The Highest of Stakes -- On Bush, Kerry, and Islamism

Sometimes an outsider can see a problem and its solutions better than those that are embroiled in the fray. British historian, Paul Johnson has clearly and succinctly compared Bush and Kerry, giving six reasons why Kerry SHOULD NOT be elected.

Kerry is untrustworthy for six reasons:

1. Kerry seems to have no strong convictions about what he would do if given office and power. I have waited for Kerry to tell us what he would do, to explain his plans. Instead he regales us with attacks on Bush and promises to do better, to be more efficient, to plan better, to make up with our "allies," and so on. What is your plan, sir? He could not be hired at a firm with so little conviction as to what he could do for them. Nor would a business or government agency accept a bid for a project that doesn't give specificity. If he were to appear on Donald Trump's "The Apprentice" television show, the Donald would soon give him the "You're fired" treatment for failing to come up with a credible plan. Why should the American people expect any less?
2. Kerry&'s personal character, so far, has appeared in a bad light. He is fundamentally dishonest about a variety of subjects, including his background. He is not Irish nor a Boston Catholic but of Germanic Judaism, ironic in that Anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Europe where Kerry seems to be the darling of the European elite and that Islam disdains all things Jewish! An example is that Kerry's religious views reflect a Leftist flavor that he showed when answering the question on abortion. It is hard to tell whether or not Kerry believes in God. Many Americans don't seem to care whether or not they do. They would prefer that a candidate has religious beliefs, but they want to be to tell IF the candidate has a belief, and with Kerry you can't.
3. Kerry has a long record of contradictions and uncertainties as a senator and his apparent inability to pursue a consistent policy on major issues. Indeed there is Kerry's twenty-year paltry senate record, really disgraceful for such a long career. Not only is he missing a track record, his voting record is contradictory. The accusation of flip-flopping on issues is valid.
4. Posturing on his military record. Kerry made his record an issue and continues to hide some of the paperwork. Some people find distasteful his self-promotion while in the service. Others see his behavior after the war as disgraceful or worse. Apparently he believed that Americans would take ANY veteran of a shooting war over one that merely serviced in the National Guard, and he believed that thirty years would erase the memories of those vets that served in that theater. One wonders what the serving military think of all of this. Could they actually serve under a commander-in-chief with such a controversial record?
5...his disturbing lifestyle, combining liberal--”even radical"--politics with being husband, in succession, of two heiresses, one worth $300 million and the other $1 billion. As both Bush and Kerry are sons of America's elite, it is not surprising that Kerry would rub shoulders and marry within his social class. However, the lifestyle of the Kerrys is buttressed by the usual team of lawyers and financial advisors to provide the best methods of tax avoidance. (my emphasis) I find this alone to be disgraceful and hypocritical on Kerry's part repeatedly has complained about the fact that wealthy Americans have benefited from the Bush tax break. Furthermore, although he legally can't use his wife's funds in his campaign, he benefits from her enormous wealth in other ways. Additionally, Teresa Heinz has refused to disclose her own financial statements, nor has it been explained if or how her funds would be set up in a blind trust as have the assets of all previous presidents and first ladies. THIS IS TROUBLING. Teresa Heinz could continue to wield enormous power if she keeps control of her assets and manages her foundations during the period she serves as First Lady. While complaining about the environment and the wastefulness of Americans, the Kerry's cavalierly continue to maintain five palatial homes, drive large cars, fly private jets and vacation using personal motor craft, at the least an hypocrisy.
6. is the Kerry team: who seem to combine considerable skills in electioneering with a variety of opinions on all key issues. <.i> We are judged by the company we keep and by the choice of our spouse. We can start with John Edwards, a trial lawyer who has been characterized as "an ambulance chaser." The unsuitability of this choice screams as the issue of the lack of and the high cost of health care is one that is hammered home by the Kerry team. John Edwards has become very wealthy by any standard by suing doctors, obstetricians. Medical doctors are fleeing the profession and refusing to perform certain procedures because they can no longer afford high malpractice insurance. Costs for the public are rising. Could it be that John Edwards and his pals in the trial lawyer association are partly responsible. As of yet, I haven't heard either Kerry or Edwards tell us what they plan to do about the lawyers!
George Soros is another very troubling influence. FrontPage Magazine online has a thorough two part expose´ of Soros. Although it is a lengthy sixty-two pages, it is well worth the effort to become familiar with the man that very well could run the monetary policy of the United States should Kerry be elected. Here is what Johnson has to say about Soros:

George Soros, a man who made billions through the kind of unscrupulous manipulations that (in Marxist folklore) characterize "finanance capitalism." This is the man who did everything in his power to wreck the currency of Britain, America's principal ally, during the EU exchange-rate crisis--not out of conviction but simply to make vast sums of money. He has also used his immense resources to interfere in the domestic affairs of half a dozen other countries, some of them small enough for serious meddling to be hard to resist.

Johnson asks the same question as do I: Why is a man like Soros so eager to see Kerry in the White House? The question is especially pertinent since he is not alone among the superrich wishing to see Bush beaten. There are several other huge fortunes backing Kerry. (my emphasis)

We always expect that the American Left would oppose Bush and showbiz types are lining up in droves. It is troubling that some, if not many Americans that don't know anything about the issues will vote for one candidate or the other simply because of the endorsement of their favorite performer. For this reason, the tyranny of the ignorant masses, our forefathers wisely created the Electoral College. I thank them for the insightfulness.

More troubling are the intellectuals on the Left, here in America and overseas, especially in Europe, that have lined up against Bush. The Bush-haters cover a wide spectrum. Last week I read of a British columnist that wrote a column advocating paying an assassin to take out Bush. Others are those we expect: Chirac of France, many intellectuals that have backed left-wing causes, and the "superbureacrats of Brussels"of the E.U.!" Although not alone in his observation, Johnson has noticed that "Anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism, is not, of course, a rational reflex. It is, rather, a mental disease, and the Continentals are currently suffering from a virulent spasm of the infection, as always happens when America exerts strong and unbending leadership.(my emphasis)

And the last of Johnson's villains are the elements of the anarchy and unrest in the Middle East and Muslim Asia and Africa that are clamoring and praying for a Kerry victory.(my emphasis) These are those that will stand to profit in some way politically, financially, and emotionally from the breakdown of order, the eclipse of democracy, and the defeat of the rule of law. They want to see Bush replaced.

This is the Jihad connection. The terrorists are not only those that strap on the bombs and maim and kill. The terror enablers are those that send them out, that financiers that will make a bundle in manipulating the price of oil during a period of crisis, that manufacture and sell arms and munitions to all sides, that house and comfort the bombers, and the clerics that fill their heads with Koranic passages and make the Jihadis heroes in the eyes of the Islamic masses. "It is only business; It is our religion;" the justification of the terror enablers. Some of THESE terrorists are even on our shores, walking among us.

A Lot of New Stuff Just Published to Our Website

Check out the new stuff on 6th Column Against Jihad.

What Do Al Qaeda and All the Other Terror Organizations Want to Happen on November 2?

What they want is very simple. You can give them the object of their desire, or not.

It is a universally understood matter, for a variety of reasons, that al Qaida seeks a political defeat of President Bush, particularly because of his aggressive policy of preemption, which has so successfully undermined terrorism and its funding throughout the broader Middle East. The Jihadists do not necessarily prefer John Kerry or his Party. They want Bush out of the White House so that a transition would take place in the Administration, followed by the shaping of new policy (especially different policy in Iraq) with at least 18 months of strategic inaction.

So the War for Iraq Is Equivalent to the Bay of Pigs and John F. Kerry is Another John F. Kennedy?
From chilled to boiling hot. Kerry gives me that visceral reaction. This time he is comparing the War in Iraq to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1962. Believe me, the only comparison he can make is that they were both done for the purpose of freeing people from tyrannical dictators.

The battle to free Iraq is nothing like the hapless Bay of Pigs invasion was not one of America's shining moments. At the last moment the planned landing site was changed from a lightly fortified to a heavily fortified beach and the promised air back up was not delivered.

John Kerry must believe that Americans don't know the difference nor do the Iraqis. However the disillusioned and betrayed Cubans exiles of Miami do.

If Kerry wants to compare himself to the other JFK, that's all right with me. With his overblown hype, I never thought much of the other either.

Would 'Inaction' by Kerry Give a Freehand to the New World Order?
Fresh after reading FrontPageand Part II I began to wonder what part John Kerry might actually play as he is adverse to taking action.
Every action and spoken has an effect as do the things that we DON'T do. John Kerry, the good "alter boy" should remember the concept of sin from his Cathecism. Especially egregious is the sin of Omission. Sitting on your hands while evil goes forward is indeed a sin. Keeping company with evil fellows and allowing them to go forward with their nefarious deeds during your watch is indeed a grevious sin.
We are judged by our actions AND by the company we keep. That also includes our choice of spouse. Oh my, John!

Is United States Sovereignty About to Be SUBMERGED into a New World Open Society?


A Kingmaker. I thought about Cardinal Richelieu, Prime Minister of France, 1565-1642 or even Otto von Bismark , the 19th century German chancellor that united various principalities into the cohesive nation that is today known as Germany. The kings that Richeleiu and von Bismark backed up were hereditary monarchs. They didn't make the kings, they made the nations. Both men were principally interested working to spread the power and interests of their respective countries.

Is spreading the power and influence of the United States the principle objective of the man behind John Kerry, George Soros. The wealth of Teresa Heinz pales next to that of George Soros, a man that "meddles" in the affairs of countries to change regimes, buying power and influence, who is, in his own words a "marxist plutocrat" that is intent on creating an open society in which NO country would have sovereignty or be in charge of its own economy, not even the United States. Instead, all the world's citizens would benefit from the redistribution of wealth financed by taxes on financial transactions, principally those from the world's present wealthy countries "to be distributed where the new world government sees fit."

This man has spent tens of millions of dollars to get John Kerry elected so that he could, in his own words, "advise Kerry from time to time."

My blood ran cold after reading this lengthy article.

The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker, Part 1

The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker, Part 2

The Myth of U.S. Isolation
The U.S. is NOT alone in it war against Islamo-fascism as the Kerry cabal has charged. The families of those that have died must feel insulted by the way that the Kerryites have dismissed their sacrifice. When Kerry says that America is "fighting alone" in Iraq, he means that France, Germany, and Russia have decided to stay on the sidelines. Obviously those that are serving with our troops are being dismissed as insignificant and unimportant players. Some contributions and sacrifice are obviously more equal the others, on the par with the notion of a type of class warfare among nations! Shame on the Democrats and shame on the American press for making a distinction!

Oh, my. France, Germany, and Russia have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar in the U.N.'s "Oil for Food Scandal." Obviously they all wanted to continue remain on the take with funds subsidized partially BY THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER, among others, while laughing all the way to the bank as Iraqi women and children suffered under the U.N. mandated sanctions. Saddam buit his garrish pleasure palaces and gassed and threw helpless Iraqis off roofs and put living prisoners into woodchippers while the group of mostly Europeans raked in the cash.

The alliances that have been formed have been denigrated by those same three countries, and STUPIDLY by the American mainstream press. I would ask the Democrats AND the press: How does it serve your country to constantly make it look bad not only in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of your own people and to denigrate the efforts of allies in the fight against the Islamo-fascists?

Ross Mackenzie: On the dismaying egregiousness of John Kerry

On the dismaying egregiousness of John Kerry, by Ross Mackenzie, October 28, 2004

There is a rabidness about Kerry supporters. Where I live, they "key" cars, destroy yard signs, and vandalize Republican campaign headquarters if any of these show support for Bush-Cheney. I have been watching election processes for about half a century now, and there is only one other time that I have seen this phenomenon--the 1968 Democrat Convention riots in Chicago. What Democrat thugs do out my way, they are doing all over the country.

Kerry is so unfit for the presidency, yet his supporters so violently crave power that they support an unworthy candidate and try to silence the opposition.. It is difficult for me to imagine anyone being an undecided potential voter at this point. It is almost as difficult to imagine anyone actually supporting Kerry. However, if you are undecided or if you are a Kerry supporter whose mind has not been locked shut, consider these points from Ross Mackenzie's article about Kerry (read the article for all of the points):

1. One searches in vain for the word "apology" in the Kerry lexicon. He and his running mate refuse to apologize for shabbily seeking to set Cheney fille against Cheney fils. He refuses to apologize (a) to American veterans who fought in Vietnam for terming them all war criminals in his 1971 remarks before a congressional committee, and (b) to American POWs, as even Jane Fonda has done, for extending their time in Hanoi by two years. And he refuses to demand that Dan Rather apologize to the president for rushing onto the air - and to judgment - with forged memos about the president's service in the Air National Guard.

