This, from The American Thinker

And that, my fellow Americans — “Islam must dominate the world” — is what makes this World War IV.

 
Seriously. According to The Jersusalem Post, Hamas is conducting a poster contest. Yes, a poster contest.

So maybe they’re turning from their evil ways, right? Maybe the Religion of Peace is becoming pacifistic?

Here are the contest details –you decide:

This is a pull-out poster. Not that you pull it out from a magazine or print journal. It’s to be a poster portraying the Israeli withdrawal, i.e, “pull-out,” from the Gaza Strip.

The purpose of this poster is to depict what is in fact Israel’s voluntary, unilateral withdrawal as a shameful full-flight retreat from the mighty Hamas.In other words, the artist will strive to show Israel’s “desperation and defeat.”

So get your crayons out, boys and girls. The deadline is August 10th and the the first prize is US$250.00. You will notice that somehow American dollars are not haram. Now, that’s a surprise, don’t you think, considering the ink is made from pig parts?

My favorite crayon for this picture is puke.

 
New informational grist for the mill, from The Jewish World Review:

	Newly opened archives of radio intercepts of messages between Tokyo and its diplomats abroad, which President Truman was sworn never to talk about, ever, reveal that the Japanese generals and their emperor did not consider themselves defeated. Some of these intercepts were conversations between Tokyo and diplomatic officials of U.S. allies. They reveal that even if Washington agreed to preserve the emperor that Japan regarded as “divine” there was no likelihood that Japan was ready to cry uncle.
	The conversations between President Truman and his service chiefs further reveal, as historian Richard B. Frank writes in the current Weekly Standard magazine, that the Army and Navy were at bitter odds over whether the Japanese home islands should or could be invaded. The Army said yes. The Navy, having taken casualties at Okinawa in April and May that exceeded those in the Normandy landings, said no, a naval blockade and ship-to-shore bombardment was the way to go.
	“Finally,” he writes, “thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood … that ‘until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion [of the home islands] can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies.’ “

Mr. Franks sums it up:

He also mentions how hard it would be to imagine Harry Truman fretting over what to call the war. Harry S. wasn’t one to mince words.

Which reminds me of a story most people know, but one that shouldn’t be lost from our American mythology: once a reporter asked Mrs. Truman why the President couldn’t be more presidential. Why did he use words like “manure,” for instance. To which Mrs. Truman replied that it had already taken her a long time to train him to use “manure” instead.

Earth to President Bush: If Truman’s picture is not in your office, please put it there. Then quit listening to your aides and start calling this global slaughter by jihadist murderers what it is: World War IV.

 
There is encouraging news this morning from the UK: apparently Prime Minister Tony Blair has developed the masculine equipment necessary to swim against the PC current. According to the article in The Guardian,

One can only hope that Mr. Blair’s anatomical improvement can somehow spread to President Bush. Look at the changes he is proposing:

Admittedly, outlawing Hizb ut-Tahrir at this point is locking the barn door after the horse of jihad has been stolen. Still, we’ll take what we can get.

Is it really possible that the long reign of Political Correctness may be finally coming to a close? Mr. Blair gives us reason to hope:

Significantly, Mr. Blair said:

The ominous implication is that America will not arrive at the same common-sensical point until we suffer another terror attack, one large enough to jolt us as Britain was jolted on 7/7.

Note to President Bush: Another al-Qaeda attack is coming. It is only a matter of time. Do you really have to wait for the bloodstained sidewalks and the heaps of teddy bears and flowers and the candlelight vigils and the solemn memorial services before you exercise the kind of leadership that Tony Blair did today?

 
My Pet Jawa is delighted at Putin’s decision to ban ABC from Russia:

Geo-Political Review, on the other hand, sounds a note of caution:

“Notorious” is right. CNN has fallen to the level of the New York Times in the estimation of many MSM-watchers. However, Geopolitical Review makes a telling point:

They’re both right. It is disturbing that a government would ban a whole news organization for one interview. In the context of Putin’s increasingly authoritarian moves, the ban on ABC seems part of a larger crackdown on freedom of speech. But it is equally disturbing that a news organization would be so morally obtuse as to interview someone utterly beyond the pale of human behavior.

It is as though Western journalism has lost its moral compass and is floundering around in a swamp of “all news — especially the sensationalist, voyeuristic and salacious kind — is always fit to print.” What a shame that it took Russia to tell them that no, it is definitely not all worth printing, or interviewing or photographing or otherwise giving validation to by paying attention to what they have to say. Such people deserve at best to be left on a desert island; under no circumstances should anyone consider it appropriate to talk to them, much less to broadcast what they have to say.

