After Adolf Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the dynamic of the Second World War changed. Britain no longer stood alone and without allies against the Nazis; the enemy of her enemies became her friend, at least until 1945.

But Stalin’s Russia, despite its size and population, was ineffectual and vulnerable due to more than twenty years of depredations by the Communists. Stalin had the manpower, but was unable was unable to supply his war effort with adequate arms and equipment. He was desperate for help from the capitalists.

The problem for Britain — and for the United States after Pearl Harbor — was how to get supplies to the Soviet Union. The Nazis’ rapid advance through Eastern Europe closed off all possible routes except for two. One was a rail line running from the head of the Persian Gulf through the Caucasus into Russia, but materiel could not be moved quickly enough by that route for it to be viable.

The other route was known as the Murmansk Run. It was possible, even in the dead of winter, for Allied merchant ships to set sail from Iceland or northern Scotland, cross the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea, and round the North Cape of Norway to reach the Russian ports of Archangel (during the ice-free months) and Murmansk (all year round).

Starting in the late summer of 1941, British, Canadian, and eventually American merchant ships, along with their naval escorts, transported massive quantities of arms, equipment, and supplies to the Soviet Union via the long and dangerous route through the Arctic to Murmansk and Archangel. Without this enormous logistical operation the Soviet war effort might well have collapsed. The disappearance of the Eastern Front was strategically unthinkable, so the death trap of the Murmansk convoys had to continue.

Ships on the Murmansk Run veered as far north as they could, pressing close against the limits of the polar pack ice to try to minimize the danger of enemy attacks. The Germans committed a substantial portion of their naval forces to defend against a possible Allied invasion of Norway, and also used them against the merchant convoys on their way to Russia. U-boats and destroyers based in the fjords of northern Norway attacked and sank as many of the supply ships as possible. During the Arctic summer, when there was daylight for twenty-four hours a day, any ship that entered the range of the Germans could expect no surcease from attack for the rest of the journey around North Cape.

The Second World War offered no shortage of horrific ways to die in battle, but the Murmansk Run was one of the worst. Depending on which sources are consulted, between one in fifteen and one in eight of the merchant ships and their escorts failed to return to port. The environment was as harsh as human beings can be forced to endure, with intense cold, fierce storms, and an icy sea in which a floating sailor could survive for no more than a few minutes.

Not only that, ships were under absolutely strict orders to maintain full speed, no matter what. There could be no turning around to pick up any men who fell overboard. If a ship hit a mine or took a torpedo, it could not expect help from any other ships in the convoy. There were no stops allowed before Murmansk.

The men who never came back from the Barents Sea were not just the sailors of the Royal Navy or the U.S. Navy. The ships carrying essential materiel to the Russians were British, Canadian, and American merchant vessels in service of the war effort, and the brave men who went to the bottom with them were civilian heroes who served their country as fully as anyone in the military.
– – – – – – – – – –
The toll on Allied shipping was enormous, but it was especially damaging to the British. Merchant ships were the blood and bones and sinews of the British Empire, and the damage done by the Germans, both in the Arctic and elsewhere, could never be repaired. The British effectively consigned a large part of their capital stock to a watery grave — from a practical point of view, it was the fiscal equivalent of towing barges of gold bars up to the frozen north and sinking them in the Barents Sea.

Britain’s leaders knew what they were doing. They realized that their actions would likely spell the end of the British Empire. They knew that the capital losses they were sustaining could never be repaired, but they went through with it all anyway. Defeating the Nazis was simply more important.

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I told the story above in order to introduce a song by Al Stewart. I haven’t featured it before now because the album which contains it had been impossible to obtain until recently.

“Murmansk Run” is from the 1980 album 24 Carrots, which was out of print for many years, but has now been re-released:

Murmansk Run
by Al Stewart

Your father sailed on the Murmansk run
To guide the flocks of the ships home one by one
Grey beneath the Arctic sun
Or the glow of Northern Lights

I see you have his photograph
His eyes are watching for dangers fore or aft
Trading days beneath the sun
For the cold and wintry nights of the Murmansk run

He never did come home to you
It’s long forgotten, a childhood dream or two
But something of the cold got through
And it lingers in your eyes

On days like these you hear the wind
And feel the chill of the ice floes closing in
Trading days beneath the sun
For the cold and wintry nights of the Murmansk run

Save our souls, river of darkness over me
Save our souls, lost on the dark uncharted sea

Now you hide yourself from view
You seem to find it an easy thing to do
Trading days beneath the sun
For the cold and wintry nights of the Murmansk run

Save our souls, river of darkness over me
Save our souls, lost on the dark uncharted sea

The lyrics above actually comprise only the first half of a two-part song called “Murmansk Run/Ellis Island”. “Ellis Island” is a change of topic, a look at another group of people who made a perilous sea crossing.

Follow the link to the lyrics if you want to read what Al Stewart has to say about the wretched refuse who opened the golden door at Ellis Island.

Here’s the latest news about the Danica White, the Danish freighter that was captured by pirates off the coast of Somalia at the beginning of June.

First, from yesterday’s edition of the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende (my translation):

Hostages Enter Eighth Week

The hostage drama for the Danica White is going into its eighth week, and is still completely blacked out.

The Somali authorities have acceded to the violent pirates off the coast of Somalia, writes Ritzau.

According to Pottengal Mukundan, head of the International Maritime Bureau (IBM), the ship can expect no help from the Somali “authorities”.

That is allegedly one of the explanations why the five Danish sailors on board the Danica White have been held hostage by the pirates for such a long time. Friday brings the five Danish sailors into their eighth week since the pirates captured them on board the Danish freighter.

In consideration of the hostages’ security, the Foreign Ministry and the shipping company H. Folmer have imposed a total blackout on the matter. No publicity is allowed to escape.

The pirates, who hold five innocent Danish seamen as hostages, can easily have a network among Somali residents [in Denmark], who report home to the pirates in Somalia about any publicity that emerges in Denmark. According to FN, the pirates allegedly have a network in these countries, through which they attempt their captures at sea. In Denmark there are about 17,000 Somalis.

The Danica White was captured on June 1st in international waters, 210 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia, when it was on its way from Dubai to Mombasa with building materials. IBM recommends that ships in the area stay 200 nautical miles from the coast.

And now the pirates have named their price, according to today’s ABC News (Australia):
– – – – – – – – – –

Somali pirates demand $1.7m for Danish freighter

Pirates holding a Danish freighter off the Somali coast are demanding a $US1.5 million ($1.7 million) ransom for the release of the ship and its crew, according to a Kenyan maritime official.

The Danica White with five crew members was hijacked on June 2, about 240 nautical miles off the Somali coast while heading to Kenya’s Mombasa port to deliver about 1,000 tonnes of construction material.