2. What's more, Kerry refuses to authorize the release - as only he can - of all his military records by signing the Pentagon's Standard Form 180. Such release might explain, for instance:

3. Why Kerry's honorable discharge from the military is dated March 2001, though his service obligation should have ended July 1, 1972, and he was discharged from the Naval Reserve in February 1978.

4. It also would be helpful to know why - as a member of the Naval Reserve - Kerry apparently could violate the law without prosecution by (a) meeting with the North Vietnamese Communists in Paris, (b) attending (even organizing), while simultaneously a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, peacenik rallies where the American flag was desecrated and the Viet Cong flag displayed, (c) condemning the United States and lying about its military, and (d) apparently being present at a meeting whose attendees voted on assassinating members of the Senate.

5. "I spent a lot of time before the vote looking at this issue. I went up to the United Nations at the request of some friends. And I met with the entire Security Council in a room just like this at a table like this. I spent two hours with them - just me and the Security Council, asking them questions." The Washington Times reported Monday, Oct. 25, that such a meeting never occurred.

6. Repeatedly, including in the debates, Kerry rejects the liberal label - saying that in today's political vocabulary, labels are inaccurate and meaningless. Then he deftly moves to redefine himself as a moderate. Yet labels do mean something, particularly regarding Kerry's history as a peacenik and his 20-year record of voting consistently against not only major weapons systems, but major military and foreign-policy initiatives. Liberal ratings groups rate him the Senate's most liberal member.

7. And the liberal Marty Peretz, editor of the liberal New Republic magazine, says this about the egregiously liberal John Kerry: "There seems to be some personal anxiety underlying almost everything Kerry thinks about U.S. foreign policy. He craves the approval of Europeans, as if he were some American 'arriviste' right out of a Henry James novel. (Teresa is a different kind of James character.) Early on in the campaign, he claimed that he had met with foreign leaders, and they had told him they preferred him to Bush - as if that were a bona fide to American voters. I can't count how many times I've heard Kerry people - not Kerry - tell me that the Germans and the French, the Swedes, and all of the Arabs dislike Bush and want Kerry to win. So what! Or, on the other hand, maybe it is really quite telling that the Arabs so much prefer Kerry."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am not a Republican. I find MANY flaws within G. W. Bush. However, I have no problems with his CHARACTER. Even though I think he could do a much better job fighting jihad (his War on Terror), I do not doubt that he will fight to protect America.

There is something seriously wrong with John Kerry. I question his character, his patriotism, his history, and I seriously doubt his willingness or ability to defend America. If he is elected, he will damage America severely. He is a man who is a total opportunist who lies so much that he cannot tell truth from non-truth. If you vote for him, and if you elect him, you will be in the same peril I would be. However, I would know that I did not ask for or permit it. Do not make this mistake.

Would This Would Be Funny if It's Wasn't So Sad?

In Saturday's Guardian, a British newspaper, Charlie Brooker concluded his column about the American presidential election with: "On November 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. - where are you now that we need you?" Yes, that's it, a columnist in a mainstream British newspaper actually called for the assassination of the President of the United States! Later that week, the Guardian thought again on what Mr. Brooker wrote and issued an apology. However, once said, embarassing words to that effect can not be taken back that could have consequences on both side of the Atlantic.

Journalistic stupidity is not confined just to the American press. It seems that the most Leftist European press got a kick out of Mr. Brooker's column, especially as they know that he was referring to them as the "entire civilized world." They are so civilized that they forgotten how to defend themselves as most of them have forgone keeping an effective military, an expense they don't want shoulder, preferring to use the military of the U.S. in a pinch to beef up NATO, although France has a much better force since they pulled out of NATO.

What they mean by "civilized" is a society that would eschew war by talking the enemy to death, hoping that the diplomats will die of old age before the first shot is fired and affecting no change. The Islamo-fascists know this and have milked their system so that now the Europeans are in peril of merging with them to be a full-fledged member of the Caliphate that could appear at any moment.

The big, bad, cowboy Americans prefer action to words. This infuriates the talking heads of Europe. And speaking of heads. Unfortunately various Europeans heads have rolled and a few more have been grabbed up because the Islamists understand that Europeans are very squeamish and public policy can be influenced by even the thought of a beheading.

Video beheadings are quite the rage in Britain, putting pressure on Tony Blair not to help out by increasing British presence in the Sunni Triangle. Various politicians have made irresponsible statements that sound remarkably like apeasement, giving the Islamists hope that they can actually affect British policy by making a few heads roll, a gruesome thought I know.

Is this the media's fault? Only partly so as irresponsible politicians can't seem to keep their mouth's shut. All they can seem to do is talk and not solve anything.

But, if this is the best the "civilised world" can do - maudlin sentimentality and ironic jests - then it's in big trouble. Both modes are a pose and a detachment from reality. Brooker and the Guardian seem to be protesting no, don't worry, we were just talking the talk, there's nothing we're prepared to walk the walk for. That's the problem.

What Would Patton Say and Do About the Present War?
by Victor David Hanson
(A paraphrase)

General of the Army, George Patton had superior insight. Time and space have overcome the dressing down and firing he received from President Truman after WWII. He was a great tactician, understanding "far more about strategy and global politics than either (Generals) Eisenhower and Bradley." He projected into future and instinctively sensed what enemy armies were about to do. A possible dyslexic, he didn't pull the information for his decisions from thin air, but "listened nightly to the BBC, read Rommel,the memoirs of Napoleon and Caesar's Gallic Wars," read passable French, and "based his opinions on studies of European history, news reports, and meetings with those that worked with the allies, even the "odious Russians."

Patton didn't always get what he wanted: the Allies didn't push on to Berlin to bring all of Germany behind the Anglo-American lines, a mistake later regretted by the West. He saw paying billion of dollars to the Soviets after the war a "forced matter of practicality” that smacked of naiveté of which he wanted no part as “all decisions made in 1945 would alter the future security of the U.S.,” and he was right! However, he believed that the soldier’s duty was to create an atmosphere in which U.S. diplomats and politicians could deal from a position of strength --- beat the enemy first, and then negotiate, not the reverse.

Patton’s tactics could be applied to today’s situation.

…Patton, who understood the hold of a radically triumphalist Nazism on a previously demoralized German people, would have the intellectual honesty to realize that we are at war with Islamic fascists, mostly from the Middle East, who have played on the frustrations of mostly male, unemployed young people, whose autocratic governments can't provide the conditions for decent employment and family life. A small group of Islamists appeals to the angst of the disaffected through a nostalgic and reactionary turn to a mythical Caliphate, in which religious purity trumps the material advantages of a decadent West and protects Islamic youth from the contamination of foreign gadgetry and pernicious ideas. In some ways, Hitler had created the same pathology in Germany in the 1930s.

Today’s enemy is far more sophisticated than were the Nazis during World War II because of the internet and globalization. They are both attracted and repelled by the success, wealth, and personal freedom of the West, and have created a “mythical solution in lieu of real social, political and economic reform that in short order would doom the power of the patriarch, mullah and autocrat” that have failed them miserably: “Blame the imperialist Americans and the Zionists Israelis who caused this self-induced misery.” Other Muslims are happy to see us take the fall as long as they don’t suffer, but when they do, we are also held accountable.

Would Patton approve of Bush’s program of reconstruction in Iraq? Yes and No. Yes, “helping the defeated re-build under democratic auspices would allow real reform.” No, because the enemy needed to be soundly defeated before re-building should commence. The insurgency should be soundly defeated to give Bush leverage against both the Europeans and the tyrannical Middle East “to prove to both friends and enemies alike the consequences and advantages of American power.”

Patton taught many lessons and gave advice that seems to have been forgotten by both the military and political classes. Among them, the lesson about public support is most appropriate: the American soldier and the American public are restless, with a short attention span. To be successful, a campaign must always be on the move. He seemed inconsistent, but we are an inconsistent people and this is an inconsistent war.

Read and contemplate the lessons of a military genuis. Patton, we need you now!

FIFTH COLUMN REPORT: Ignorance at the State Department Runs (Down) Policy, Again

State Department Slams US-Run Radio in Arab World,by Dr. Walid Phares,FrontPageMagazine.com,October 26, 2004

I really do not know if America can survive its government. So few people know anything about Islam, and even fewer know anything about Arab culture. Every foreign policy action and war that I can remember since the end of World War 2 have been conducted in an "idea-free" zone. In fact, watching Iraq, and particularly the role of the State Department, I must conclude that anyone with ideas was given the pink slip a very long time ago. It dismays me to say so, but Colin Powell represents the State Department so well since he has the idealessness and unvalues resembling the actions of the lava lamp. By no means is he the worst. It is just that he is so representative.

Dr. Walid Phares has published the following article indicating the latest malintended bumbling of the State Department. Quite correctly, he points out that punditry programs, lectures, and other crude attempts at "spreading ideas" via radio do not work well with young people in Iraq. These kids want the music, as obnoxious as elders such as myself find it. The young are still young enough to want to experience life in a culture almost devoid of the feelings of life.

Dr. Phares makes some terrific statements, and this article is worth getting and reading:

"...Radio SAWA and its sister TV station al Hurra are more about the future of Middle Easterners than the future of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, DC. Radio Free Middle East, the real function of SAWA, is not about who will next occupy the White House, but about how to free the oppressed people in a region that has produced lethal terrorist ideologies."

"...[M]usic is itself a tool of liberation. The Taliban, the Wahhabi and the Khumeinists are the enemies of songs and human emotions."

None of the choreographed attack is accidental. Dr. Phares opens this article with these words: "Here’s how a coordinated attack against Middle East democratization debuts in America: On October 13, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler writes on page A12 that "an Arab-language pop music and news station funded by the U.S. government and touted by the Bush administration as a success in reaching out to the Arab world . . . has failed to meet its mandate of promoting democracy and pro-American attitudes. In one sentence, three powerful bullets: 1) The US is funding Radio SAWA, supposed to promote Democracy and pro-American attitudes, 2) the Bush Administration is projecting it as an achievement, and 3) it has failed to meet its mandate."

This is pure fifth column evil at work. These fifth columnists infest organizations like the State Department, work assiduously to undercut the efficacy of the elected officials as crude politicking for Kerry, and work hand in glove with the fifth columnists in the journalistic media.

We must purge these fifth columns or perish.

Kosovo: The War Democrats Love -- How the Worm Has Turned!

Reading Don Feder's Cold Steel Caucus Report, a sense of anger and regret came over me. I had been deceived into believing that the world would be better off without Milosevic and Serbs in Serbia, that the KLA weren't jihadists, but "freedom fighters," that Serbs were not fighting in self-defense, and that the removal of Christian Serbs wasn't "ethnic cleansing." How stupid of me.

That's what the Clinton White House told us. They went to war without the express approval Congress or of the U.N., but that was o.k. NATO and the French approved, so it was o.k., that's what we were told. Now, George Bush hass gone to war WITH the approval of Congress and with a U.N. resolution, but that's not o.k. I'm confused!

Mon dieu, but of course! I DIDN'T have Michael Moore to explain Clinton's war to me. But that's o.k.

Islam Flinches at Modern Western Values

Gee, I flinch and become disturbed when thinking about the values that are depicted in both Britain and America, but is this reason to maim and poison us? If you don't want your kids to see American images in movies and television, don't show them, block the signal with v-chips or other censoring devices, don't buy the CDs and DVDs, turn off the radio. No one is forcing Muslims, or even Americans, to consume objectionable material.

Don't buy the media and the distributors will go out of business. Don't watch the shows and the advertisers will withdraw their support, don't patronize the movie theaters or listen to radio and t.v. stations that broadcast material of which you don't approve, the market will close them down for they are out to make a profit, but for heaven's sake, don't muder us.

Many in the West agree with you on this subject and deplore how society has changed, but beheading and blowing people up won't reverse what has happened.

Both Islam and the West need reforming, but not in the same way. We in the West must fix what's wrong with our culture as well.

Michael Moore Will Cover the Elections for the BBC?????