This criminal slime was responsible for the slow, gruesome murder of 172 children, many of them raped before they died. All told, 344 people died and many hundreds more were injured. Those who survived will never recover, not ever. Down the generations their terror will flow. And for what?? May he rot in hell. How dare they talk to such slime and call it news?

What did ABC hope to accomplish? What could their conversation with a grotesque tell us that we did not already know? The MSM has confused freedom of speech with license. It is as though the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — implied that anyone with a gun could shoot anyone he pleased.

********
Hat tip: Geopolitical Review

 
In yesterday’s post, frequent commenter DP111 made the remarks reproduced below. They deserve their own post.

The demeaning of the most vibrant and successful culture in history by the PC and Ultra-liberal brigade has thrown our whole system into confusion. Note the confusion and division in Britain over the Belmarsh detainees — Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, all have been called into question. These were issues that had been settled a long time ago. It is the presence of Islam and its social requirements that has thrown us right back to the Middle Ages. The Islamists though, care nought for our legal, judicial or constitutional systems, except as rope to hang us with.

Bodissey had a picture of the three proverbial monkeys. All three of them are symbolic of the PC culture that now pervades the West. The deaf monkey will not hear unless the speech is politically correct. Similarly the second monkey for sight, and the third will not speak anything that has not been filtered through political correctness.

What is the key? Subversion, as Bodissey suggests, and as I posted in a tangential manner a week ago, is the answer. Subversion is what has been going on for the last 30 years and subversion is the key to put a spanner in the works of Political Correctness and Ultra-liberalism. The tactic is to use Political Correctness and Ultra-liberalism as tools, to tread the PC path and lead it into a dead alley, an impasse, to a logical absurdity.

We have complained that MSM, being totally liberal and politically correct, does not hear or see the Blogworld. The three monkeys are on different wavelengths from the Blogworld wavelength. So subversion in this context means, that we have to frame our articles, speech, and any other form of communication, and put it on the same wavelength as the MSM.

The MSM will not see an attack on religion as politically correct or fit in with their Ultra-liberal view of society. We thus have to shift the battleground to the secular field. Another reason to shift the battleground from the religious to the secular is that the “religious” battleground suits Islam perfectly, as it further raises the profile of Islam in the West, which is the main purpose of the Jihad.

In the first instance, we need to start putting real pressure on two issues, both of which are social and legal issues.

1. The enslavement of women in Islam.

It is damnably unfair that Muslim women have to bear the responsibility of “honour” in Muslim society, a deadly serious matter, but get no power that goes with such awesome responsibility. It is damnably unfair that a Muslim woman has no power to decide her fate. It is unjust that Muslim women have to bear the pains and penalties of FGM. Women are also regarded as chattels in the world of Islam – in effect slaves.

The public manifestation of our acceptance of institutionalised slavery in the West is the burqa. It is an acknowledgement, that we as a Western society have recognised the institutionalised slavery of women in Islam, as legitimate in the West. This cannot be accepted in a liberal and socially just society.

Our sense of justice and compassion for the cruel injustice heaped on Muslim women, is what concerns us as liberal compassionate humans. Once Muslim women are free, as it is their right to be in the West, then the after effects on Islam are of no concern to us. It is a private matter within Islam.

2. The sentence of death on Apostates of Islam.

Freedom of choice is the hallmark of a liberal and just society. Yet we countenance the fact that people who leave Islam, have to go about in daily fear of their lives. Hour by hour that fear stalks them, even here in the West.

How could we have allowed such a situation come to pass in the citadel of liberalism? How did we ignore the cries for help from the weak, the vulnerable and the isolated?

Such social issues are not the fault of Muslims. Muslims are the first and most oppressed victims of Islam. They are just as kind and nice people as any other. It is the doctrine of Islam that gives rise to social values that are so cruel and unjust on individual Muslims. My heart goes out to the weak, the trammelled and the vulnerable Apostates of Islam. They are truly the most marginalized and victimised individuals in the world. Let it not be said, that even here in the West, we allowed such injustice to continue.

The moral high ground is ours if we choose to seize it. Hope for all those in the thrall of Islam, and Compassion for those who are the most marginalized and vulnerable victims of a doctrine that needs to be made humane.

DP111

 
“The New York Times.”