“We were informed yesterday that the pirates are demanding $US1.5 million in order to release the vessel,” Andrew Mwangura of the Kenyan branch of the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme said.

Hat tip for the Berlingske Tidende article: LN.

Thanks to Phanarath for his help in correcting the translation.

Revised version: Changes suggested by Christine from CVF.

[Nothing below this]

Below is a new essay from Phanarath, our frequent Danish commenter, translator, and contributor.

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The Non-Intelligent Response
Or, the Salvation of the West
by Phanarath

The West has become a very civilized place.

We have become used to dealing with people of reason and good morals. So even when we have enemies we tend to look for something good in them, something they would like to happen, something that would make it worth their while to make peace with us. We think that a reasonable deal can usually make things better for everyone involved.

And this is because we are clever and civilized. We don’t run around attacking people for no other reason than that they are unknown to us. We try to talk to them, thinking that a common understanding will benefit all parties. However, we didn’t arrive at this way of doing things in a peaceful manner. We had to fight many wars and share many stories with our former enemies before these ideas dawned open us.

Now all that is behind us, and we are civilized. We are a peaceful and happy people. People who get unhappy can go to a doctor and get it fixed. We are the last people, as Friedrich Nietzsche predicted in Also Sprach Zarathustra (1885), those who blink with their eyes and claim to have invented happiness.

However, we seem to fall somewhat short when dealing with Muslims. It seems that all the resources and the justifications tend to fall their way.

But when empires were still around there was another way of dealing with things. From the Romans to the Nazis (in eastern Europe and Russia) it was the custom to execute a number of civilians whenever a soldier was killed by what might be a fraction of the local population. The British empire had the same way of dealing with such things. If a British soldier was killed ten or a hundred would be swinging on the gallows indiscriminately the next day.

Today we know that this kind of punishment is immoral and unjust. But back then people counted on it. And it became the natural order of things. So when the Romans, the Brits, or the Nazis killed off a village, people would tend to blame those that had made them angry.

I would love to be a “good” person. But at the same time I have come to understand that morals are no good if they don’t do any good.

When we try to respond intelligently to the threats the Western world is faced with today, we ignore the fact that we are dealing with barbarians. Any of the old empires would have done a lot better then us. The danger we face is Muslims, and they are not as civilized as we would like them to be. They have no self-interest that we can try to understand, not as a group anyway.

The intelligent response will not work. It will only be exploited.
– – – – – – – – – –
The US is sometimes accused of being imperial, and so is the rest of the West for that matter. But look at what the Headquarters United States Marine Corps has to say about the purpose of the US Marines (pdf format):

Today’s Marines operate within a continuum of force where conflict may change from low intensity to high intensity over a matter of hours. Marines are also engaged in many military operations other than war, such as peacekeeping missions or noncombatant evacuation operations, where deadly force may not be authorized. During noncombative engagements, Marines must determine if a situation warrants applying deadly force. Sometimes Marines must decide in a matter of seconds because their lives or the lives of others depend on their actions. To make the right decision, Marines must understand both the lethal and nonlethal close combat techniques needed to handle the situation responsibly without escalating the violence unnecessarily.

It sounds very reasonable. But does it sound like the soldiers of an empire? No way, not by a long shot.

Soldiers of an empire would be expected to kill any commoner who looked at them in a wrong way. They would only be held responsible if they happened to kill someone “important”. The USA is not behaving anywhere near the way an empire would. So basically the US especially, and the West in general, is getting all the blame for being an empire without getting any of the benefits, and it is not working very well for us.

What will work is a predictable response to any Muslim offense, and the response must be repeated every time the offense happens. And I suppose that the time for killing innocent people is past.

But there are other ways. Imagine if European countries started to expel ten Muslims every time Muslims raped or killed a European. Just ten random Muslims sent to the Middle East. After a while even Muslim communities might start to speak out against killing and raping infidels. And even if this isn’t possible, we could subtract ten Muslims from the people allowed to enter the country — the important thing would be that the rapist or the killer knows now that ten of his brothers can’t get in because of what he did. And everyone knows that this is an automatic response.

Imagine that Israel, every time there was an attack by Palestinians, simply went in to the Palestinian areas and pushed people out of a piece of land, put up fences and incorporated the territory into Israel, naming it after the dead Israeli. Everyone would whine for a while, but after this has been done a few times, people will start to see it as the natural order of things. And Palestinians would start blaming the terrorist for the loss of land.

If a rocket is fired from a school area, and the school is important for the local community, the Israelis can say that they are very sorry to take it over, and that they know how important it is to people and that they wish there were another way around this, but the rules are the rules, so we are really sorry and we hope you can get by. The important thing is to do exactly the same every time no matter what. Always the same response.

So, in summary, I think that a non-intelligent or automatic response is what can save us.

I understand, of course, that this is very far from what is possible at the moment politically. But things may change faster then we would like.

The New Republic is being either naive or cynical. This one is a tough call if you want to believe the best about a person, or group of people — in this case a magazine that’s been around since the First World War.

By now you’ve probably read about what Sgt. Mom calls “the latest milblog kerfuffle-du-jour.”

The dust-up concerns a series of essays The New Republic has published by a supposed soldier in Iraq who describes anecdotes about his fellow soldiers that are (a) horrific and disgusting, and (b) inaccurate in their details. Of course, (b) simply means another “fake-but-accurate” strand in the MSM tapestry of careless lies and half-truths woven to serve their purposes. With the MSM, f-b-a is a standard sufficient to allow them to print what the rest of us consider slanderous, but which gives them license to put their agenda into the public sphere for consumption by the willing or the unwary.

OPFOR blog and The Weekly Standard magazine both question the veracity of the pseudonymous Scott Thomas’ stories about his service in Iraq, and then ask their readers to pass judgment based on their own experience of military life.

The commenters on both sites take the stories apart; they do so on the basis of small, telling details. For example, it’s not called a “chow hall” in Iraq, and the things on soldiers’ heads are no longer “helmets.” Nor do enlisted men ever operate as free of the oversight of their NCO’s as TNR’s “correspondent” would have you believe. In real life, any sergeant or junior officer would take these fellows down based on the ghoulish, sick stories this writer tells. Not to mention what their peers might do to them for such depraved behavior…
– – – – – – – – – –
Here we are again, right back at Dan Rather’s fonts from a 1970’s IBM Selectric. We’re back in WWII movies where the reality behind the bad guy (usually German) is revealed by his ignorance of, say, American baseball players. In other words, liars get outed by the little things they don’t know but couldn’t possibly be ignorant about if they came from the milieu they are claiming as their own.