Look who else the BBC has lined up for election eve coverage. If we didn't know that the BBC is Left wing, we know it now!

France Eyes 'New Alliance with White House Baded on Mutual Respect, Which Is Not Allegiance?

Huh? Since which has the French government respected ANYONE? How can we even use the terms French and respect in the same sentence without laughing? Just ask any of the former French colonies whether their French masters RESPECTED them.

Could the Liberation be talking about themselves? A "handful of ideologues hungry for adventure by deaf to the planet..?" Come on. Refer back to paragraphh one. France, who do you respect? No one in Europe, or anywhere else in the world, feels your respect.

The Left-wing newspaper Libération yesterday said that victory for Mr Bush would maintain America as an arrogant, imperialistic super-power guided by "a handful of ideologues hungry for adventure but deaf to the planet". Putting Mr Kerry in the White House would "perhaps" mean a more multilateral approach.

Will Mr. Kerry go hat in hand looking for the "respect of the French?" They are under the impression that he will.

Read the original

The New American Fascism

Personal and political rage is manisfested everywhere we look. Take a sobering look at the re-emergence of fascism in the American political landscape. The "Thought Police" and enforced PC attitudes coupled with violence and corruption are the beginning stages of what might be a very unfortunate period in American history. I hope I'm wrong.

"A Rich, Spoiled Brat"

Disapproving of the rich and famous is an American passtime. Many wonder what it would be like to have several houses, fancy cars, and servants at our beck and call. The truth is that many wealthy citizens became that way because they worked darned hard for their money and they work just as hard to keep it. Sometimes some of them even work hard at giving it away. The motives are various.

Many wealthy parents worry that their children will grow up with the wrong attitude about money and will use wealth in the wrong way. They go out of their way to teach their children about philanthropy and the value of a dollar, sometimes living a Spartan existence as an example for their children. Not all wealthy people are materialists, spoiled in the pursuit of the acquisition of things and the collection of people to massage their egoes.

Public service for the wealthy had been encouraged as a way to pay for one's good fortune as wealth is sometimes tied with the dispensiing of God's grace. Others use their wealth as a naked grasp for power, and yet others disguise their ambition for power in the guise of philanthropy.

How will we characterize Teresa Heinz Kerry, the "eccentric" second wife of Senator John Kerry, candidate for President of the United States. The kindest thing that I can say about her is that she is a "rich, spoiled brat." You will have to draw your own conclusions about her character and ambition or if she fits in with any of the categories mentioned above.

Should such a person be First Lady of the United States? I think not. But the bigger question is whether or not a man with such a wife should occupy the White House.

How Should We Define the Islamist Challenge to U.S. Security?

Frank J. Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., lists five principles of challenge to America's security in order to counter the pernicious influence of Islamism. Most them deal with the Islamist challenge of violent Jihad, homeland security, and relations with both friends, allies, and enemies that are located OUTSIDE U.S. territorial borders. Indeed the principles and problems he lists are strategic and important to the security of the United States.

As do many others, Mr. Gaffney limits his definition of security challenges to those topics that have rivited the attention of the American public for more than two years: threats of violence, WMDs, the economy, war, politics, and diplomacy, overlooking and failing to see the slow, insidious attempts at change of American civil and constitutional law and institutions that could be more dangerous than terrorism.

A for instance: Is the country more secure when public school children are exposed to curricula that deconstructs American values, that puts hating America first while ridiculing America's founding fathers and founding ideas? Can America continue as America if school children no longer value America's ideals that are being co-opted and twisted by hostile and unfriendly movements.

Our attention has been fixed on the most immediate problems that have to do with security from violence so much that we haven't recognized danger by the teaming of the Left that has teamed up with Islamo-fascism to overthrow freedom and liberty in the United States. This tag team has worked silently in small steps, entering universities, large corporations, government agencies, public school systems, the military and border patrols, as well as the halls of power in Congress and has made attempts at the Oval Office itself. While we were looking at the forest of terrorism, we failed to see individuals that are affecting quiet and pervasive changes that are not in the best interest of the United States, all done in the name of tolerance and a variety of "isms," including that of multiculturalism and post-modern, deconstructivism, and relativistic philosophies, all very suprising as the totalitarianism Lefitst-Marxism and Islamist extremism tolerate neither multiculturalim nor relativism.

Security is not oobtained only through prevention of war and terrorism. Secure people are able to live in manner that allows them to persue their objectives in a cooperative manner with their neighbors. The trick is to convince your neighbors that your objectives are best for them. Post-moden multicultural Lefists and Islamo-fascists have slowly and quietly been working to convince us that their agenda is best for America. Clearly it is not.

Read this before you vote: An Excellent Thought Piece from Britain

I want to make a correction to this October 24 post with new information I acquired 25 October 2004. I am reposting with the current date and time.

I had said on this post originally: A new friend who lives "over there" understands what is going on regarding Islam and Europe. So far, so good.

However, our new friend is English with an affection for America. Because of having to deal with these absurd jihadists, I not try not to identify persons who share the same fight against jihad and for freedom. In this case, our friend is new, and in so many ways, writes like an American thinks, that I made an incorrect assumption. The "whilst" and "colour" should have tipped me off. It is a pleasure to correct this aspect of his identity and to enjoy it.

Otherwise, what I said stands.

He can and will speak to what is going on over there, with England, the EU, France, Turkey, etc., and he will be able to tell us the plain truth instead of leftist agenda presenting. He sent this article, and it is rather good.

At times, it is easy to lose patience and perhaps hope even with the English. Maybe they are like us: some 45% of us think Kerry and all of the associated "thinking" is good. Maybe that percentage in England is equally off their trolleys. Let us not throw the fine people away with the chaff. Afterall, Britain, like Australia, stands with us, despite a large percentage of Britains running free instead of being committed to the asylums.


If Bush loses, the winner won't be Kerry: it will be Zarqawi
By Charles Moore(Filed: 23/10/2004), The Telegraph

Earlier in the week, I was talking to a brisk, amusing, Toryish member of the Great and the Good. It had recently fallen to her to give away some prizes at a ceremony to do with helping the environment. Gripped with the desire to liven things up a bit, she said, she had dropped into her speech an aside about the "greatest human threat to the planet - Bush's re-election". There followed a moment's silence, and then a weird noise that it took her a second to recognise was tumultuous, orgasmic applause.

On the way home, she told me, she thought things over and felt uncomfortable. She did not repent of her dislike of the President of the United States, but she worried a little that people should feel so passionately, so certainly. I think we should worry a lot.

One of the criticisms thrown at George W Bush is that he is a menace because he believes that God is telling him what to do. A moral equivalence is set up, in which Osama bin Laden and Bush are presented as two sides of a fundamentalist coin. On Wednesday, a television programme tried to equate the Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates the violent destruction of all societies that do not conform to sharia law, with the American neo-conservative intellectuals who taught that people should revive their interest in Plato and the civilisation of the ancient Greeks. This is about as accurate as saying that the Nazi party and the Labour Party are the same, because both arose from the discontents of the working classes.

It is the critics themselves who are suffering from pseudo-religious certainty and superstition. Isn't there something self-righteous, slightly crazed, about directing such overwhelming anger at the man whose job it is to pick up the pieces of September 11 on behalf of the free world?

George W Bush as we see him today is a response to disorder, not its cause. Four years ago, he was the same as 99.9 per cent of Western politicians. He inherited the economic health and mental torpor of the Clinton years, when many people really had come to believe that the Western way of life was like a children's slide magically moving upwards towards ever greater pleasure and peace, in permanent defiance of the laws of political gravity. To the extent that Bush campaigned on foreign policy at all in 2000, his selling-point was that he didn't have one.

After some 2,500 Americans died in a day, he had to get one fast, so fast that he made some big mistakes. He resisted the idea of "nation-building", even as his policies of military intervention made it inevitable. Having had the maturity to choose able lieutenants, probably more intelligent than himself, in Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, he did not clearly adjudicate between their different versions of what ought to be done in post-war Iraq.

Understandably exasperated by the feeble multilateralism that had permitted genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s and hampered effective war in Kosovo, he did not see that determined unilateralism requires more, not less diplomacy. And whereas some conservative leaders resonate internationally (Margaret Thatcher was the patron saint of taxi drivers in six continents), George W Bush doesn't travel, literally or metaphorically.

But he has got the big idea. There is a global problem with Islamism. There is a problem of alliances between bad states and terror organisations that reach beyond state boundaries. There is an almost universal rottenness in the politics of the Arab world. There is an atrocious weakness or, as the UN oil-for-food scandal shows, worse than weakness, in many of the Western nations and international organisations that are supposed to help guarantee our security. And it is the duty of the most powerful nation on earth to do something about it.

The only big free country that has retained the untrammelled capacity to decide for itself has been decisive. The greatest terrorist hope about America - that it was not serious - has gone. And a huge, partly covert programme has begun to catch our foes and make us safer. It tempts fate to say it, but it is not mere chance that neither Britain nor America has suffered terrorist attack since 2001.

I don't understand what John Kerry or Jacques Chirac think should be done about terrorism. Or rather, I think they think nothing much should be done. Kerry compares terrorism to prostitution - a permanent affliction that can be mitigated, but no more. You can move a few tarts off the street, introduce more clap clinics, insist on curtains in the red light district, but in the end, the oldest profession regroups. It's a very French attitude, and it reflects a truth about human nature. But prostitutes, unlike Islamist terrorists, are not determined to destroy our way of life (in fact, they have strong conservative motives for keeping it ticking along). You can't say to Osama bin Laden, as you might to Madame Claude: "You're entitled to your little ways, but just be discreet about it, will you?" His little ways are death, our death. It's him or us.

So who gains if Bush loses? The Labour Left, of course, and the political power of the European Union, the Guardian readers who have been writing magnificently counterproductive anti-Bush letters to the voters of Clark County, Ohio, and every twerp who says with a trembling lip that Mr Bush and Mr Blair have "blood on their hands"; not to mention every corrupt, undemocratic, "pragmatic" government in the Middle East that longs for a return to stasis.

But some rather more fearsome people gain too, such as the man who said of Americans in a document discovered earlier this year "Šthese are the biggest cowards of the lot, and we ask God to allow us to kill, and detain them, so that we can exchange them with our arrested sheikhs and brothers". He is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and it is probably he who killed Ken Bigley. Such men believe they have already changed the government in Spain; they will claim at once that they have done the same in the United States. They will be right.

And who loses? Iraqis about to have real elections of their own for the first time, Afghans who have already voted with more than expected success, Iranians trying to assert their own democracy against its clerical corruptions. And us. What one can see in each twist of the Iraq story - don't send the US Marines into Fallujah, don't send the Black Watch to help the Americans, do give in to Ken Bigley's kidnappers - is exactly what is meant by defeatism, an actual longing to lose. Whatever you think of the war, why would you want that?

John Howard, who joined in the war, won again in Australia this month. I think that Tony Blair will do the same. And I suspect, though it is close, that George W Bush will win, too. Like them or not, all three have put themselves on the right side of a battle that has to be won.

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. Terms & Conditions of reading.Commercial information. Privacy and Cookie Policy.

The Pen IS Mightier Than the Sword

The pen is mightier than the sword and in the war of ideas, arming soldiers in the conviction that they can do good things for their country that don't follow the Islamist line is sufficient reason for their humiliation and subsequent execution, for the human mind is the most dangerous weapon ever devised. If this wasn't so, Muslims would not have contrived and developed Islam so that it a thorough, totalitarian mind-control ideology.

The goal of the Islamists in Iraq is to same as that of the Islamists in Nigeria, Korea, Bali, Australia, United Kingdom, E.U., and the United States and Canada, as well as in the hearts of every single Muslim, living and dead: to create a world free of all other belief systems, making Islam triumphant regardless of the desires and beliefs of other human beings.

Islam must defeat those that champion freedom in Iraq even if they must kill every single Iraqi man, woman, and child. Even if they must raze every building, destroy every oil well, or turn over the sands of the deserts in their spite and vengeance in order to destroy any vestige of resistance to Islam and Sha’ria that might exist within the hearts of even one Iraqi. Such is their vehemence of their rage against freedom of thought. Why else would they have tortured and executed fifty Iraqi soldiers of the new force?

As America is attempting to help Iraqis to determine their own futures, free from an enslaving Sha'ria, all things American, including those acting there to alleviate the suffering of decades under Saddam's brutality, must be destroyed in such a manner as to demonstrate that resistance to Islam is not only futile but deserving of a death accompanied by horror and true pain and suffering .

