some of these outlying neighborhoods outside of their support base, and they wanted to take the fight there to divert our attention. They also tried some diplomatic efforts to call off attacks for a couple of weeks and to act as if the problem was solved -- again, a desperate attempt to avoid the removal of this safe haven in Tall Afar. [An old arab battle trick called a hudna. Don't fall for it! -- ed.]

But we conducted very effective combat operations against the enemy, we being the Iraqi security forces and our forces. These were very complex defenses in neighborhoods outside of the Sarai neighborhood, which was the center of the enemy's safe haven here. They had their command and control in a safe house in the center that was very heavily defended. Outside of that, they had defensive positions with RPG and machine gun positions. Surrounding those positions, they had homes that were rigged to be demolished by munitions as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered them, and then, outside of those, they had Improvised Explosive Devices, roadside bombs, implanted, buried into the roads.

But our forces aggressively pursued the enemy in these areas. They were able to defeat these IEDs based on the human intelligence we developed. We exploded many of them with attack helicopter fire or detonated them with our engineers. We penetrated that defense. Our tanks led with our Iraqi infantry in support. We absorbed any energy from their rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, continued the assault into these safe havens and destroyed their leadership throughout the city. The word then went out that -- to the enemy that put other elements on notice: look, we're being slaughtered here; we need to avoid these very effective combined forces of Iraqi and U.S. forces. But we continued to relentlessly pursue them as we moved to isolate the Sarai district.

And the main engagements in this fight happened really between the 2nd and the 6th of September, a period of time during which we killed 118 terrorists and captured 137 of them. And we think at this point the enemy realized the futility of their defensive efforts.
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We had some very heavy fighting on the 5th and 6th of September, during which we killed many of the enemy, who engaged us from their forward defensive positions. And it was at that point that the enemy shifted their approach again to essentially running away from the area. They gave the word to retreat. They did everything they could to blend in with the civilians who were evacuating from this dense urban area to protect them, and we caught them. We were integrated with the population. The people were pointing out who the enemy was. We had Iraqi army who was very good at sensing something isn't quite right when this man is walking down the street with children, and the children look very nervous. This one man in particular was a beheader who had beheaded over 20 people. And we were able to capture him as the children fled, as we came up to talk to this individual, and the children related to us this man said that they had to walk with him or he would kill them.

We captured five of the enemy dressed as women, trying desperately to get out of the area. Just yesterday we captured 104 of the enemy in these outlying areas.

So we relentlessly pursued the enemy as they attempted to break contact with our forces. But we're maintaining contact with them, and we're continuing to hunt them down.
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I can't tell you how proud I am of the troopers of this regiment. They have relentlessly pursued this enemy in continuous combat operations for well over 14 days. They are tough, they are disciplined, they are compassionate. And America ought to be proud of the Cavalry troopers of this regiment and the soldiers more broadly in our army and the armed services.

We have been joined by a very effective organization, the 3rd -- the 2nd of the 325, the White Falcons from the 82nd Airborne Division. They've gotten into this fight and have done a tremendous job. We're coordinating our efforts with the 1st of the 72nd Infantry in Mosul, who is pursuing the enemy relentlessly in their area as the enemy attempts to flee.
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And it is very clear to our soldiers as we go into these areas, as we see these caches, as we see the horrible acts that these people have committed, as we see the extremist literature and the intolerance and the hatred that this enemy possesses, it is very clear to us that these are enemies of our nation, and we are proud to be here to pursue them and defeat them in Tall Afar and broadly throughout this region.
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They are some of the worst human beings on the face of the Earth. And it gives us no -- there is no really greater pleasure for us than to kill or capture these particular individuals.
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In one of these buildings the enemy had big barrels of chemicals that had explosives implanted in the chemicals, wires running around, and the whole house was rigged for demolition.