Back during Rathergate, James Lileks was quoted by the Standard:

“The whole ‘fake but accurate’ line shows how tone-deaf these people are; it’s like saying a body in a pine box is ‘dead but lifelike.’ It boggles, it really does: the story is true, the evidence is faked, but the evidence reflects the evidence we have not yet presented that proves our conclusion — ergo, we’re telling the truth…

Both OPFOR and the Standard did what The New Republic should have done to begin with: fact check with those who do know the details because they can prove they were there in Iraq when these brutal incidents supposedly took place. For example, TNR’s essayist describes a soldier who deliberately makes a U-turn in his Bradley in order to run over a dog.

Even to this un-military blogger, the story smells like… like a dead dog lying in the sun. I mean, how do you make a swift U-turn in a tracked vehicle like a Bradley, hmm? And we are supposed to believe that the dog is going to stand and wait for you to return and run him over just for fun? Heck, even the lazy hounds given to sleeping on our country road get up well before my speeding bullet of a car reaches their nose.

Here’s how a commenter from the Standard sees it:

From the description of the dog-killing incident, the Bradley driver slowed the vehicle down and tried to do a skid turn. When you turn a tracked vehicle like a Bradley, you do it through differential braking—you slow down the inside track and accelerate the outside track, so the vehicle skids through the turn. Anyone who has ever seen it done will tell you it would be just about impossible (a) to catch a dog like that (dogs have better reflexes than tracked vehicles).

But even assuming that this guy was the world’s greatest track driver, I still think the story as presented is pure BS. According to the story, the dog is on the right side of the vehicle, because the driver turns right to run it down.

I am looking now at a 1/32nd scale model of a Bradley, and I can say with some assurance that the driver’s hatch is on the left side of the vehicle. Immediately to the driver’s right is the engine compartment, the cooling grill of which rises above the level of the driver’s hatch, making it impossible to see anything on the right side of the vehicle. Even if the driver was head-out, he still couldn’t see anything to his right below the level of the top deck (all armored vehicles have significant blind spots close in, which is why they need dismounts to protect them from RPG guys in foxholes).

You can read the other stories, even more disgusting and sad, at the sites mentioned above. I’m not going to give them space here — like the jihad beheadings, TNR has given us incidents that are pornographically sadistic. They are fodder for the “no-war-no-time-no-how” crowd, and it is this group that appears to be in the majority of TNR’s readership.

Since its inception in 1914 TNR has had a decidedly liberal bent. Its first issue included an essay by Rebecca West which complained about British conservatism. Its current editor says that TNR coined the word “ liberalism”. I believe him, for his magazine is solidly in the liberals’ camp.

The concept of an opinion journal is an honorable one. However, any journal must of necessity strive for at least a modicum of accuracy in order to gain a modicum of respect or attract new readers.

In march of this year CanWest, a media conglomerate based in Canada, acquired a majority interest in TNR. Interestingly, when you go to the Canwest site there is no mention of their ownership, though CBC.ca has the details.

NPR has an interview (audio) from March with the editor of the magazine. He explains their new look — due no doubt to the infusion of money from CanWest. TNR is now biweekly; its intent is to create a quality magazine worth keeping. Perhaps they see themselves as the left center liberal alternative to City Journal. However, if that is their intention, then their first duty is to demand meticulous reality from their contributors. Good art and slick paper don’t make up for content based on fabrication.

Thus, these so-called soldier “reports” they’ve been running can only hurt their reputation for integrity. The only reason they can begin to get by with the lies is that their readers are decidedly anti-military. They don’t know anyone who has ever served and they don’t want to. When it comes to the minutiae of the military world, they are totally ignorant and they pride themselves on the gaps in their understanding. This makes TNR’s fakes easy to read, easy to fulminate about.

Here is an irony for you: in their brand new incarnation as a bi-weekly TNR ran an exposé of David Sedaris’ memoirs showing them to be untrue, exaggerated, and sometimes made up out of whole cloth. In this instance, they did indeed perform due diligence in their fact checking. Sedaris never worked at a mental hospital as a kid; he made those stories up. Still, I consider Sedaris a talented storyteller. It’s a shame he’s been labeled as “nonfiction” or that he allowed his stories to be construed as fact. Discovering the depth of his fiction doesn’t detract from enjoying his tales.

But this supposed soldier, Scott Whatshisname, probably has less factual material in his fabulist creations than does Mr. Sedaris. And the mystery soldier’s “facts” would have been much easier to check, had anyone at TNR been willing to approach another soldier. If you click here, you will find that TNR, or their writer, went through some trouble to ascertain that Mr. Sedaris’ stories did not have a basis in fact. However, their high moral dudgeon is beside the point: Mr. Sedaris tells funny stories that reveal the human condition with compassion. He is beloved for what he creates, not for the accuracy of his stories. One holds him to the same standard of “truth” one demands of Dave Barry or P.J. O’Rourke or James Thurber.

TNR’s soldier storyteller is in another category of tale-telling. He has none of Barry’s or Sedaris’ humor or compassion or skill. His brutal, sadistic “recollections” have been created not to entertain but to titillate, and to discredit the American soldier in Iraq. It is obvious that the author has a very tightly focused agenda. It is also obvious that TNR shares his view of our military. If this were not the case then TNR would have published an opposing point of view. At the very least they would have said up front that they had not checked his story.

TNR joins the ranks of those publications which have given in to the temptation to put out material which supports their philosophy whether or not the essays are true. What counts is what the readership is hungering for. They know what their audience wants: vilification of those with whom it disagrees. No one could walk away from these tales with any admiration for our military. Fewer and fewer of our citizens even know anyone on active duty — or anyone who has served in the past. Thus, they can swallow and digest these lies without a qualm. It all looks “real” to them because it fits their underlying beliefs.

One commenter on the Standard’s post says:

I’m not Pollyanna, and ugly things happen. But my trial lawyer and my colonel BS detectors are both flashing red. To believe this crap, you have to want it to be true.

He has just sussed the motive for these scurrilous essays, and the reason TNR readers will eat them up. Is there anything so satisfying as being served a meal of our favorite prejudices?

Bon appétit, TNR.

“Fred Thompson and Hillary were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person.

The Republican, Fred Thompson, gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his office for a job. He then took $20 out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.

Hillary was very impressed, so when they came to another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into Thompson’s pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave the homeless person $5.

Now, do you understand the difference?”

hat tip Lifted from Dr. Phat Tony’s

[laughter here]

Well, better late than never.

Dana at Principled Discovery wrote me on Tuesday with a tip about the latest Carnival of Homeschooling, which she is hosting this week. I put her message in my “to do” pile for the day, and then…

Blogger decided to shut down access to our blog for the rest of that day, and part of the next.