Will there be anything left of Iraq besides ashes once the Jihadists have their way? Perhaps this is the plan: to use Iraq as an object lesson, to show, as did the Romans when they plowed over Carthage with salt, that resistance to Islam will only bring total destruction. The world should note this possibility: Islam will destroy you completely if action is not taken.

Some good places to start when looking for news about Islam, thanks again to Ali Dashti and Jihad Watch

Jihad Watch: Al-Qa'ida Internet Magazine Sawt Al-Jihad Calls to Intensify Fighting During Ramadan- 'the Month of Jihad'


Some good places to start when looking for news about Islam:

http://www.apostatesofislam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=661

http://news.yahoo.com/

http://news.google.com/

http://edition.cnn.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

http://www.foxnews.com/

http://www.alertnet.org/

http://www.reuters.com/

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/world/

http://www.voanews.com/

http://www.insideworldnews.com/

http://news.nabou.com/world/

http://www.economist.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

http://www.time.com/

http://www.iht.com/

http://www.worldtribune.com/

http://www.topix.net/religion/islam

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Islamic+News

http://islam.newstrove.com/

http://www.terrorism.com/

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/

http://www.drudgereport.com/

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/

http://www.theatlantic.com/

http://www.pressdigest.net/tocnews.html

http://www.pressdigest.org/english.html

http://www.rocketnews.com/
(Just type "Muslim" and 0 days (today), and it will search out news)

http://www.centralasianews.net/about.php
(Look for news after region or country)

Posted by: Ali Dashti at October 23, 2004 10:15 AM

Islam Is Another Way of Saying Arab Nationalism

An excellent column in Slate describes how competely the identity Muslims and Arabs are wrapped up in Islam. After all, Islam was created on the Arabian Peninsula by Arabs for Arabs. Arabs spread Islam by the sword to neighboring territories along with all things Arab.

Arabs today are seen and revered as the first among Muslims for their role in bringing Islam to mankind. Bin Laden is a Muslim commander that has been lifted up to a place of prominence because of his "Arabness," and it's not a small thing that recently Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged allegiance to him and changed the name of his group to reflect his new allegiance.

It will be well for Westerners to become familiar with the concept of Pan-Islamism. The Islamic power base was centered on the Arabian Peninsula until it was grabbed away by the Ottoman Empire. And Arabia will always be the site of the three Mosques and sacred ground.

Muslims may fight among themselves to determine the center of Muslim power, but they are united in their determination to defeat and subdue the Infidel. That's us folks! They will use any means possible. We are all aware of their violent and dark side: bombings and beheadings. Employing the tactics of taqiyya and kitman Muslims will lie, flatter, bribe, or do whatever is necessary to achieve their goal: world domination with a triumphal Islam also known as the Caliphate, and Arab Muslims will be in the driver's seat! Imagine what will happen to the cost of a barrel of oil if this comes to pass!

When you read the rest of the original Slate article, "It's an Arab Nationalist Thing," be sure to follow the interesting links for further clarification.

John Kerry Leaves a Bad Taste--Let Me Count the Ways

John Kerry leaves a bad taste. I knew of many reasons, Victor Davis Hanson eloquently and succinctly lists six of them that “have everything to do with style, character, and judgment.” Hanson’s six reasons, as a friend reminded me, have nothing to do with Kerry’s abilities as his friends and family won’t be the leader of the free world, a point to consider. To add my two cents to Hanson’s hundred dollars, we are judged by the company we keep and the old saw, “actions speak louder than words.” Kerry’s actions and words and the people that surround him now are indicative of those that would advise him in his “kitchen” or unofficial cabinet and those “foreign leaders” and their friends and colleagues that certainly would not hold the best interest of the United States as their primary concern.

My grandmother’s homespun wisdom regarding pillow talk comes to mind when thinking about the creepy Teresa Heinz Kerry, the most unlikely candidate for First Lady in almost one hundred years, in comparison to both the remarkable and the less shining examples of recent first ladies, the elegant and refined Jackie Kennedy, the motherly Barbara Bush, as well as Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, Pat Nixon, Nancy Reagan, Mamie Eisenhower, Bess Truman, the competent, though controversial Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the former school teacher-librarian, Laura Bush. Mrs. Heinz Kerry won’t be the leader of the United States, but there is no doubt in my mind that she will much to say and do about leading John Kerry if he becomes the leader. What’s more, Heinz Kerry is accustomed to getting her own way. Will it be wise to put such a headstrong individual in the halls of power to make her own mischief? I think not.

Kerry’s other choices of friends and companions give me pause. Michael Moore is not a person that is worthy to represent the United States in any function nor is the billionaire George Soros who doesn’t want a position in the government, but will be “glad to advise Kerry during his presidency.” What does the Left-winger Soros expect for those millions he shelled out to get Kerry elected as well as all those other Left-wing advisers that have pushed and pulled at his campaign and at our expense.

Will this be the year that the Left becomes triumphant in America? We hoped that with the fall of the Soviet Union we could have rid the world of all that Marxist-Leninist unpleasantness, but we were deceived. It has been transplanted to America through the willful assistance of our universities that have instilled that odious ideology into the minds of many, if not most, of our best and brightest minds. Pity that they are now spoiled for leadership in the best interest of America.

I fear that Kerry’s ascension to the American throne as leader of the Free World will unleash upon us the scourge of Leftist’ ideology that will bring down this country, weakening us in the one of the most dangerous moments in our collective history. Weakness that we can ill afford in view that there are forces that are patiently waiting in the wings with bombs and sharpened knives, ready to blow us up and dismember the residue.

Am I being overly dramatic? I think not. What the Islamists attempted to do on 9-11 will be repeated some day and could more easily succeed if we are weakened by a leader and his cabal that does not have the best interest of the United States ahead of his ambition.

ISLAM: After living in freedom in the West, who would want to be forced to live under totalitarian mind control?

Reading Sa'ud Bin Hamoud Al-Utaybi’s editorial certainly brings me closer to Islam knowing that Islamist fighters, jihadists, are striving to bring me closer to Allah. Of course I am being sarcastic. After living in freedom in the West, who would want to be forced to live under totalitarian mind control? Inviting Islam into our lives is equivalent to inviting Hitler's Brownshirts and all the others of the Nazi apparatus to inform and guide our lives.

Islamism and Nazism are the same in spirit and have the same goal: world domination. As Nazis used terror against European Jews and others in the 1930s, Islamists are using terror against the Jews and everyone else to create a climate of fear while they relentlessly dismantled European free institutions as well as in Africa and in Asia, replacing them with bureaucracies that stifled freedoms that we have traditionally enjoyed in the West.

The world and Europeans believed that they had freed themselves of Nazism forever at the end of WWII. Nazism as a political force was of course defeated, but the Nazi mentality remained behind in the minds of fringe elements of European society and in the minds of Anti-Semites, a traditional and unfortunate European mindset, as well as those that would come in contact with and be in league with North Africans and Middle Easterners, for the Nazi tradition had been transplanted to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood before Hitler’s death, and, like as the dangerous meme (mind virus) that it is, has infected the various and many Islamic resistance groups that have sprung up across today’s Muslim world.

Muslims need little to jump start them to use violence to accomplish their goal of world domination as the Koran, with its confusing collection of Sira, chapters, and “aya,” verses, and the ahadiths of the life of Mohammed give have abundant passages that exhort the Muslim to emulate the life of Mohammed, the “perfect man” that used tribalism, war and violence to spread the message of Islam. In contrast to Jesus, who preached a message of peace and non-violence, Mohammed encouraged and even exhorted Muslims to use the vehicle of war and deception to make Islam triumphant. Today extremists Muslims have gone back in time to revive the tradition of Mohammed as they have many times in the past. During thirteen hundred-fifty years, waves of Muslim aggression spread over the land, and sometimes were pushed back. Other times the invaders were successful, forcing populations to accept Allah at the point of a sword or at the prospect of living under the the condition of dhimmitude, enforced second-class citizenship.

To understand this point, non-Muslims MUST read history and procure and read these Koran, ahadiths, and other reference materials in order to form an informed opinion. Forming a correct opinion can be difficult for Islam does not permit dissent within its ranks and criticism or even questioning by non-Muslims is met with hostility, as both are capital offenses in the Muslim world. The Koran, a transcribed narrative depicting the stream of consciousness of Mohammed in conversation is confusing and difficult to understand as it is full of allusions to events of the Muslim world during the life of Mohammed, and information gleaned from the workings of Mohammed’s own mind, not the more straightforward teaching of the Torah and the Christian Bible.

Various Muslim scholars have had to interpret the even the text, and Muslims rely on these scholars to tell them what the Koran means. We all know that relying on others to tell us what something means is risky and unreliable at best as such opinions are often biased and fit an agenda. Muslims are required to read or memorize the Koran in Arabic even if they don’t understand Arabic, even if they are illiterate and can’t find out for themselves what the texts actually say. Translations of the Koran, ahadiths, and other texts, and explanations are available, but Muslims claim that they are not accurate, an absurd claim. How, then, would non-Arabic speakers and readers come to understand Islam? Muslims insist that they must take the word of Muslims that can speak and read Arabic for the inspiration.

The ahadiths are a compilation of the traditions and life of Mohammed collected and written down by various authors. “Each man has his own ahadith” speaks to their great numbers. As with sayings and events attributed to Jesus, conferences have been created to weed out those that seem less authentic. Even today there is controversy over what said and done and what it means. Today’s troubles are based on that controversy as Muslims bomb and maim each other in order to establish a dominant sect that will triumph over all other Muslims and the non-Muslim world in the name of Allah..

It is true that in the past Christians and Jews also have used war to spread and impose their faith, as we well know and as Islamists repeatedly remind us. That was then and this is now. Today’s world is far more dangerous. The spread of dangerous and lethal technologies has given extremists the power to do great harm to all mankind, not to solve the world’s problems, but to fulfill grudges and as revenge for real and perceived insults against groups and particular individuals.

Another point that is repeated is that America used atomic weapons at the end of World War II and have used nuclear weapons as a deterrent ever since. Nuclear weapons have become more than a deterrent. Our enemies see that America’s insistence that nuclear weapons not be made available for all as hypocrisy. However, America has not used nuclear weapons to spread an ideology of hate. They were used to check the totalitarian Soviets that had enslaved not only their own people but Eastern Europe and were threatening to move in on others as are the Islamists.

Today nuclear weapons are being used as potential blackmail in the hands of an apocalyptic ideology. There is no doubt in my mind that if Hitler had the bomb, he would not have used the bomb to end a war and to prevent further suffering. He would have used the bomb’s power to force us into slavery as his ideological successors, the Islamists and present-day European and American Leftists and surreptitious-Nazis, their collaborators, clearly will do.

If Islam is the “religion of peace,” why then do we find scores of influential Muslims spouting messages of hate across the Muslim world? Why aren’t they calling for Muslims to embrace peace and their non-Muslim neighbors in the spirit of brotherhood? There are Muslims that do, but it would be well to remember that for Islamists the term “peace” can’t be understood in the sense that we us it: the absence of war. For Islamists the term means “the absence of enemies.” To rid themselves of enemies, Islam requires that non-Muslims capitulate and swear allegiance to Islam whether or not they choose to adopt the faith and find themselves subdued as second-class citizens, dhimmis, with a list of prohibitions and responsibilities that would forever keep that status in front of their minds and those of their Muslims neighbors. If non-Muslims refuse to convert, or to become dhimmis, the other choice is death, for non-submission to Islam is a capital offense. For us in the West, this is no choice.

Muslims complain that the West keeps them down. The complaint is a red herring. Young Muslims are educated in the West and return home with all the knowledge and requisite skills to create viable industries to raise their standard of living. Billions of petro-dollars worth of oil have flowed into the accounts of wealthy Muslims around the world that could spend this money on creating industries and social services that would raise up the poverty-stricken millions of the world’s Muslims. Instead of improving the lives of the world’s Muslims, they choose to spend the money on themselves and on Islam, to make Islam triumphant over the world’s non-Muslims and as a vehicle for a power grab. Their leaders make the West and Israel the bad guy, a useful tool that they are using to keep the world’s Muslims agitated and focused on jihad rather than on them and on their bank accounts and lifestyles. As Iraq has shown us, there are certainly enough explosives and weapons in the Muslim world that could be used to overthrow corrupt governments if the people truly want something different.