Around this house a lot of families were living. Our soldiers were conducting an area reconnaissance operation. They went into this house. Immediately their eyes began burning, their throat began burning, so they withdrew out of the house immediately and then we conducted reconnaissance with some chemical protective gear and with a remote reconnaissance capability into the house and we could tell that the thing was rigged with chemicals.
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I don't know if you've been following some of the enemy's propaganda. [The colonel's a funny guy! -- ed.] You know, one of the cells in this enemy's structure here, this very well developed enemy structure, is a propaganda cell. And on the sort of jihadist and extremist websites, they've been saying, you know, that coalition forces are using chemical weapons. I think what they had hoped to do was detonate this building, kill innocent civilians in this neighborhood and then blame it on coalition forces. But we preempted their ability to do that by evacuating the civilians from that building. That's one example of it.
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I mean, basically, you know, in a lot of areas of this city, it was -- it was the schoolhouse for the enemy. And they would go in -- they took over schools. They would go into schools, have classes on how to do an IED. I mean, literally, chalkboards. We've got photos of students and teachers standing in front of chalkboards. And, you know, in one engagement we had about a month ago we were able to gain observation of the enemy having an IED class outside of a school with, you know, 30 people gathered around, digging up a hole, and showing how you put in an IED. Now, we disrupted their class with an artillery attack that resulted in 30 of the enemy being killed on that occasion. But it's another example of what the enemy was using this area for.

The colonel has a gift for understatement.

Confessions of a Leftist

Nice bit of satire in a comment by The Honest Liberal at Fourth Rail:

Hello,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a liberal, some would call me a leftist, but with one main difference from others of my ilk - I am honest about my goals, which are the goals of my ideological bretheren.

We seek to either a) turn the US into a socialist Marxist state, or b) weaken the US to the extent that it no longer can obstruct the socialist revolution.

Why do we want another socialist/Marxist state? Because some of us who are leaders of the movement will be at the top of the ruling order, which would be a great position to be in, just like it was in the Kremlin or in the Chinese CP.

We oppose the Iraq War because it spreads capitalism and democracy to the region. We oppose Bush because he is an easy target to rally the world against (and thus to our cause by default). We managed to turn Hurricane Kartina into a racial issue so that we could heap more world hatred onto the right-wing of America (which we did successfully get away with). We make excuses for the actions of Al-Qaeda because, well, the enemy of our enemy is our friend. Thus, we oppose the Patriot Act, Iraq War, Afghan War, etc.

So why am I honest about the liberal agenda and other liberals are not, still pretending to stand for 'peace', 'social justice', 'racial equality', etc. For long, this veil worked, and many naive worker bees joined our cause.

But the time has come to take the movement to the next level, and attract a much larger global following. This can be achieved by being open about our goals. We have already maginalized George Bush to the extent that anything he does can be easily spun to the negative. Imagine, we have trained the public to be more outraged over Abu Ghraib and Halliburton than the London subway bombings or the decrees of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

I thus advocate dropping the veil and being totally honest about our goals.

The leaders of our movement are the two Georges (Soros and Galloway), Michael Moore, many prominent Hollywood Stars, the media, the courts, and the universities.

The pieces are in place, and the time is now.

Note that we control the media, the courts, and the universities. Despite the loss of only 1900 troops and a successful election in January, we have managed to turn the majority opinion against the Iraq War. Most of the world perceives it as a failure, and the US as the villain in this story.

We managed to get away with putting Abu Ghraib everywhere, and the progress that the US makes no-where. That this blog never made it into the mainstream spotlight, despite actually reporting truthful facts that reflect favorably on the US, is proof of this.

We managed to literally ruin the international credibility of the United States over a non-violent incident at Abu Ghraib, while shielding Zarqawi from similar scorn, for his violent activities.

We managed to make the US appear racist and inept over a natural disaster. This is our biggest coup yet.

We are winning. If we weren't, you would not even be here, fighting desperately in a losing battle.

Saving Throw vs Illusion

The brutal terror in Iraq is militarily insignificant. Its true target is the Western audience, especially the American, sitting at home, transmitted by an enabling media.