Even after we were back on the air, things got kind of crazy, so that I’m just now getting around to posting about it. Fortunately for all of us, the helpful information to be found at the Carnival doesn’t stale-date quickly.

This week’s Carnival is a special Teacher In Service Edition, the virtual homeschool equivalent of a teachers’ work day. The post is loaded with how-to tips for parents who teach their kids.

Don’t miss the humorous and very brief introductory anecdote from Dewey’s Treehouse — I won’t spoil it by quoting it here; you must go and read it.

As usual, I scrolled down to look for my field, Math. The first entry I noticed was from Homeschool CPA, a homeschooling mother who is also a Certified Public Accountant, with answers to the question, “When Do I Start Teaching the Kids About Money?”

Next I went looking for my other pet subject, Art. That’s where I ran into one of my favorite bloggers, the Headmistress at The Common Room, who quotes extensively from Charlotte Mason’s books to advise on the best ways to teach art appreciation to children.

Other topic areas include Motivational, Planning, Language Arts, Physical Education, Home Economics, Science, Character, Law, and Field Trips. Each one has a number of blog entries listed under it. There’s a wealth of material available covering all aspects of home education.

And don’t expect any political correctness in these entries, either.

If you want to learn how to teach your kids at home, there isn’t a better place to start than the Carnival of Homeschooling.

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Readers may remember that the future Baron Bodissey was homeschooled by me until he was twelve. A few weeks ago…
– – – – – – – – – –
…he graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Chemistry. His interest in the subject began during his homeschooling, when his cousin gave him a Periodic Table of the Elements to supplement his studies.

He was about nine at the time, and immediately became fascinated with chemistry. He just fell in love with the periodic table. He never looked back, and is now about to begin a career in a chemistry-related field, oenology (known to us peons as wine-making).

He has taken a job, and will work for a year in a winery. After that it will be graduate school at Virginia Tech for their two-year oenology program, which combines chemistry, agriculture, and business. Once he has his degree, his dream is to go into business for himself, and start his own winery right here in Central Virginia.

It just goes to show that you never know where homeschooling will lead.

If a contest were ever held for the most politically correct multi-culti feelgood broadcasting outlet, Canada’s VisionTV would be well up there among the finalists.

According to its mission statement:

We are Canada’s multi-faith and multicultural broadcaster. VisionTV presents inspirational, insightful and original programming that celebrates diversity and promotes understanding among people of different faiths and cultures. VisionTV is part of a group of channels that also includes One: the Body, Mind & Spirit channel, a digital service offering programs on natural health, personal growth and living a planet-friendly lifestyle.

People of faith celebrating peace, love, and understanding, 24/7, in a sustainable eco-friendly manner, right?

Well, not quite. There seems to be one “faith community” represented on VisionTV which is less than pacific in its doctrinal views. According to Stewart Bell in today’s National Post:

VisionTV defends airing ‘jihad’ lecture
Muslims Urged To Take Up Fight Against ‘The Enemy’

VisionTV says it will monitor one of its shows more closely after it broadcast a lecture by an Islamic preacher who said scripture requires Muslims to either fight jihad or finance it.

The multi-faith channel, available in 7.8 million Canadian homes, said it took the precaution following a complaint about last Saturday’s broadcast of a lecture by the Pakistani fundamentalist.

In the hour-long talk, Israr Ahmad said, “Jihad in the way of Allah, for the cause of Allah, can be pursued either with your financial resources or your bodily strength when you go to fight the enemy in the battlefield.

“So jihad, the highest form, is fighting in the cause of Allah.”

Mr. Ahmad runs a seminary and bookstore in Lahore, Pakistan, and his writings foresee the “global domination of Islam,” compare Jews to “parasites,” describe the Holocaust as “divine punishment” and predict the “total extermination” of Jews.

His followers in Canada include terror suspect Qayyum Abdul Jamal, who was arrested last summer for his alleged role in a plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

According to Mr. Jamal’s wife, Mr. Ahmad was her husband’s teacher and mentor.

Now, this is Canada, after all, the land of gun control and hate speech laws, where speaking out against homosexuality in public can get you arrested. Canada is the Sweden of the New World. How could this happen in Canada?

The television program left some wondering how the Pakistani preacher, who claims that Jews control the world through a secret conspiracy involving financial institutions, made it on to Canada’s government-regulated airwaves.

“Israr Ahmad is widely known for his hateful words and vilification of Jews,” said Canadian Jewish Congress spokesman Bernie Farber. “We are deeply concerned that Vision would give this individual the imprimatur of Vision’s credibility. It was a mistake in judgment and ought to concern all of us.”

Did Mr. Ahmad break VisionTV’s rules? Well, maybe; maybe not:

VisionTV’s code of ethics forbids the broadcast of programs that glorify or incite violence or “have the effect of provoking or abetting domestic or international religious or political conflicts.”

The broadcaster acknowledged that the show, Dil Dil Pakistan, had talked about jihad and fighting but said it did not contravene the station’s policies against incitement because the comments were made in a historical context. But it said the show would be monitored more closely.

“We have essentially a system of flagging shows when complaints are made, where we’ll watch subsequent episodes even more carefully than we otherwise do, and take extra care and caution. So that’s certainly the case here,” said Mark Prasuhn, VisionTV’s chief operating officer and vice-president of programming.

But VisionTV’s viewers were not all reassured by the network’s promises of vigilance:
– – – – – – – – – –

Toronto resident Mindy Alter, however, said the message came through loud and clear when she tuned in to the show, which aired from 3 to 4 p.m. on July 14.

“The part about the jihad, he said very specifically that it is incumbent upon Muslims to wage jihad against their enemies until Islam rules supreme over the world,” Mrs. Alter said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think that belonged over the airwaves of Canadian TV. You can put that in whatever context you like. To me that’s preaching jihad.”

Whoa, Ms. Alter! Your words are verging on intolerance! If you’re not careful, you’ll be charged with hets mot folkgrupp, with defaming the cultural practices of an ethnic group.

Responded Mr. Prasuhn: “Definitely, the viewer is correct. [Mr. Ahmad] does make the point about, you either contribute financially or through your body, and he uses the word fight. But none of this, as far as I could see, is in any way correlated or referenced to the present day. It is strictly a historical context and reading of the Koran by a Koranic scholar.”

OK, glad you cleared that up. But:

Mr. Ahmad is not just a religious scholar. He heads a self-described “revolutionary” organization called Tanzeem-e Islami, which wants to turn Pakistan into a fundamentalist Islamic state.

In his book Lessons From History, he writes that the revival of Islam will begin in Pakistan, because it is the only country that “has the potential for standing up against the nefarious designs of the global power-brokers and to resist the rising tides of the Jewish/Zionist hegemony.”