It is obvious that the Islamists want something different and they will force the peoples of the Muslim world to want to accept extremism. The rhetoric of writers such as Sa'ud Bin Hamoud Al-Utaybi is an example of a move to create a theocracy run by clerics as if found in Iran, in their minds a “purer” and better government. The form and tone of the new society and government could go in different ways. To keep that which is created in the “purist mold,” Islam has always had checks and balances: Muslims must determine whether a thought or action is Muslim or non-Muslim through constant reflection, referring to an Imam for guidance, interminable rituals that inform and guide every aspect and imaginable behavior, last, but not least, prayer. There is nothing wrong with prayer, but being led in prayer five or six times a day and monitored attendance at services is over the top, the perfect mind-control mechanism. Extremism is Islam requires a return to the Muslim past of the Middle Ages that was super-puritanical, punitive, and invasive.

Americans experienced a similar social and religious tone to that which was developed in Europe and transplanted to America, that that created during in Colonial America a Christian totalitarianism sustained by thought and morality police and eventually died out and was replaced by modern Christian thought and expression. Puritanical Muslim societies such as Saudi Arabia and Iran have the thought and morality police today as do the Taliban that are re-emerging in Afghanistan.

Sa'ud Bin Hamoud Al-Utaybi’s editorial reflects the desire of Islamists the world over to affect world domination and the subjugation of all non-Muslims through jihad. His call may be for Middle Eastern Muslim consumption, but his words affect all of us whether we like it or not.

The Kerry Nightmare

The American Spectator

Chew on this!


The Kerry Nightmare
By William Tucker
Published 10/19/2004 12:09:28 AM


Last night I had the strangest dream. I guess it was a nightmare, really. I remember most of it, except how it ended.

First I dreamed Kerry won the election. That wasn't so bad in itself. He seemed Presidential enough for the job. He had a dignified bearing, spoke well, didn't mangle his phrases. People were weary after four years of uncertainty under George Bush and ready to try something new.

Kerry started off well. On January 22, in a burst of world optimism, he went to the U.N. and laid down his mea culpa. America had gone it alone too long, he said. We were ready to cooperate with the rest of the world. The General Assembly gave him a 15-minute standing ovation. His speech was cheered wildly in cities from Paris to Berlin to Peshawar. A new day had dawned. Peace was at hand.

The only concrete result that came out of his U.N. visit, however, was that Poland decided to accelerate its troop withdrawal, already scheduled for 2005. Other allies said that since Kerry was throwing in the towel, they were going to leave sooner than later as well. Everyone but Great Britain packed up and headed home. Meanwhile, Kerry visited France and Germany to hold long talks with President Chirac and Chancellor Schroeder. The main outcome, however, was that they told him Iraq was his problem and wished him well. Meanwhile, terrorists in Iraq stepped up their operations.

By the time President Kerry got back from Europe, things had taken a turn for the worse. Both Sunni and Shi'ite leaders announced that, despite the January election of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, both now regarded his victory as illegitimate. Democracy was a foreign system that America was trying to impose on the Muslim world. Both recommended a return to the Ummah, with religious leaders at the helm. Since each sect claimed to the rightful heirs of Mohammed, each claimed the right to the position.

The opposition became bolder. Several suicide bombers penetrated the Green Zone and American casualties started to rise. With our allies pulling out, our soldiers were also required to take over key positions in the South. Suddenly we found ourselves stretched way too thin. Rioting broke out in several cities of the Sunni Triangle.

All the pretty plans of the campaign were evaporating and President Kerry now found himself facing the basic contradiction of his position. Was Iraq the wrong war at the wrong place and the wrong time? Or were we actually undermanned? For two long weeks, Kerry mulled the problem while fierce debate was waged in Congress. Half of Kerry's constituency called for a pullout and peace demonstrations took place in New York and Washington. Many Democrats in Congress said our troops were endangered, however, and call for a draft.

Kerry solved the problem by going to the United Nations. A high level conference was arranged in Baghdad with all sides attending. A truce was called and for three weeks an international panel debated the issue. Finally, it was decided that 140,000 American troops would be given safe passage out of the country. They would leave in an orderly fashion and then Iraqis would continue to meet under U.N. supervision to decide how they would govern themselves.

Like the Indians watching the British march out of Fort William Henry, however, once the terrorists saw their enemies defeated they could not restrain themselves. Before the American soldiers had even begun to pack their bags, they were under daily attack. General fighting broke out in several cities, even as the U.N. panel continued to meet. Then a suicide bomber rammed the home of Prime Minister Allawi and killed him. The elected government collapsed. Civil war broke out between Sunni and Shi'ite militias, both claiming religious authority, while the Kurds withdrew completely, declaring their own state..

Like so many a President before him, John Kerry found himself at the mercy of events. All the pretty plans of his election campaign -- the diplomacy, the conferences with our allies -- were forgotten. Suddenly he was a commander-in-chief trying to rescue a stranded army.

Events didn't wait. Now convinced that America was abandoning the Middle East and no longer content to watch Iran develop a nuclear weapon that in two years would be able to hit Jerusalem, the Israelis sent a fleet of F-16s to drop bunker-busting weapons on three nuclear complexes at Bushehr, Natanz, and Arak. Rioting broke out in every Middle Eastern capital. Terrorists streamed into Baghdad from every direction. Syrian and Egyptian armies prepared for a retaliatory attack against Israel.

That's when I woke up.

I've been walking around in a cold sweat all day thinking about these things. But that's silly, I suppose. After all, it was only a dream. The American people couldn't possibly elect John Kerry President, could they?


{William Tucker is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator and a contributing writer to the American Enterprise.}

A Book Worth Reading

The Dawning of a New Dark Age, A Collection of Essays on Islam, by Mark Alexander (1st Books, ISBN: 1-4107-9037-1, paperback; 2003)

I thought I knew almost all of the current books (past few years) about Islam. I had not encountered this book, however, until the author alerted me to it, for which I am grateful.

After reading the book, I can recommend it enthusiastically to readers new to Islam and its dangers, but I must offer a qualification to that recommendation.

First, the writing is excellent. The author’s style flows, with great grammar and syntax as well as thought formulation and progression, i.e., he is clear and easy to follow. I would love to see more writing from him.

The book is presented as a series of short essays. One may start at any point reading these and lose absolutely nothing by skipping about, as long as one reads the entire book. If you start reading from the beginning and proceed systematically to the end, you may notice repetitions, but probably not if you dip in and out until finished.

Second, and more importantly, his grasp of Islam meets many criteria of depth and breadth. He lived in Saudi Arabia long enough to come to terms with Islam, particularly the Saudi variety (Wahhabism), and Arabs. He knows the subject well and covers almost all of the concerns people should have about Islam. There is so very much I agree with that I almost had déjà vu. Some of the 47 chapters are more appealing to me than others, but these chapters are like 47 unique facets, each giving insight to this huge problem of Islamism. Someone beginning the work of studying Islam will find valuable nuggets of information in all 47 chapters.

Anyone unfamiliar with Islam will get a terrific education, delivered quickly and painlessly. It is such an easy introduction that I would put this book into the MUST READ category for those who want to understand why Islam is a threat to American culture and values, and who want a good place to start understanding the problems Islam creates for our civilization.

Third, the author is not just pro-Western culture, but he is unabashedly pro-American. He sees with objectivity about the threat that Islam poses to our country and the entire civilized world, and he minces no words presenting his thoughts fearlessly, without concessions made to the “sensitivities” of this or that person or group or nation. I greatly admire how he identifies multiculturalism and political correctness for the evils that they are, and identifies Islam and its evils for what they are. Since he spent significant time in school in England, he speaks to how the Brits have severely endangered themselves by being so obliging to the Muslims infesting their country. He also has excellent chapters on France and Turkey.

My sole complaint is that, for all of the author’s excellent qualities, he is not philosophically-oriented; I wish so much that he was. Were he so oriented, his case against Islam could be even stronger, perhaps unassailable. He wants very much to wake people up, to shake them out of their passive unconcern, to fill their minds with good information, and to neutralize the poison of relativism, multiculturalism, and political correctness, all of which are sustained by today’s wide-spread moral uncertainty among Americans. He is looking for answers in terms of guiding principles, and he comes close to finding them.

However, he relies on Western religion as a philosophical base, particularly Christianity, rather than philosophical principles, and this perspective just does not take him as far as he obviously wants to go. Religions have values which differ from religionist to religionist, and which separate religions from a strong system of philosophy. Rational, integrated philosophical principles complete the armamentaria, and take those who hold these principles the full distance.

What religionists and non-religionists have in common is a shared vision of the incredible danger Islam poses. We also support the Constitution, which guarantees our freedom of thought and Rights of Man. We must stand united and well-armed through the discipline of philosophy rather than distracted by differences in details of various belief systems.

[We discuss the philosophical elements of Islam and dealing with it within our website, 6th Column Against Jihad.]

Otherwise, I enjoyed this book very much, and I think it offers much of value to an intelligent reader who wants a good place to start to understanding Islam.

(Review by George Mason)

YES, YES, YES--->GETTING IT RIGHT!!!! Why to Vote for President Bush, by Harry Binswanger, from Capitalism Magazine

Vote for President Bush by Harry Binswanger -- Capitalism Magazine


I have been wanting to write a solid statement about why anyone who is remotely rational should re-elect George W. Bush. Life has been throwing many balls for this "juggler" right now, and I might not get to it until it is moot. Thankfully, Harry Binswanger has written one of the best critiques of Bush and Kerry and drawn elegant conclusions about why to re-elect Bush.

I read Mr. Binswanger's article today in Capitalism Magazine which is right up there with Front Page Magazine as one of the best on-line magazines. I can provide other details, but I cannot improve. So, read this article--and think.

To intice you, here is the article summary:

Summary: The nature of this campaign is set, and the meaning of this election is: independence vs. dependence. The Bush policies favor America retaining its sovereignty--cooperating with allies as and when they are willing--and America on the offensive. The Kerry program favors America surrendering that independence to curry favor with the bribed French and the America-hating despots at the United Nations.

More than third of U.S. Muslims see war on Islam

More than third of U.S. Muslims see war on Islam -- The Washington Times

"More than one-third of American Muslims believe that the U.S. war on terrorism is really a war on Islam, according to survey information released yesterday by researchers at Georgetown University."

Compare that to the C.A.I.R. survey published within the past two weeks that purports that 25% of Americans regard Muslims negatively.

The Islamic apologists whine petulantly while most of the rest of the media act like they do not know how to react to these data.

To me, these two surveys mean that we are making progress.

Prior to 9-11-2004, both of these surveys would have shown tiny percentages in the same categories. Despite the events of the 1990s, Americans remained obsequiously blind to Islam and its practitioners. Now, America is catching on: While not all Muslims are terrorists, almost all terrorists are Muslims, and this is what the objective Muslims are saying (See the Middle East Media Research Institute publications).

Only now are better sorts of Muslims in America starting to stand up publicly to oppose the Islamic jihadists in theory and practice, over three years later.

Those who have overcome their own inertia and read any of the really outstanding books which tell the truth about Islam (see our recommendations on 6th Column Against Jihad), have learned that Islam is as it has always been. It has always been a philosophy of war masquerading as a religion (wolf in sheep's clothing). It preaches universal conquest and domination by Muslims against all non-Muslim peoples on the globe.

All over the world, MUSLIMS are killing, maiming, and destroying. All over the world, ISLAM'S JIHADISTS preach violent death to America and act out what they preach. WE--the USA--have been severely attacked. By Whom? By Muslims, jihadists, Islamists. WE--the USA--have had to war against these sand savages of the religion and philosophy of hate and nihilism.

What is behind all of this jihadic misery in the world? It is ISLAM, ISLAM, ISLAM! We-the USA--ARE at war with Islam, and only the cowardly politically correct are trying to evade this fact by calling the Islamic spade a non-spade (like "radical Islam" or "hijacked Islam").

Who practices ISLAM? It is MUSLIMS. What identifies almost every terrorist infesting the world? They are MUSLIMS.

These are the facts of reality. I did not make up any of this. A is A. Things are what they are, modern academia notwithstanding.

Muslims and Islam caused this mess, and they have been teaching us to fear and hate them, and teaching us to want to destroy them. It is THEIR FAULT, not ours. We did not start this--Muhammad did, some 1400 years ago.