As Wretchard notes,

The enemy has not been without successes, proving tactically adaptable and ruthless. Yet at heart his strategy was static: it was to inflict a low but continuous rate of casualty on US forces and broadcast that fact to the world. The enemy center of gravity was the US electorate. They attached video and camera crews to their striking units in the same way that US forces attached supporting weapons to theirs, creating the first combined media-military arms in history. Using these new type of formations they relentlessly projected the message, 'we are in charge'. And people believed them.

What is asked of us in this war is really not very much at all: to simply not give in to self-absorbed impulses towards apathy. In the fantasy-game idiom, we just need to say "I disbelieve!" and make our saving-throw.

But it is discouraging how many willingly many wish to accept their message of despair, in a fit of self-loathing. Why? The Left simply cannot disbelieve; it would rob them of too much self-image:

Piers Brendon recalls in Dark Valley, his history of the 1930s, that the most common scrawl left by doomed Old Bolsheviks at Lubyanka prison were the words "What For?" But more poignant yet was the refusal of some Party members, exiled to Magadan, the worst camp of the Gulag, to smuggle news to their comrades of their fate. One said, 'at least now they still have hope in Communism. If I let them know the truth then they will have nothing'. Even in Magadan the Left's deepest need was to believe. Having abolished the God of their forefathers and finding themselves prostrate before the false god they fashioned for themselves, as between extinction and despair they chose extinction.

This is terribly important, because

Historically, most catastrophic defeats -- at Gaugamela or France in 1940 -- have not been consequent to inferiority in arms but to infirmity of concept. Defeat occurs first of all in the mind. By that standard the Global Caliphate is well on its way to imposing its will on Western politics which is intent, like some demented person, on rearranging objects on a green baize table.

The Left got used to believing the Big Lies for decades as it refused to see the horrors and evils of Stalin, and it would be too painful to get out of its illusory world:

The landscape of Communism from East Germany to Cambodia, from North Korea to Cuba deserves to preserved as a monument to the greatest act of hypnotism in history. Piers Brendon, writing in the Dark Valley, described the pilgrimage of Western intellectuals to this palace of horrors, intent upon discovering paradise. And discover it they did.

Before setting off for Moscow in 1932 to experience "the veritable future of mankind", Malcolm Muggeridge made a bonfire of bourgeois trappings, including his dinner jacket. Arthur Koestler endorsed the slogan at the frontier -- "Change trains for the twenty first century". ... Muggeridge ... soon perceived the truth and mocked the gullibility of other visitors. Lord Marley denied that official lies could have been told about the Five Year Plan -- "Think how ashamed the Soviet Government would be if it were discovered that their statistics had been falsified" -- and believed that the authorities permitted food queues in Moscow because they "provided a means for inducing the workers to take a rest". Edouard Herriot was convinced that the milk shortage was due to the large amount allocated to nursing mothers. George Bernard Shaw expressed his confidence that the Soviet Union was free from hunger by declaring that he had thrown his supplies of Western tinned food out of the train window ..." (from the chapter Stalin's Revolution)

But the El Dorado wasn't there; and the really big historical question is why it took the best minds of the West more than 50 years and countless lives to discover that elementary fact. This monumental self-hypnosis calls into question our collective ability to know; and when politicians and media talking heads speak with perfect assurance about "religions of peace" or alternatively, about a "death cult" with bloody borders, how certain are we that our epistemology is any better than that of the 20th century intellectuals?

It is a kind of mental disease:

None of these revelations matter because virtually no Western politician can ever use force again to prevent a regime, even one openly dedicated to terrorism, from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The subject is verboten because the Left has declared it so. Unless something radically changes, it is only logical to prepare for the consequences of this head-in-the-sand policy, a possible catastrophe beside which September 11 will diminish into insignificance. Perhaps this event is already inevitable and those future victims beyond saving. But even so, it is important to begin the work of opening our eyes now, so that we might avoid the blindness which took the world of the 1930s and the 1990s over a cliff. Some mental disease in Western culture has allowed it to stand idly by while evil grew to monstrous proportions around and within it; an infirmity dignified with the name of pacifism. Perhaps it has already killed some of us reading this post; and the least we can do, if our final moments come, is to realize why we died.