Islam will come to rule in four stages, he claims: the Ultimate World War in the Middle East, the appearance of the anti-Christ, the extermination of the Jews and the “domination of Islam, over the entire globe.”

But the VisonTV’s VP of programming doesn’t see what all the fuss is about:

Mr. Prasuhn said the show was screened before it was aired and that no problems were identified. He said he watched the show again after receiving a complaint on Monday and did not see a problem.

“He is saying that Muslims have a duty to propagate their faith,” Mr. Prasuhn said.

“Then it goes a little further. It isn’t directly connected to the word jihad, but in the same paragraph or whatever he then gets into talking about [how] this is accomplished — and again he’s kind of referencing Koran and history — accomplished through jihad, which means these two things, financial contribution or fighting.

[…]

“At no point did I hear him say anything that would reference the present day or that would reference what a practitioner of Islam should do today. Now, that’s an inference one might draw, I suppose, but I did not hear it in his words.”

The National Post thoughtfully provides some excerpts from a book by Israr Ahmad, Lessons from History, published in 2004:

It would of course be unfair to make sweeping generalizations because individual persons vary greatly, but as far as the collective psyche of the Jewish nation is concerned, it is undeniable that they have developed a deeply ingrained tendency to conspire and to man-oeuvre things surreptitiously for their own gain, without ever appearing on the stage.

This is how the Jews were able to take control of the affairs of the world without really exposing or endangering themselves. This unnatural and artificial alliance between the Jews and the Christians — the basis of the New World Order — is actually nothing more than the relationship between a parasite and its host.

The Western and predominantly Christian countries of the world, as we have discussed above, are virtually being controlled by a very powerful Jewish minority — a recent accomplishment of which was the destruction of the military might of Iraq in the Gulf War. The next item on the Jewish agenda is the creation of Greater Israel.

The condemned Children of Israel are going to be completely destroyed at the hands of their own prophet, Prophet Isa, just as numerous other nations were removed from the face of the Earth because they committed the crime of rejecting their respective messengers.

So this is simply an “historical interpretation” of the Koran, eh?

Does this mean that we Christianists can now interpret the Bible as commanding the faithful to emulate the Crusaders, take up the sword, and kill all the Muslims?

A word of advice, kids: don’t try this stunt at home in Canada.

Hat tip: RES.

Sometimes it seems as though we need a full-time citizens’ group to take up residence in Congress to protect the rest of us from their perfidy.

Andrew McCarthy addresses the defeat of the American individual’s right to safety:

At least for now, the Democrats have killed Rep. Pete King’s amendment which would have provided protection from being sued for people who report suspicious behavior — like the Flying Imams’ simulated hijacking — in national security cases.

Maybe it’s me, but I just find this stunning. Asking whether, in this era (or, frankly, any era), you should be able to tell the police you saw something troubling without having to worry about it is like asking whether you should be able to breathe. It is common sense — if such a thing exists anymore in Reid/Pelosi America.

The Democrats’ maneuver here is also an obnoxious assertion of state power over the individual: If the state subpoenas you for information, you are compelled to provide it to the authorities whether you want to or not; but if you want to provide it voluntarily in order to protect your community, the Democrats say, “prepare to be sued.”

What possible good reason is there to silence people who want to tell the police they saw suspicious behavior? Under circumstances where we are under threat from covert terror networks which secretly embed themselves in our society to prepare and carry out WMD attacks? Planet earth to the Democrats: To execute such attacks, terrorists have to act suspiciously at some point. There are only a few thousand federal agents in the country. There are many more local police, but even they are relatively sparse in a country of 300 million. If we are going to stop the people trying to kill us, we need ordinary citizens on their toes. Again, this is just common sense.

Democrats killed the amendment in a very sneaky, technical, under-the-radar way in the House — so they can tell their insane fringe backers they pulled it off, yet no one’s fingerprints are on it. As far as I’m concerned, that just means we should blame “THE DEMOCRATS.” Period. If they don’t want personal accountability, we should see it this way: When it comes to national security, this is who they are.

Unfortunately common sense is a scarce commodity in our nation’s capitol. It has come to the point…
– – – – – – – – – –
…that hyper-vigilance (a chronic condition afflicting sufferers of PTSD) is the only alternative to the insane, Machiavellian behavior that goes on there. It’s no longer enough to idly peruse the MSM to see the news. In order to be safe, you have to stay two steps ahead of this perfidious crowd. You need a bull horn to warn people of the dangerous legislative waters ahead.

CVF has some practical guidance for those of you who are forced to fly the unfriendly skies after this shameful defeat of John Doe. As they say, “it’s time to gear up” — literally:

• Expect more probes of the 6 Flying Imams variety, especially as we go into the August vacation season.
• Bring a video camera or video cell phone with you, so you can gather evidence as needed to protect yourself and your fellow passengers, from both terrorism and lawsuits. You can pick one up for less than $100 at Wal-Mart (online price maybe cheaper in the store), Target, or RadioShack.
• It’s time for a Passenger Bill of Rights and Passenger Training. If we have to protect ourselves, so be it. Kyle Shideler did a great post on this on May 3, and I’m reposting it below because it’s even more important now.

[go here for the Passenger Training. Scroll down.]

Now that I think of it, why weren’t the airlines loud and vocal about this issue? It’s their bread and butter on the line, after all. In addition to bugging those who failed to vote for your safety, write some of the airlines you use. For legislators, snail mail goes into quarantine, so phone calls, faxes, and emails are more effective. But for airlines, a letter would serve well. Just google the last one you used and write them to ask why they weren’t on hand to protect you, their customer?

Call Homeland Security. Where were they on this? Ask them why they didn’t have anyone on hand to protest this disgusting and dangerous politicking. By the way, the governor of each state has to appoint a state level head for DHS (don’t you love the levels of bureaucracy?) so look yours up and send them a letter, too. Demand that you be allowed to protest or report questionable behavior.

My choice is to refuse to fly. There’s nowhere I want to go badly enough to put my life in the hands of Congress, thank you very much. But not all of you have that luxury.

Act now, while you still can.

Several readers have commented or written to complain about the pesky interruption of our long posts with a “read more” button which requires you to click onto another page in order to read the rest of the story (many others like the feature, but this is not addressed to those who have no problem with it).

Before “read further” was available – I first noticed it on Belmont Club – our long posts simply took up too much room. Instead of being able to scroll quickly down the page to read samples of what was on offer since the last time you visited, you had to move past numerous paragraphs before arriving at the previous post. For those who don’t visit everyday this was an onerous task. Given how verbose we both tend to be, finding your last stopping place could mean having to scroll all the way down the page, only to find that you had to go on to a previous page anyway. And for us, it meant fewer posts per page, which simply didn’t look as appealing.