Muslims need to stop crying in their cups. They need to reform Islam fundamentally, subordinating Islamic might to the Rights of Man. If necessary, they must destroy Islam, if it cannot be modernized. As it is, it is a deadly philosophy totally on a par with Nazism in principles and actions. American Muslims need to break up living on "reservations," and assimilate. And, while doing it, stand up for America, loudly and proudly and stop actively and passively supporting its destruction.

These figures of 38% and 25% are too low, but they represent progress. If Muslims do not heal themselves, these numbers must increase until we reach critical mass which will force Islam into the existential choice of REFORM or PERISH.

FIFTH COLUMN AT WORK: Disgusting Duke University

WorldNetDaily: Terror-harboring group recruits students at Duke
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40973, Monday, October 18, 2004,by Aaron Klein.

To begin appreciating how morally ugly is the event and its university sponsor are, start with the by-line:

HOMELAND INSECURITY
Terror-harboring group recruits students at Duke
University hosts organization that supports violent jihad operations

Then add, "Speakers at a controversial Duke University Palestinian solidarity conference, which concluded yesterday, recruited students to join a terrorist-harboring organization..."

Those who presented "...[W]ould not state their last names."

Some people, retaining sanity, went as spies and reported:

"This workshop, just as its title suggests, functioned as a recruiting session for the ISM, and ISM brochures and materials were distributed there," the Conservative Union member told WorldNetDaily.

Try these paragraphs on for size:

The conference at Duke was PSM's fourth national gathering, following previous events at Berkeley, Michigan and Ohio State. Some PSM critics have charged that those earlier events were hotbeds of anti-Semitism, with some attendees
shouting, "Kill the Jews," and "Death to Israel!"

As WorldNetDaily reported, this year's conference featured a host of other speakers who publicly support suicide bombings, including Fadi Kiblawi, who advocates killing Jews everywhere. He wrote in a University of Michigan publication of his desire to
"strap a bomb to one's chest and kill those racists ... The enemy is not just overseas. The enemy is also amongst us."

Typical of liberals, the President and administration of Duke either pleaded ignorance or proudly proclaimed that they could take no stand.

Some people have nutsy ideas about what constitutes "tolerance." Our Constitution provides for people to speak freely without governmental interference. It does not provide for the "right to be heard." Furthermore, Duke is a private university, so is even farther removed from governmental intervention. As someone said, the protections of the Constitution are not to become a "SUICIDE PACT."

Once some one or some group declares itself enough for its guiding principles and practices to be defined, tolerance stops when you find those principles and practices are aimed at the annihilation of you, your values, and the values of civilization. Once diagnosable as irrational, tolerance of a person or a group must end, in the name of reason, reality, and ethics based on these. If you do not end it, you become part of the problem rather than the solution.

Duke should be chastised and punished. The best people to do are its alumni, by ending donations and withdrawing all sanctions until the administration gets its principles screwed on correctly and vows never to repeat this or participate in other conferences with murderers. The rest of us should email and write letters to Duke, and publish blogs and articles which expose its behavior.

Websites by Ex-Muslims

Jihad Watch: Islam: A Totalitarian Ideology?


So much material is flowing in to be read and digested, and so many existential commitments are competing that we're in a bottleneck preparing and publishing blog material. However, this is a quick one but an excellent one.

Jihad Watch presents not only highly relevant articles from all over the globe in this war with Islam. If you are not going there daily, you are missing great stuff. Commentors add to articles, and some of these commentors are just outstanding. One is Ali Dashti.

Today, Ali Dashti has republished some links you might want to copy and refer to from time to time.

As always, the old list of websites by ex-Muslims:

http://www.secularislam.org/

http://www.faithfreedom.org/

http://www.middleastwomen.org/

http://www.apostatesofislam.com/

http://www.mukto-mona.com/

http://www.homa.org/

http://www.ladeeni.net/english.htm

http://taslimanasrin.com/

http://www.muslimsandislamic.faithweb.com/

http://www.geocities.com/freethoughtmecca/

http://exmuslim.com/

http://www.islamreview.org/

http://www.shoebat.com/

http://www.noniedarwish.com/

http://www.murtadd.org/

http://www.webspawner.com/users/hfali1/

http://www.knowislam.info/

http://www.geocities.com/ibn_rushd2

http://www.ampbreia.com/


Posted by: Ali Dashti at October 18, 2004 09:40 AM

New Material on 6th Column Against Jihad Website

We are pleased to announce that we have added new material to our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, which is the companion site to this blog. Cubed has published Part II of her series on the role of American education as fifth column to the jihad--specifically in this part II, the History of American Education. We invite you to visit the site, and--if you would like to contribute something--please contact us at 6thcolumn@6thcolumnagainstjihad.com.

Hitler's Iraq

Hitler's Iraq, by Grant Jones, FrontPageMagazine.com, October 14, 2004.

Scratch a Nazi, find an Islamist. Scratch an Islamist, find a Nazi. Islam is much older than Nazism, but it is entirely sympatico with it. As Craig Winn points out in his recent book, Prophet of Doom, Hitler found Muhammad, Mohammedism, Islam entrancing, and he learned much from Islam. Likewise, the rise of Nazism was heralded with great favor in the Middle East, and it is still popular among Islamists.

Apologists will indicate that this article by Grant Jones addresses only the politics of the Ba'ath Party and its affection for Nazism and says little to nothing about Islam. Included in this effort to fog the issues, American lefties will echo the same. It is not true about this terrific article, and, besides, history makes liars of them all. Islam and politics are fused, as many have pointed out, including us in 6th Column Against Jihad. Islam and language are fused. Islam and culture are fused. "Secular" over there does not mean secular as we use it. Where do these secular dictators get their ideas, after all?

This article is as refreshing as it is well-written. I love it when someone tells the truth without a filter as does the author of this article: "Actually, those that are trying to re-establish the secular Baath dictatorship, or its Islamist equivalent, are pure evil."

Jones nails the situation over there with:

It is not surprising that both the secular Fascists of Syria and the medieval theocrats of Iran and Al Qaeda should unite in attacking those that would bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East. Nihilists united in hate recognize their common ambitions and enemies. Their purpose is to destroy what chance there is for democracy in Iraq, after which they will fight it out for power. A classic example of nihilists uniting to destroy freedom is the Enabling Act passed by the German Reichstag on 23 March 1933. This act made Hitler dictator of Germany by a vote of 444 to 84. On the surface it seems peculiar that Communists delegates would vote for such a measure along with the Nazis. But only on the surface, the Nazis and Communists were just two different gangs with a common enemy, the first democracy Germany ever had, the Weimar Republic.

Why is the Middle East the basket case of the world? Islam. Why is Islam so destructive? It, like our overglorified left in America, is nihilism.

Brownshirts on the March

Brownshirts on the March,Reprinted from NewsMax.com, Phil Brennan, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2004

This article speaks for itself.

To Kerry supporters: Be careful what you ask for.

They were the thugs Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) used in their drive to power: beating up opponents; destroying polling booths; driving off opposition party voters at the polls; stealing ballot boxes; attacking and trashing opposition party headquarters; and generally brutalizing anybody who dared to oppose their beloved fuehrer.

The SA, or Sturmabteilung, also called 'Brownshirts' were Nazi terrorists in uniform dedicated to intimidating and brutalizing any groups or individuals who stood in their way.

They are of course long since dead, most having been butchered by Hitler's new corps of thugs, the SS, after the SA had outlived their usefulness.

In this election year of 2004 we are witnessing a rebirth of the same kind of political thuggery, this time acting in behalf of the National Socialist Democrat Abortion Party (the new NSDAP).

Consider: "Protesters ransack a Bush campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida," wrote Wednesday on the Web columnist Kim Weissman. "Bush campaign workers are assaulted in Miami. Shots are fired into Bush campaign offices in Knoxville, Tennessee and Huntington, West Virginia. Republican headquarters in Bozeman, Montana are vandalized, for the second time in a week. The window of the Bush campaign headquarters in Bellevue, Washington is smashed, the office burglarized and computers containing campaign plans are stolen; cars with Bush bumper stickers are vandalized and campaign signs are painted with swastikas and burned."

This kind of unrestrained thuggery is going on all across the nation, and the thugs are all supporters of the new NSDAP - all of them acolytes of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, no matter how loudly the Democratic candidates disavow them.

Wrote Kim: "Scenes such as these used to be the stuff of evening news reports about elections in foreign nations struggling to achieve liberty and representative government; but thanks to the unending torrent of hatred spewed by Democrats and leftists and magnified by the media, these events are now taking place in our own neighborhoods."

Think about it - the mainstream media elite has not bothered to report on this widespread organized brutality. Imagine what their reaction would be if it was being carried out by supporters of George Bush and his Republican colleagues.

Kim Weissman put it this way:

"If such criminal violence had been directed against Kerry campaign offices and workers, the media would be in full-throated hysteria, Democrats would be screaming "hate crimes" and demanding investigations by the Justice Department, and they would also probably seek to involve the U.N. Civil Rights Commission, claiming this to be an organized civil rights violation designed to inhibit voter turnout (with more faith in non-democratic foreign organizations than in their own countrymen, Democrats have already succeeded in getting international monitors to supervise our upcoming election)."

Writing in National Review Online Stanley Kurtz revealed incidences of NSDAP neighborhood terrorism. "Plenty of folks told me that their cars had been keyed, dented, or had windows smashed in for carrying a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. Nasty notes left on the windshield are common. And some drivers get cut off in traffic and flipped off by cars sporting Kerry bumper stickers. One fellow said a couple of young guys pulled up next to his 64-year-old mother's car and signaled her to roll the window down. When she did, they screamed, "Bush is a F***ing MORON!"

"Apparently, Bush-Cheney cars are routinely keyed in places like liberal Seattle. And liberal Bethesda, Md., has reportedly seen a rash of spray-paintings of Bush yard signs (with Kerry signs left intact). One pro-Bush family in liberal West L.A. had its yard sign stolen six times. Theft, spray paint, or just tearing to shreds are the weapons of choice against yard signs, but one Bush-Cheney sign was actually set on fire. Even in conservative Idaho, Bush-Cheney cars get keyed. And in conservative Houston, parking while visiting a friend in the liberal midtown section can mean a keyed car. Apparently, these attacks are so common that you can now buy a T-Shirt with a picture of a slashed-out Bush/Cheney logo and the legend, "A person of tolerance and diversity keyed my car."

At the root of all this is the almost total domination of the Democratic party by self-proclaimed "progressives," a code word for socialists once used by the members of Moscow's subservient American communist party to identify each other.

No matter how you describe it, Socialism is a coercive ideology that cannot survive without ultimately resorting to force to enforce its totalitarian doctrines.

Violence is socialism's ultimate weapon.

In its name, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by such socialist regimes as the Soviet Union, the Chinese communist government, Castro's Cuba and Hitler's National Socialist (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - NAZI) party among others.

In their eyes, anyone opposing socialism is an enemy of progress and must be dealt with accordingly. The stronger the opposition the stronger must be the measures against it.

Mr. Kerry and his kewpie doll running mate would deny that they are socialists, but one quick look at their programs, or as Kerry puts it, their "plans," and you see they have got Karl Marx written all over them.

Their catalogue of plans is a litany of government programs. Individual businesses small and large do not provide jobs - in their administration they will (note how Saddam's socialist Ba'athist party did it - 60 percent of the working people of Iraq worked for the government).

You name it - health care, education, scientific research - no matter what the issue, their plan calls for the government to handle it. That sort of thing has a name - it's called socialism. It starts out as socialism lite. But it has been truly said that when you go socialist you have to go all the way - you can never be half-socialist any more than you can be half-pregnant. And history shows that sooner or later socialism lite becomes socialism heavy.

The Brownshirts are on the march, and the banner they carry is a Kerry/Edwards campaign poster - and that tells us plenty about what the new NSDAP is all about.

Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist who writes for NewsMax.com. He is editor & publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www.pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

He can be reached at phil@newsmax.com


102

The Arab Mind Revisited

The Arab Mind Revisited - Middle East Quarterly , This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/636; The Arab Mind Revisited, by Norvell B. De Atkine, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004.