Need one say anything further to inspire you to ask, perhaps a little apprehensively, “Okay, what now?”

It is this: The New York Times is running background checks on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’…children.

Let’s see, what do they hope to find? That the adoptions were illegal somehow? That the children were paid for? That they are somehow Roberts’ illegitimate “love”-children? That somehow, somewhere, some way, there is a besmirchment they might procure and smear across the candidacy of this man?

Don’t bother with the rhetorical “have they no shame?” The day they lost that is so far back in the mists of time it’s barely perceivable. Waaay back there in the generation before last, back with the Times’ Mr. Duranty and his wonderful look at the future in Soviet Russia. That was proof-positive of the Times’ proclivity for liars and propagandists.

The only shame attached to the New York Times accrues to the people who still read it. Hang down your heads, folks. Or maybe just have them examined.

 
February 16, 1941 (Associated Reuters International) — Adolf Hitler’s aide Josef Göbbels said in a wire recording that London will face more attacks because of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s foreign policy decisions.

Dr. Göbbels’ remarks, aired Thursday by an Aryan radio station, were delivered one month after the attacks in London and other British cities, which killed 1,556 people.

Hitler’s deputy didn’t claim that the Nazis were responsible for the bombings, but said that those attacks stemmed from Churchill’s decision to invade North Africa.

“Churchill has brought you destruction to the heart of London, and he will bring more destruction, Odin willing,” he said.

In London, Downing Street refused to comment on the wire recording.

Some critics, including British MP Oswald Mosley, said that the North Africa war led to the recent attacks in London.

But Churchill denied that the bombings were related to North Africa.

“If you continue the same policy of aggression against Aryans, Odin willing, you will see the horror that will make you forget what you had seen on the Western Front,” Dr. Göbbels said.

Dr. Göbbels also said the Roosevelt administration was repeating the “same lies they said at Versailles… that they are bringing freedom.”

“There is no way out of North Africa for the British without immediate withdrawal, and any delay on this means only more dead, more losses,” he said.

“If you don’t leave today, certainly you will leave tomorrow, and after tens of thousands of dead, and double that figure in disabled and wounded.”

In the recording, Dr. Göbbels also warned other countries to leave Aryan countries to avoid more violence.

He said those countries ignored a three-month “truce” that Hitler offered for European states in May 1940 to give them time to pull out their forces.

“Instead (of accepting the truce), you spilled blood like rivers in our countries and we exploded the volcanoes of wrath in your countries.”

“Our message is clear: you will not be safe until you withdraw from our land, stop stealing our schnitzel and wealth and stop supporting the corrupt rulers,” he said.

In January, Dr. Göbbels appeared in a wire recording criticizing the U.S. concept of reform in Europe.

The German-born mastermind is believed to be Hitler’s aide and to have been hiding in the troubled border areas of either Bavaria or the Rhineland.

Note: the preceding text was created by making global changes in the original Al Jazeera story, with as little additional editing as possible.

 
There is an important new site out there. Bookmark it. Blogroll it. Tell everyone who is willing to listen. H5N1DROME contains all the information you need to understand avian flu and to be prepared for its eventual arrival here.

Arguments abound as to whether or not this virus is going to assume plague-like proportions. When you mix the transmission of illness and the inevitable politics of medicine and economics, the result is something like war. People die, some needlessly, information is suppressed for the “common good” (for example, the World Health Organization) and to “avoid panic” (the Chinese government). Those who happen to be positioned to acquire enough information and financial backing can make a killing — so to speak — from this configuration of plague, fear, and concupiscence (in the medieval sense of that word, not our modern-day definition where it-all-boils-down-to-sex-just-ask-Freud).

As usual, knowledge is power. Just to name two bloggers who have raised the warning flags, Winds of Change and Right Wing Nut House have written cogently on the plague. Armed with just the screen you are sitting in front of you have enough power to assume some control over your position in the coming cascade of events.

Stay tuned.

 
This blog has repeatedly asserted that the critical front in the Great Islamic Jihad is the struggle within the soul of the West. It is a bitter but non-violent civil war between those who would surrender to the deconstruction of Western culture and those who would resist it.

The fortunes of this war vary from country to country in the West. The reports by Fjordman and Rune suggest the inevitable conclusion that Scandinavia has all but lost the war. The combination of state-enforced political correctness and mass Muslim immigration is a lethal one, leaving Swedish civil society on the verge of collapse.