Sometimes I can only visit a blog once or twice a week. That being so, it is helpful when the lead-in is fairly short so I can judge for myself whether to read the whole thing or to go on to something that appeals to me more.

So that’s our reasoning behind “read more.” Not everyone likes it, but more do than not, so until we can come up with a better way to fit more on the page (like learning to be more succinct), it’s a feature we plan to keep.

Oh, another advantage: when you click on “read more”, then the comments are immediately available and you can decide whether you want to join the fray or not. Comments by others can inspire a reader to add their own view, which makes for a better post – and a better blog.

You will note that this post doesn’t fold.

[That’s all there is]

The Counterjihad Calendar Project is designed to support and supplement the efforts of Stop the Islamization of Europe and the group’s plans for a counterjihad rally in Brussels on September 11th. SIOE is a joint effort put together by SIAD in Denmark and Akte-Islam in Germany, who have combined forces to stage a protest at the EU Parliament on the anniversary of 9-11. My goal is to have the complete calendar available before then; when it’s finished, it will be available at our Café Press store..

After consulting with Phanarath, I chose Christiansborg as the architectural icon for Denmark. It may be unfamiliar to most people outside of Denmark, but it is very important and well-known to the Danes (click for a larger image).

Christiansborg is the home of Folketinget, the Danish Parliament, the symbol of Denmark’s enduring democracy.

Here’s the list of Danish Counterjihad websites that I have collected so far:

http://dansk-svensk.blogspot.com
http://danzon.kimcm.dk
http://exile-onthewing.blogspot.com
http://hodja.wordpress.com
http://mikkel.hoegh.org/blog
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/flemmingrose
http://www.polemiken.net
http://siad.dk
http://turbanbomb.blogspot.com
http://universalgeni.wordpress.com
http://www.uriasposten.net
http://viking-observer.blogspot.com
– – – – – – – – – –
I need more input from readers in each country to help me create lists of URLs for that country. The goal is to fill up each sidebar with Counterjihad sites.

Once again, the twelve countries I will be using for the 2008 calendar are:

• France
• Denmark
• Germany
• India
• Sweden
• Italy
• The U.S.A.
• Greece
• Britain
• Australia
• The Netherlands
• Spain

For each country involved, I invite readers to post suggested counterjihad links in the comments, or send them via email. I particularly need links for the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, India, and Italy.

Next up (for March): Germany. Which German monument do you think I’ll use?

Genug ist genug!

Move over, CAIR.

Welcome NIAC to the cohort of American Islamic groups that gather in Washington D.C. to gorge at the federal trough and twist the arms of senators and congressman hard into the middle of their backs.

Muslim advocacy groups in the United States are slick, sophisticated, well-funded, and in your face. NIAC is a top player in all four of these categories. It’s the Shi’ite alternative to all those tiresome Sunni Wahhabists.

According to DKShideler at the CVF blog, the Iranian pressure group is confident that it can reserve a room in a Congressional office building as easily as you or I can book a double at Days Inn:

NIAC Books A Room: The House Republican Conference has one week to block the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), from holding a July 26, 2007 two and a half hour disinformation conference in room B 369, Rayburn House Office Building: “Human Rights in Iran and US Foreign Policy Options.”

NIAC presents itself as an educational non-partisan group, taking both sides of any issue, a slightly more sophisticated version of CAIR. But a closer look shows that they fit somewhere between open apologists for Ahmadinejad and a regime defense team running interference to prevent any U.S. actions against Iran. NIAC simply takes the Baker-Hamilton “realist” position to the logical conclusion of U.S. surrender: that the U.S. should appease Iran whenever possible, negotiate on Iranian terms all issues of interest to the Mullahs, and never support Iranian democracy advocates or any internal critics of the Mullahs’ regime.

Go over to the CVF blog to find out the details of the NIAC offensive, including a cast of characters and a set of mug shots. The usual suspects are there — Mad Jad featured prominently — but there are others you probably haven’t heard of or seen before.

NIAC is carrying water for the mullahs in Iran, even as it pretends not to. Its purpose in Washington is to make sure that the administration and Congress remain hobbled by indecision and fecklessness for as long as possible:
– – – – – – – – – –

For NIAC, being an “advocacy organization” means pressuring Congress and the White House to eliminate or freeze economic sanctions and to stop any support for Iranian democracy supporters or dissidents. They’re wrong about Iranian Americans of course: those thousands of successful Iranian-Americans are involved in U.S. politics as citizens, as voters, through professional and civic associations. They’re just not involved in a way that makes them a malleable constituency for a handful of elite politicians in Tehran or Washington, D.C.

Iran Is a State Sponsor of Terrorism: Keep in mind that on April 30, 2007, the State Department Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism designated Iran as a state sponsor of terror…

DKShideler’s conclusion:

Bottom Line: As a public education effort, consider asking your Congressman these questions:

Will the Republican Leadership support NIAC’s efforts to book the room on July 26, or encourage Mr. Soros to spring for a room at an actual Motel 6?

Should your congressman be supporting efforts to buy Ahmadinejad more time?

Should we keep his economy chugging along without stronger economic sanctions, lest the Iranian mullahs begin to feel deprived?

If all efforts to assist dissidents and democracy advocates result in their imprisonment, is it NIAC’s position that ineffectual hand-wringing is the only alternative?

Ineffectual hand-wringing is official U.S. Government policy. There’s a chapter dedicated to it in the State Department handbook. It’s employed so frequently that the acronym IHW is used for it in the literature.

If you want to see more than that, contact your senator or representative.

And go over to CVF to learn more.

A reader in Sweden, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote to me a few days ago with this appeal:

Immigration costs in Sweden amount to almost 29.7% of the public budget (2001).

The immigrants comprise the biggest expenditure within the public budget. Every municipality ought to give the information about the “price of immigration”.

Jansson estimates the immigration costs for the Swedish state to be $33 billion.

And refers to the fact that just $778 million has been shown in the Swedish public budget.

Write about how a criminal nomenklatura squanders, no, embezzles taxpayers’ money to keep the immigration and compassion industry running and so that its thousands and thousands of employees can keep their fat salaries and vote for the right party in 2010.

These new figures (SEK 231 billion = $33 billion) do not astound; we have heard about them before: SEK 215 billion, SEK 250 billion, SEK 315 billion. The Swedish state of idiots even borrow money abroad to be able to pay for the importation of all these asylants who never will get a job.

It is high time for a coup d’état!

Unfortunately, there is no military remaining for the coup!

It could have been started with some 1800 soldiers and a few determined colonels. However, the nomenklatura have gutted the military to avoid the possibility of any revolt or a true coup d’état that they otherwise might have had to fear.