One of the finest books I have encountered in general, but in specific, about how the Arab-Islamic mind works is The Arab Mind by Dr. Raphael Patai. It is one of the most important books to read, reread, and study by anyone who wants to understand how active and passive jihadists think and behave, as well as moderates in the Middle East who are steeped in the same cultural molding coming from the fusion of arabic language and Islam. Recently, I reviewed this book on our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, in order to bring its incredible importance to the attention of those who would understand Islamists below any superficial level.

You know that this book is valuable because of those who attack it and how they attack it, as outlined in this excellent article from the summer 2004, The Middle East Quarterly. See the third and fourth italicized paragraphs.

Please read this article, then check our site review. Hopefully, these will entice you to read the seminal work by Dr. Patai.

Editors' preface: In the spring of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal drove headlines in the United States and the Middle East. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote a report in The New Yorker, entitled "The Gray Zone," describing the abuse of prisoners as the outcome of a deliberate policy. Hersh also made reference to a book, The Arab Mind, by the cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai (1910-96):

The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was The Arab Mind, a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression.… The Patai book, an academic told me, was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—"one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation."[1]

This mention of Patai's book (on the sole authority of "an academic [who] told me") sent journalists scurrying to read it—and denounce it. Brian Whitaker, writing in The Guardian, called it a "classic case of orientalism which, by focusing on what Edward Said called the ‘otherness' of Arab culture, sets up barriers that can then be exploited for political purposes." He quoted an academic as saying, "The best use for this volume, if any, is for a doorstop."[2] Ann Marlowe, in Salon.com, called it "a smear job masquerading under the merest veneer of civility."[3] Louis Werner, in Al-Ahram Weekly and elsewhere, embellished Hersh's account with a made-up detail: The Arab Mind, he wrote, "was apparently used as a field manual by U.S. Army Intelligence in Abu Ghraib prison."[4] (Hersh made no such claim.) Only Lee Smith, writing in Slate.com, suggested that critics had misread Patai, whom he described as "a keen and sympathetic observer of Arab society," a "popularizer of difficult ideas, and also a serious scholar."[5]

No one took the trouble to crosscheck Hersh's academic source on the supposed influence of Patai's book as the "frequently cited … ‘bible of the neocons.'" A more accurate description of The Arab Mind would be a prohibited book. Edward Said had denounced Patai twenty-five years earlier, in Orientalism;[6] in academe, The Arab Mind long ago entered the list of disapproved texts. It was easy to point an accusing finger at the book (again). Patai himself was also a convenient target. A Hungarian-born Jew and lifelong Zionist, he lived in British-mandated Palestine from 1933 to 1947, and in 1936, earned the first doctorate ever awarded by the Hebrew University. He edited Theodor Herzl's complete diaries and served as the first president of the American Friends of Tel Aviv University. For many antiwar conspiracy theorists, the idea of someone like Patai as intellectual father of the Abu Ghraib scandal proved irresistible.

The only concrete evidence for the book's use in any branch of government appeared in the foreword to the most recent reprint (2002) of The Arab Mind, by Col. (res.) Norvell B. De Atkine, an instructor in Middle East studies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School. De Atkine wrote that he assigned the book to military personnel in his own courses because students found its cultural insights useful in explaining behavior they encountered on assignment.

While critics skimmed Patai's book for generalizing quotes, they skirted the book's premise, as restated by De Atkine: culture matters and cultures differ. The realization by Americans that culture counts explains the commercial success of several cultural handbooks, addressing the very issues that concerned Patai.[7] And while there is no reason to believe that The Arab Mind had the specific influence Hersh attributed to it, the resulting publicity has sent its sales soaring, further extending the life of the book.

The following is De Atkine's foreword to The Arab Mind, reprinted here in full.

Incurable Romanticism
It is a particular pleasure to write a foreword to this much-needed reprint of Raphael Patai's classic analysis of Arab culture and society. In view of the events of 2001—including another bloody year of heightened conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and the horrendous terrorist assault on the United States on September 11—there is a critical need to bring this seminal study of the modal Arab personality to the attention of policymakers, scholars, and the general public.

In the wake of the September 11 attack, there was a torrent of commentary on "why" such an assault took place, and on the motivation and mindset of the terrorists. Much of this commentary was either ill-informed or agenda-driven. A number of U.S. Middle East scholars attributed the attack to a simple matter of imbalance in the American approach to the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict. This facile explanation did nothing to improve the credibility of the community of Middle East scholars in the United States, already much diminished by their misreading of the Arab world and their reaction to the U.S. response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

To begin a process of understanding the seemingly irrational hatred that motivated the World Trade Center attackers, one must understand the social and cultural environment in which they lived and the modal personality traits that make them susceptible to engaging in terrorist actions. This book does a great deal to further that understanding. In fact, it is essential reading. At the institution where I teach military officers, The Arab Mind forms the basis of my cultural instruction, complemented by my own experiences of some twenty-five years living in, studying, or teaching about the Middle East.

Raphael Patai prefaces his 1973 edition of The Arab Mind with the sentence, "When it comes to the Arabs, I must admit to an incurable romanticism." So it is with me. I first became interested in the Arab world in an elective course at the United States Military Academy many years ago, and my military career thereafter was divided between assignments with regular army artillery units and tours in the Middle East. It was during my preparatory study at the American University of Beirut that I was introduced to the writings of Raphael Patai. In a sociology class we used his book, Golden River to Golden Road: Society, Culture and Change in the Middle East.[8] Since that time, I have read a number of his books and admired his careful scholarship, lucid writing style, and empathetic approach to his subject matter.

Over the past twelve years, I have also briefed hundreds of military teams being deployed to the Middle East. When returning from the Middle East, my students, as well as the members of these teams, invariably comment on the paramount usefulness of the cultural instruction in their assignments. In doing so they validate the analysis and descriptions offered by Raphael Patai.

The officers returning from the Arab world describe the cultural barriers they encounter as by far the most difficult to navigate, far beyond those of political perceptions. Thinking back on it, I recall many occasions on which I was perplexed by actions or behavior on the part of my Arab hosts—actions and behavior that would have been perfectly understandable had I read The Arab Mind. I have hence emphasized to my students that there must be a combination of observation and study to begin a process of understanding another culture. Simply observing a culture through the prism of our own beliefs and cultural worldview leads to many misconceptions. More often than not, this results in a form of cultural shock that can be totally debilitating to a foreigner working with Arabs. Less common, but equally non-productive, is the soldier who becomes caught up in a culture he views as idyllic and "goes native." Inevitably there will come a time (usually during a political crisis) when the cultural chasm will force unpleasant reality to resurface.

Mines and Warts
In writing about a culture, one must tread a sensibility minefield, and none is more treacherous than that of the Middle East. In pursuit of intellectual honesty and a true-to-life depiction of a people, some less-than-appealing traits will surface. All cultures and peoples have their warts. One trait I have observed in Arab society—which has become more pronounced over the years—is an extreme sensitivity to any critical depiction of Arab culture, no matter how gently the adverse factors are presented. In his postscript to the 1983 edition of The Arab Mind, Patai mentions a spate of self-critical assessments of Arab society by Arab intellectuals in the wake of the "new Arab" said to have emerged after the 1973 war; but this tendency to self-criticize proved to be illusory. While we in the United States constantly criticize our society and leadership, similar introspection is rarely seen in the Arab world today. When criticism is voiced, it is usually in terms of a condemnation of Arab acceptance of some aspect of Western culture. Criticism also often emanates from outside the Arab region and, despite the so-called globalization of communication, only the elite have access to it. This is particularly true when political systems or ideology are discussed.

In no small way, this tendency has led to the current state of affairs in the Arab world. For this reason, as well as the fact that Patai was not an Arab, some scholars are dismissive of The Arab Mind, terming it stereotyped in its portrayal of Arab personality traits. In part, this stems from the postmodernist philosophy of a recent generation of scholars who have been inculcated with the currently fashionable idea of cultural and moral relativism. Much of the American political science writing on the Middle East today is jargon- and agenda-laden, bordering on the indecipherable. A fixation on race, class, and gender has had a destructive effect on Middle East scholarship. It is a real task to find suitable recent texts that are scholarly and sound in content, but also readable.

In fact, some of the best and most useful writing on the Arab world has been by outsiders, mostly Europeans, especially the French and British. Many of the best and most illuminating works were written decades ago. The idea that outsiders cannot assess another culture is patently foolish. The best study done on American society—to take one famous example—was written some 160 years ago by the French visitor, Alexis de Tocqueville, and it still holds mostly true today.

The empathy and warmth of Raphael Patai toward the Arab people are evident throughout this book. There is neither animus nor rancor nor condescension. Arabs are portrayed as people who, like all people, have virtues and vices. Patai's description of his relationship with the Jerusalem sheikh, Ahmad Fakhr al-Khatib, is indicative of the esteem in which he held his Arab friends. It is a lamentable fact that friendships such as this one would be almost impossible to conceive of at the present time.

Along with his empathy for and understanding of Arab culture, Patai has a powerfully keen faculty for observation. In a passage in his autobiographical Journeyman in Jerusalem,[9] he describes in minute detail an Arab date juice vendor and the way he dispenses his juice. It is this ability to observe and appreciate detail that enables Patai to grasp the significance of the gestures, nuances of speech, and behavior patterns of Arabs. To most Americans, the subtlety of Arab culture is bewildering and incomprehensible. Yet, if one is to work productively in the region, one must have an understanding of these cultural traits.

It might legitimately be asked how well Patai's analysis bears up in today's world. After all, it has been about thirty years since the majority of The Arab Mind was written. The short answer is that it has not aged at all. The analysis is just as prescient and on-the-mark now as on the day it was written. One could even make the argument that, in fact, many of the traits described have become more pronounced. For instance, Islamist demagogues have skillfully used the lure of the Arabic language, so carefully explained by Patai as a powerful motivator, to galvanize the streets in this era of the Islamic revival, in a way even the great orator Abdul Nasser could not achieve.

Blustery Arabic
Patai devoted a large portion of this book to the Arabic language, its powerful appeal, as well as its inhibiting effects. The proneness to exaggeration he describes was amply displayed in the Gulf war by the exhortations of Saddam Hussein to the Arabs in the "mother of all battles." This penchant for rhetoric and use of hyperbole were a feature of the Arab press during the war. The ferocity of the Arab depiction of Iraqi prowess had American experts convinced that there would be thousands of American casualties. Even when the war was turning into a humiliating rout, the "Arab street" was loath to accept this reality as fact.

More recently, the same pattern has been seen in the Arab adoption of Osama bin Laden as a new Saladin who, with insulting and derogatory language in his description of American martial qualities, conveyed a sense of invincibility and power that has subsequently been shown to be largely imaginary. Saddam Hussein used similar bluster prior to the 1990 Gulf war. Patai traces this custom, which continues to the present era, back to pre-Islamic days. It is also an apt example of the Arab tendency to substitute words for action and a desired outcome for a less palatable reality, or to indulge in wishful thinking—all of which are reflected in the numerous historical examples Patai provides. This tendency, combined with Arabs' predilection to idealize their own history, always in reference to some mythic or heroic era, has present-day implications. Thus the American incursion into the Gulf in 1990 became the seventh crusade and was frequently referred to as another Western and Christian attempt to occupy the Holy Land of Islam—a belief galvanizing the current crop of Middle Eastern terrorists. Meanwhile, Israel is frequently referred to as a "crusader state."

Patai's discussion of the duality of Arab society, and of the proclivity for intra-Arab conflict, continues to be revalidated in each decade. The Arab-against-Arab division in the 1990 Gulf war is but one example of a continuing Arab condition. Juxtaposed against the ideal of Arab unity is the present reality of twenty-two divided states, each with the self-interest of its ruling family or elite group paramount in policy decisions. In the 1960s, it was the "progressive states" versus the "reactionary states," which pitted Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Libya against Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco. Today it is secular forces versus the Islamists, a conflict to one degree or another being played out in every Arab state.

Even when facing a common enemy—usually Israel in this era, but also Iran or Turkey—mutual distrust and intra-Arab hostility prevail. In the Iraqi-Iranian war, for example, Arab support was generally limited to financial help—with provisions for repayment, as the angry Saddam Hussein learned after the war. In [1998], when Turkey threatened Syria with armed conflict if the leader of the nationalistic Kurdish movement in Turkey continued to be supported by Syria, it was very clear that Syria would find itself standing alone. Thus the Asad regime was forced to make a humiliating submission to Turkish demands. Perhaps the most telling validation of Patai's insight into the conflictual nature of Arab society relates to the Palestinians. While their conflict with Israel has been a bloody one over the years, it cannot approach the level of death and destruction incurred in Palestinian wars against Lebanese, Syrians, and Jordanians. Despite this great violence, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict retains its place as the primary galvanizing issue for the "Arab street."