Britain threatens to tolerate itself out of existence, as chronicled repeatedly by Norman Geras. An Islamic radical like Sheikh Omar Bakri continues to preach violent jihad against the infidels, while he and his disciples enjoy the generous benefits of Britain’s welfare state.

In Australia, pastors are jailed for defaming Islam when they quote the Koran. The primary religious text of Islam is “defamatory” by its very nature, but it is apparently unwise for Australian citizens to point this fact out.

Oriana Fallaci has to stay out of her native Italy or risk jail time for printing her opinion of Islam. The Netherlands… Germany… France… Canada… Each is a front in the Great Jihad, and each is succumbing in its own way to the enemy tide.

Here in the USA we are not as badly off — in some cases the First Amendment still manages to protect the right to voice an opinion — but the forces of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness still tighten the screws on most sensible discourse. The situation is so severe that major national media do not dare to call this war what it is: the Third Wave of the Great Islamic Jihad.

How did we get to this sorry pass? What happened?

You can chalk it up to the victory of Soviet communism. Communism was defeated empirically, in the real world, by democratic capitalism. But in the marketplace of ideas — in the media and academia, among the mandarins of pop culture, and in the permanent federal bureaucracy — the Soviets won. Capitalism has to be tolerated, since the engine of modernity will not run without it, but it will never be respectable, and its associated virtues — hard work, thrift, religious values, and civic culture — have been permanently discredited.

Thank the KGB for its tireless work infiltrating and financing student radicals, black activists, labor unions, and any organization that sought to undermine traditional Western values. Thank the innumerable fellow travelers, the Marxist theoreticians and deconstructionists, who gladly drilled and dynamited and demolished until our common culture was a field of rubble. Thank the forces of leftist subversion who ate their way through the body politic like termites through an old stump.

The socialist left may be a spent force on the political scene, but its legacy is still with us. Each of us labors under a great burden of unexamined premises that inhibits honest discussion. To make a profit, to judge an idea on its merits, to observe real differences among people and groups — each of these actions carries the risk of elite disapproval. Each of us has witnessed the telltale glance over the shoulder and lowered voice whenever an un-PC thought is uttered.

This suppression of meaningful discussion has allowed the Great Jihad to enjoy success within our midst. Because dissent on such issues is not allowed, taxpayers in Britain have to fund Islamic education in the schools, and Swedish police are not allowed to release rape statistics based on the ethnicity of the perpetrators. Islam is a Religion of Peace, and scrutinizing its tenets and practices is — horror of horrors! — racism. Our toxic tolerance looks the other way while Muslim women are suppressed, straitjacketed, abused, and even killed, all in the name of the most noble of ideals.

So what can be done to hinder this suicidal juggernaut?

Since subversion brought on the current crisis, the time has come for counter-subversion. The duty of a warblogger, as I have said before, is to storm and occupy the national conversation. We have to subvert the dominant paradigm.

We will have to it with no help from the mainstream media, committed as they are to the PC worldview. And we will have to do it despite the Bush administration and our elected politicians, who seem constitutionally incapable of taking action without the approval of the New York Times and the network news. It will truly be a task for “the distributed intelligence of the Internet”.

We can begin by asking questions, dangerous, politically incorrect questions. We must ask them forcefully and repeatedly until they become part of the collective dialogue. Here are some examples, and you can add your own:

• Is Islam inherently dangerous, or just its most radical forms?
• Are journalists aiding and abetting our enemies in the way they cover stories and utilize terrorist sources?
• Is the UN part of the problem rather than part of the solution?
• Does the destruction of common values by a degraded popular culture play right into the hands of the Great Jihad?
• Why are we so reluctant to tackle the Saudi and Iranian problems?

To jump-start this conversation we have to be willing to ignore the nagging inner voice that tells us, You can’t say that! We have to inure ourselves to the label “racist”. We have to expect that we will be called “tools of the neocons”. We have to learn to brush away the insults.

If we want to succeed in this fight, we have to be subversive. And subversion is a thankless task.

It’s time to take back the culture.

 
The Washington Post is on it, making sure you know how lazy this President is. So how lazy is he? Get this: he surpasses that other do-nothing Republican, Ronald Reagan in amount of time spent on “vacation” in Crawford.

These sojourns to Texas burn the Democrats. Every August they complain about his move to Crawford. This time they claim he’s just trying to avoid the Rove scandal —that Deomocratic trumped-up, in-your-dreams “scandal.” Can’t blame a disorganized and demoralized party for clutching at straws.