In fact, there are a few men remaining in Sweden who are trained to be tough and to use violence, but they are in the police. And unfortunately their primary duties must necessarily consist of keeping order in places like Malmö.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

In the space of little more than a generation, Rosengård, a neighborhood in the city of Malmö in South Sweden, has been transformed from an ethnic Swedish district into one made up almost entirely of Third World immigrants, mostly Muslims.

A video shown last year (in Swedish with Finnish subtitles) on the Finnish TV channel YLE describes the situation in Rosengård, and features interviews with its residents. Here’s a sample from it (thanks to Carpenter and KGS for translations of the Swedish and the Finnish, respectively):

Question:		What is Rosengård like?
Mohammed Said:		A real wonderful place. Peaceful.
Q:		How long have you lived here?
Said:		Twenty-five years.
Q:		Has Rosengård changed?
Said:		Yes
Q:		How?
Said:		There used to be a lot of Swedes here. They have all left. There are only foreigners living here now, at least 99.9%
Sara Haidu:		I have lived here for six years and am doing well. I wouldn’t want to move away from here. Sometimes there are disturbances.
Q:		What kind of disturbances?
Najia Ali:		Boys on a rage.
Q:		Why?
Ali:		They only rage; I don’t know why.
Q:		Are you both afraid to go out in the evening?
Ali:		Yes.
Said:		The same with my family. Someone from my family must leave with me when I go out, so that nothing happens.

Large families and cramped housing are the norm in this city. Here there are more children and youth than elsewhere. Almost everyone has a foreign background.

Rosengård has become notorious for a kind of lawlessness that used to be unknown in the once-civilized culture of Sweden. Riots, rape, assault, murder, arson, theft, and general mayhem have become commonplace in the area, with the vast majority of the crimes committed by Muslim immigrants.

As noted in the Finnish video, the response of the Swedish natives has been simply to move away to more congenial neighborhoods, leaving Rosengård with an ever-increasing concentration of unemployed and violent young men.

Crime and disorder are now the norm. Here’s the latest report, from the July 15th edition of Sydsvenskan, as translated by Kepiblanc:
– – – – – – – – – –

Police fired warning shots after assault with knives

Some fifty policemen rushed to Rosengård following an alarm about several major violent episodes. A 20-year old man is now held under suspicion of attempting grave violence and violent riot. Several other are suspected of severe threats, or alternatively, incitement to riot.

It seemingly began as some trouble between various families. When the police patrols arrived the situation didn’t look critical, but emotions are in uproar, says sergeant Anders Telsing.

The riots began immediately after half past seven Sunday evening.

A 15-year old boy tried to grab a cell phone from another 15-year old boy. He refused to give the phone away — and was beaten up.

The two boys are neighbors in adjoining apartments on Ramels Road.

The victim went home to his father, who contacted the perpetrator’s parents and relatives. He was allegedly met with knives and at least one handgun.

The father fled the place, pursued by the neighbor and his relatives. “The father locked himself up in his apartment; they tried to get in. Someone mentions that they had a knife as well as a handgun and threatened him through the door’s peephole and the letterbox flap,” says Peter Lukic, police superintendent.

Someone sounded the alarm and around ten policemen arrived at the scene. Soon thereafter things calmed down.

About 45 minutes later the police intended to leave the area.

A little later a policeman activates the alarm function in his communications gear and calls for immediate backup.

Police superintendent Peter Lukic describes the situation until the alarm goes off:

“A lot of people start arriving from all sides. Bystanders talk about knives and handguns.

“A man with a knife breaks through the police line and runs toward the other family.

“I neutralize him, hold him to the ground and force him to let go of the knife at point blank.”

The man is being held, and right after one o’clock Sunday night he is arrested charged with suspicion of various severe threats.

“Then tempers heat up again. We’re obliged to get in the middle; more and more people arrive. We’re unsure about their armament. They start fighting in spite of us standing right among them.

“The situation is such that we can guarantee neither our own safety, nor that of others.”

He fires two rounds into the air and people spread out.

No person was hurt in the fight or the shooting. An ambulance was called, but it appears that a bleeding man had just suffered an epileptic seizure.

The witnesses who talked to Sydsvenskan give a similar description of the cause leading to the row and the events.

“Luckily the police were present. Otherwise blood would have been spilled”, says a witness.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Unfortunately, the day is coming when blood will be spilled. It’s inevitable.

We receive emails from Swedes over the age of fifty who say that their country is gone; that the Sweden they were born to no longer exists. They feel that is dangerous for them to speak the truth in their native land, so they send emails in a foreign language to strangers who live four thousand miles away.

It’s clear that the situation in Sweden cannot continue as it is indefinitely. Someday there will be too few armed policemen to contain the violence of Sweden’s invited guests. At some point there will not be enough money to pay for the upkeep of the unemployed immigrants and their enormous numbers of children. There will come a time when the Swedish government’s bond rating will drop so low that it will be unable even to borrow the money required to keep the country’s multicultural fantasies alive.

Do you remember that old anti-drug TV commercial from back in the ’60s?

What do you do when the music stops?
Where are you then? Where are you then?
When you’ve dropped four floors from the mountaintop,
Where are you then? Where are you then?

What do you see when your pupils contract,
When you’re out in the alley after your act,
And you’re not quite whole, and the straight world’s intact,
Where are you then, my friend?

Someday the whole façade must come crashing down. Then what?

Hat tip for the Sydsvenskan article: LN.

This post was finished just after Blooger locked us out. I posted it at IBA during the interregnum, but here it is again for our regular readers. And thanks to Epaminondas for his informative comments while the post was over there at IBA.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

An essay by Terry Mattingly describes the primitive superstition which lies behind the conspiracy theories that are spreading like viruses through Pakistan, roiling the waters and causing unrest.

In reading his article, I was reminded that human beings are, above all, reasoning creatures. That this faculty can be short-circuited by the notion that other people (or groups of people) conspire against us, bears witness to two tendencies. One is our susceptibility to project onto others what we most fear, and the other is our laziness: in a perversion of Occam’s razor we settle for the crudest explanation for a phenomenon — or an imagined one — so that “reason” gives us the needed justification for going on the attack.

Here’s the example that Mattingly uses:

The rumor spread across Pakistan in a blitz of text messages on cell phones.

There was a killer virus on the loose, and all you had to do to catch it was answer a call from an infected number. The virus didn’t hurt cell phones but would — eyewitnesses confirmed this — cause users to drop dead. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was forced to issue a denial, telling users that it was safe to turn their phones back on.

Unfortunately, Pakistan doesn’t have a Snopes page — a place to check out things like the latest weird email your co-worker sends you about a new destructive virus that eats your hard drive and metastasizes into a blood-sucking robot that will consume you and your mates in short order.

It will come as no surprise that many of the viruses in Pakistan often have one origin: the all powerful, evil Joooos:

Then there were messages claiming that Israeli trucks were carrying a million HIV-infected melons to Arab consumers in a new biological-warfare plot. This was not to be confused with other urban legends about a “Western-Zionist conspiracy” to use polio vaccines and other medical means to sterilize the next generation of Muslims.

Having lived through the firm conviction of many otherwise reasonable African Americans that the US developed AIDS in order to commit black genocide, I have often pondered the notion that people who feel oppressed and fearful look outside themselves for the nearest enemy to blame — in the case of HIV in black Americans, the Man is at the bottom of this nefarious plot. Pointing the finger away from oneself to the villain in charge allows for a certain amount of emotional security. At least you “know” the cause of your troubles. Faced with the ambiguity of chance and of having to accept responsibility for our behavior, it’s much easier to find a bad guy.

Mattingly excerpts from a recent speech (“Fact vs. Rumor: Journalism in the 21st Century”) in Istanbul by Husain Haqqani of Boston University. Haqqani says:

“The contemporary Muslim fascination for conspiracy theories often limits the capacity for rational discussion of international affairs…”

He doesn’t add that it also leaves the average, illiterate Muslim susceptible to the propaganda of the various factions spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood for the last several generations, all of whom have Utopian fantasies of conquering the world once and for all.

But Haqqani also argues — not very convincingly — against this “fascination” as being at all inherent in Islam:

“The Muslim world’s willingness to believe rumors is not a function of the Islamic religion. Like other Abrahamic faiths, Islam emphasizes truth and righteousness. The Quran says: ‘O ye who believe! Fear Allah, and (always) say a word directed to the Truth.’ And one of the sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad … specifically forbids rumormongering: ‘It is enough to establish someone as a liar that he spreads what he hears without confirming its veracity.’“

Hmmm…another one of those cherry-picked quotes that fails to take into account the universal Islamic belief in taqiyya, a belief that arose very early, during the Sunni-Shi’ite split. Originally, Shi’ites — the oppressed group — developed the notion of taqiyya as a method of dealing with the superior Sunnis. Eventually, however, most of the splintered groups of believers in Allah found the concept useful when dealing with anyone outside the confines of their particular group. “Taqiyya” may be Arabic but the concept is as old as tribalism and I have no doubt you could find it being practiced under another less exotic name in some of the more remote hollers in the Appalachian Mountains here in the USA.

However, this behavior is quite limited in much of the rest of Western culture, which has long moved past tribalism, even past the nuclear family to some arrangement of serially monogamous relationships with others, however fleeting. Keeping secrets, lying to outsiders, universal dissembling – all have been replaced with another set of false premises based on building an image for public consumption. Where there is no belief in a permanent Truth, taqiyya is irrelevant.

Back in Pakistan, and much of the Middle East too, feasting on rumors and fear is an every day function, like eating or sleeping. Consumption of these rumors increases the fear and bigotry so commonplace in the “Arab Street.”

Mr. Mattingly says:

The result is a climate of confusion and cynicism that prepares millions of people to believe the next round of rumors, often with violent consequences in an age in which ancient prejudices and modern technology merge seamlessly.

I would disagree that these two opposites “merge seamlessly”. In fact, their collision helps to create and foster the “climate of confusion and cynicism” he observes.

Haqqani, quoted by Mattingly, looks at the results of surveys in organizations like World Public Opinion. Here much of the Middle East speaks positively about globalization, religious freedom, and democracy. At the same time, the majority of respondents also hold that Muslim nations should enforce Islamic theocracy in order to avoid contamination by the West.

So who will point out to them that they are already contaminated? Cell phones and cable TV and jihadi porn videos have changed them irrevocably. The only course left when faced with such overwhelmingly uncomfortable cognitive dissonance? Why, reach out and blame someone – and three guesses who the Evil Someone is:
– – – – – – – – – –

Large majorities affirmed the belief that the United States is trying to “weaken and divide” the Muslim world and slightly smaller majorities said America’s goal is to “spread Christianity in the region.”

The impact of the rumors can, perhaps, be seen in another paradox in these surveys, said Haqqani. Large majorities in Egypt, Indonesia and Morocco (results were mixed in Pakistan) agreed that violent groups that kill civilians are guilty of violating the “principles of Islam.” However, less than a quarter of those polled believed that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Many Muslims seem to believe that 9/11 was a great achievement, but that Osama didn’t do it. They are confused by all the rumors.”

Confused? That’s a polite way of saying “ignorant.” Haqqani pleads that:

Leaders in the West must understand that almost half of the world’s Muslim population is illiterate. Meanwhile, the 57 nations in the Organization of the Islamic Conference contain about 500 colleges and universities, compared with more than 5,000 in the United States and 8,000 in India. That is one university for every 3 million Muslims.

One college for every three million Muslims? And did that just happen? What about the billions of petrodollars the House of Saud has poured into treacherous propaganda madrassahs aimed at creating monsters bent on destroying the West? The Saudis could have spent those untold sums on real schools with real teachers and actual educational content. Who is to blame for the ignorance and poverty in the Middle East (and its murderous consequences), if not the Saudis? Follow the money and you’ll find the cause for the widespread illiteracy and ignorance. It resides palatially in the middle of the desert, a snake lying in wait for its next opportunity to spew more venom.

Haqqani claims that —

“What we are seeing is not just a crisis rooted only in religion or education. This is a culturewide crisis of politics and economics and technology and education, and it is easy to see the role of religion because of the powerful role that faith plays in the lives of millions of people.

“The greatest fear of most Muslims is that their societies will be overrun by the Western world… They believe that modernity equals Westernization; Westernization equals promiscuity and licentiousness; and all of that equals a loss of faith. We cannot change that overnight. It is a project of a century or more, in which millions of people must learn that the modern world is built on values, laws and tolerance, not just highways, airplanes and cell phones.”

He fails to say Islam has always attempted to take just the technology of the West while avoiding contamination by its ideas. He also fails to say it has never worked. And when is this “project of a century or more” going to begin? Haqqani fails to mention the already decades-old project of the Muslim Brotherhood to bring about the exact opposite. Not a world built on “tolerance” but a world founded on submission to the will of Allah.

As long as the corrupt House of Saud continues to churn out hate-filled Wahhabists and/or Salafists, there will be no peace, no tolerance, and no education in the Middle East. They need that Pakistani ignorance firmly in place, or how else are they to carry out their stated mission?

Mr. Haqqani, you are being willfully deceitful: this is not about “values”; this is about the triumph or the defeat of the Ummah. From your academic perch at Boston University, which eventuality do you hope for?