But you sure can point the finger at their MSM camp followers. Here’s the WaPo’s snarky take on things —

Sure he is. During this down time he will visit seven states, sign legislation and host a state visit by the President of Colombia. And, of course he’ll be trailed by his Secretary of State and by Donald Rumsfeld, not to mention the staff migration that accompanies him or the teleconferences with Washington.

Some dream vacation. Sounds like he gets weekends off for good behavior. Nonetheless, he’s just a shiftless sort:

Here’s another way to consider this bit of “news.” Where did our last President have to go? He was a government employee his whole professional life, living in government housing in Arkansas for the years previous to his election to the White House. What was he going to do, go visit his Momma’s house? Drop in on the in-laws? Mr. Clinton simply didn’t have a homeplace to go to when he wasn’t at the White House. But government work being as lucrative as it is, now both the Clinton’s can afford their own homes. Planning ahead, Mrs. Clinton parked them in New York before buying her own mansion closer to the seat of power.

Now when Hillary is in the White House it will be a short commute home for vacations, won’t it?

And another thing. Do you think the MSM gets the fact that they deepen their already precipitous slide to irrelevancy when they print trash like this? In his series on PC and Reality Testing, Shrinkwrapped quotes a New York Times book review by Richard Posner:

Isn’t it amazing how an intelligent person can read the writing on the wall and not be able to translate it into self-preservation?

 
The passing news is not usually within the purview of Gates of Vienna. The focus here is on the underlying themes rather than the passing scene. However, the assassination yesterday of the journalist Steven Vincent in Basrah has important implications for those who think about events in the Middle East and their impact on the world at large. Especially their impact within the United States.

Mr. Vincent was abducted from the streets of Basrah, along with his translator, who is unnamed in the reports and has no identity beyond being female. His bullet-riddled body was found later, dumped on the road. The translator, seriously wounded, survived the abduction.

The news reports mention several things: that Mr. Vincent had been in Basrah several months, researching a story on the history of the city. While there, he filed stories with the New York Times, The Christain Science Monitor, and National Review online. These reports mention his criticism of the UK troops in what he saw as their failure to curb the internecine warfare between the Sunnis and extremist Shi’ites who are fighting for politcal control of the post-war process in Basrah.

Here is the reason Mr. Vincent died. An interview with Front Page Magazine in 2004, his own ideas will serve as his obituary:

And Mr. Vincent makes this most telling diagnosis, one which needs emphasis and repetition:

Those who would honor Mr. Vincent can pick up his pen and write after him:

• Words matter. They matter desperately and their misuse may cost us our own freedom.
• The status of women in any given society matters.
• Multiculturalism tolerates and promotes evil.
• Islam is tribal and adolescent.
• Supporters of the war must take the reins of the conversation from those who are leading it down the path of “insurgency” and move the conversation toward the truth: this is a mission of liberation.

In a subsequent post, attention will be paid to Mr. Vincent’s book In The Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq. Obviously it was a courageous journey but not one he would be allowed to survive.

Rest in peace, Mr. Vincent. May the angels of peace, the ones who directed your writing, fly you home.

 
The Indonesian government is waging a campaign to exterminate pigs alleged to be infected with the deadly bird flu virus. The Taipei Times published this account:

	When government workers in white anti-contamination suits descended on Ceng Kim’s farm to slaughter his pigs, claiming they were infected with the bird flu virus that killed three people nearby, he hid inside his house. He couldn’t bear to watch, but the rest of Indonesia saw the dramatic images on television that night: Squealing pigs electrocuted one by one and tossed into a fire.
	“My pigs didn’t kill anyone,” said Kim. “But if the government says they’re sick, what can I do?”

The evidence for any connection between the pigs and the avian flu is scanty at best . According to The China Post,

For the Muslim majority in Indonesia, targeting the pigs has the added advantage of damaging the fortunes of the ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia. The Chinese, like the pre-Holocaust Jews in Germany, are seen by many Muslims as greedy interlopers, and are often subjected to discrimination and violence.

From the evidence available, it seems that the positive readings for the virus in the pigs may be due to the droppings from infected birds, which inhabit the same farmyards as the pigs.

Epidemiologists now believe that the 1918 influenza epidemic originated in domestic fowl and then spread to farmyard mammals. The disease jumped to humans via the Allied soldiers who were in close contact with farm animals on the Western Front, living in cramped conditions that were ideal for the spread of the disease.

Given the high stakes in the avian flu outbreak, some people simply refuse to take any chances:

First they came for the pigs…