Sinister West
Perhaps the section of this book most relevant to today's political and social environment is the chapter on the psychology of Westernization. After centuries of certitude that their civilization was superior—a belief evolving from the very poor impression the European crusaders made on the Arabs and fully justified by the reality—the Arab self-image was rudely shattered by the easy French conquest of Egypt in 1798. A declining Middle East had been far surpassed by a revitalized Europe. The initial shock among the Arab elite was followed by a period of limited emulation, at least in the form of Western political and social values.

As the Western political hold on the Arabs receded, Western cultural influence increased, which in many ways was even more irritating to the Arab elite—particularly in terms of the technology invasion that at every level was a daily reminder of the inability of the Middle East to compete. Patai's assessment of the Arab view of technology has been amply supported over the last decades. Clearly enthusiastic users of technology, particularly in war weaponry, the Arabs nevertheless remain a lagging producer of technology. Partially, as Patai demonstrates, this is a reaction to the "jinn" (devil) of Western culture as it appears to the Arab of the twenty-first century. While recognizing the superiority of Western technology, the traditional Arab sees Western culture as destructive to his way of life; hence the ever-present battle between modernity and modernism: Can a society modernize without the secular lifestyle that appears to accompany the process? Adherents of the Islamist ideology, espousing a politicized, radical Islam, see no contradiction between a seventh-century theocracy and twenty-first century technology and would answer yes; however, history does not support such a view in the Middle Eastern context. As a Muslim coworker put it, "We want your TV sets but not your programs, your VCRs but not your movies." This will be the battleground of every Arab nation for the coming generation.

In his section on the "sinister West," Patai gets to the heart of the burning hatred that seems to drive brutal acts of terrorism against Americans. Despite its lack of a colonial past in the Middle East, America, as the most powerful representative of the "West," has inherited primary enemy status, in place of the French and British. Patai points out the Arabs' tendency to blame others for the problems evident in their political systems, quality of life, and economic power. The Arab media and Arab intellectuals, invoking the staple mantras against colonialism, Zionism, and imperialism, provide convenient outside culprits for every corrupt or dysfunctional system or event in the Arab world. Moreover, this is often magnified and supported by a number of the newer generation of Western scholars inculcated with Marxist teaching who, unwittingly perhaps, help Arab intellectuals to avoid ever having to come to grips with the very real domestic issues that must be confronted. The Arab world combines a rejection of Western values with a penchant for carrying around historical baggage of doubtful utility. At the same time, there is a simplistic, if understandable, yearning for return to a more glorious and pristine past that would enable the Arabs once again to confront the West on equal terms. This particular belief has found many Arab adherents in the past decade.

Patai also delves into the extremely sensitive issue of the nature of Islam in a particularly prescient manner. He views the fatalistic element inherit in Islam as an important factor in providing great strength to Muslims in times of stress or tragedy; in normal or better times, however, it acts as an impediment. Given their pervasive belief that God provides and disposes of all human activity, Muslims tend to reject the Western concept of man creating his own environment as an intrusion on God's realm. This includes any attempt to change God's plan for the fate of the individual. Certainly one can point to numerous exceptions. But, having worked for long periods with Arab military units, I can attest to their often cavalier attitude toward safety precautions, perhaps reflecting a Qur'anic saying, heard in various forms, that "death will overtake you even if you be inside a fortress." Just observing how few Arabs use seat belts in their automobiles can be a revelation. This manifestation of Arab fatalism is often misconstrued as a lesser value put on human life.

In the all-important area of Muslim relations with other religions, Patai sums up the differences between Christianity and Islam as being functional, not doctrinal. The proponents of fundamentalist Islam do not fear Christianity. They fear that Westernization will "bring about a reduction of the function of Islam to the modest level on which Christianity plays its role in the Western world." The quarrel is not so much with Christianity—which most Muslims see as a weak religion of diminishing importance—as with the secularism that has replaced it. Frequently in the Arab world one hears references to the [singer] "Madonna" culture and its manifestations of drugs and sexual promiscuity. Today, while Western military power has become much less of a threat, the inroads made by Western cultural values have become more of one.

My special area of interest has been the impact of culture on military structure, strategy, and operations,[10] and in this regard the assessments of Patai, although not aimed at this area, are particularly informative. As he wrote, "despite the adoption of Western weaponry, military methods, and war aims, both the leaders and the people have kept alive old Arab traditions." The observations and studies of military specialists continue to support his conclusion. The Arab military establishment's ineffectiveness in the past century has never been a matter of lack of courage or intelligence. Rather, it has been a consequence of a pervasive cultural and political environment that stifles the development of initiative, independent thinking, and innovation. This has been commented on by a number of Middle East specialists, both Arab and non-Arab, but none explains it as well as Patai, who suggests that Arabs conform not to an individualistic, inner-directed standard but rather to a standard established and maintained rigidly within Arab society. As I noticed among the officers with whom I worked, there was a real reluctance to "get out front." The distrust of the military's loyalty to the regime reinforces a military system in which a young, charismatic officer with innovative ideas will be identified as a future threat to be carefully monitored by the ubiquitous security agencies.

Family Cohesion
Patai also carefully illuminates the many virtues of Arab society. The hospitality, generosity, and depth of personal friendships common in the Arab world are rarely encountered in our more frenetic society. The Arab sense of honor and of obligation to the family—especially to the family's old and young members—can be contrasted to the frequently dysfunctional family life found in our own country. Within Arab culture, old people are seen as a foundation for family cohesion, and children are welcomed as gifts from God rather than as burdens. Daughters—who traditionally are valued less than sons—remain the responsibility of their families, carrying their honor even after marriage (and it is this sense of family cohesion and honor that, in its negative aspect, results in the restrictions and controls placed on women). The idea that the state should bear responsibility for the welfare of their family would be considered insulting to most Arabs.

Finally, in his 1983 edition, Patai takes an optimistic view of the future of the Arab world but adds a caveat to his prediction with the comment that this could happen "only if the Arabs can rid themselves of their obsession with and hatred of Zionism, Israel, and American imperialism." In the eighteen years since those words were written, none of these obsessions has been put to rest. In fact, they have increased. The imported 1960s and 1970s Western ideologies of Marxism and socialism have given way to Islamism, a synthesis of Western-style totalitarianism and superficial Islamic teachings, which has resurrected historical mythology and revitalized an amorphous but palpable hatred of the Western "jinns." Nevertheless, many astute observers of the Arab world see the so-called "Islamic revival" with its attendant pathologies as cresting and beginning to recede.

Ultimately, the Arabs, who are an immensely determined and adaptable people, will produce leadership capable of freeing them from ideological and political bondage, and this will allow them to achieve their rightful place in the world.

Col. Norvell B. De Atkine (ret.) served eight years in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt (in addition to extensive combat service in Vietnam). A West Pointer, he holds a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut. He teaches at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The opinions expressed here are strictly his own. Reprinted from The Arab Mind (Hatherleigh Press, 2002), by permission, all rights reserved.

[1] Seymour Hersh, "The Gray Zone," The New Yorker, May 24, 2004.
[2] The Guardian (London), May 24, 2004. This, despite the fact that Whitaker himself, a year earlier, had quoted an authoritative Arab source on "the Arab mind." As coalition forces encircled Baghdad, he wrote a piece on the "sense of humiliation" among Arabs and brought a quote from a Kuwaiti spokesman that could have come straight from Patai's book: "In the Arab world, there is a classical, traditional enemy. This traditional enemy has always been the west or the Americans. This is one vision that always existed in the Arab mind." The Guardian, Apr. 9, 2003.
[3] Ann Marlowe, "Sex, Violence, and ‘The Arab Mind,'" Salon.com, at http://www.salonmag.com/books/feature/2004/06/08/arab_mind/index_np.html.
[4] Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), July 1-7, 2004.
[5] Lee Smith, "Inside the Arab Mind," Slate.com, at http://slate.msn.com/id/2101328/.
[6] Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 308-9.
[7] Most notably, Margaret K. Nydell, Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Westerners (Yarmouth, Me.: Intercultural Press, 1996), reviewed in Middle East Quarterly, June 1997, p. 90.
[8] Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962, and subsequent editions.
[9] Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992.
[10] Norvell De Atkine, "Why Arabs Lose Wars," Middle East Quarterly, Dec. 1999, pp. 17-27.



This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/636

Three Articles Well Worth Your Time

I had been wondering what had happened to my emailings from Capitalism Magazine. It turned out that I had failed to throw a switch on Yahoo. While untangling my snafu, I found three articles I had missed, and I want to bring them to your attention.

All three were written by Objectivists, practitioners of the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

If you have not visited the sunlit universe of Ayn Rand and discovered the gorgeous depth of understanding her philosophy permits your own mind, then you have been missing intellectual satisfaction not obtainable elsewhere in the culture today. Ayn Rand was unique in history. She not only formulated a complete philosophical system, but she put it into two presentation formats. In her later years, she published many non-fiction essays which elaborated Objectivism. Prior to this, she wrote her philosophy into novels and plays which uniquely present Objectivism in an esthetic format easily and attractively absorbed by any reader new to her thoughts. My favorite over the decades has been her last novel, Atlas Shrugged. It has the most complete statement of her philosophy of her fictional works. The best single presentation of her philosophy in a crystal clear format, in a single volume, was written by her colleague Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Meridian Books, NY, 1991.

These articles present thinking you cannot easily find in the culture today.

If you are sickened by liberalism and perplexed, if not turned off, by the conservatism as practiced by the Bush administration, then John Lewis' article will utterly enlighten you:
Opposing Platonic Conservatism: A Matter of Values
by John Lewis, Ph.D. (October 5, 2004)

If you want to read a reasoned case for John Kerry, Craig Biddle provides it. I do not agree with his voting for Kerry, but I really appreciate his arguments:
Capitalist Hawk for Kerry
by Craig Biddle (October 4, 2004)

Lastly, artist Edward Cline writes about the dominance in the world of nihilism, most particularly expressed in Islam, and he puts his thoughts so clearly and so correctly.
The Nihilism of Islamifascism: Taking it Personally
by Edward Cline (October 1, 2004)

Objectivism should be and will be the philosophy of America at some time in the future. I will not live to see it flower, but I have seen it come (starting in 1965) from a maligned and discounted bag of kook ideas from kooks during Ayn Rand's life (she died in 1982) to producing two institutes devoted to the dissemination and elaboration of her ideas and a steadily growing body of new academicians in philosophy, history, business, and many other disciplines, now formally trained in Objectivism. Of all of the things I have found helpful in life, Objectivism sits atop the list. Thanks to it, I can think.

And, by the way, Ayn Rand's books have never gone out of print and still sell in the hundreds of thousands every year. Neither liberals, nor conservatives, will tell you that.

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO: Australians Re-elect Howard as Prime Minister

The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Australians Re-elect Howard as Prime Minister

Australians had the good sense to re-elect John Howard. Howard, like many Australian leaders before him, stands tall with America. As goes Howard, so goes Australia.

Australia is a diseased country. It is rife with socialism and the unAustralian mentalities that cause socialism. Once I had thought that Australia was much freer than the USA, but I was wrong. Deteriorated Australia is we are becoming if we do not purge positions of power and influence within the USA of neocomm liberalism.

I suspect that the Australian equivalent of our "red states" is a populace of reality-oriented, down to earth people, who want freedom but lack the full and proper intellectual and cultural leadership as well as lacking critical mass in voting right now. We must never abandon these people or let them stand alone. The good people of Australia are as good as the good people of America, for the same reasons.

Australia has stood bravely with us and taken the heat over and over. The better sorts of people in Australia see the Muslim immigration invasion and the fifth columnists in their political, intellectual, and journalistic circles conspiring with them to convert Australia to a fully unfree country.

Re-electing John Howard was critical for the future of Australia and America, and, for that matter, the free world. The next important election is America's, next month. It is essential that the lovers of freedom re-elect George W. Bush, for the same reason Australians re-elected John Howard.

Iraq Conundrum: What Am I Missing?

Over my morning tea came the news of two more car bombings in Iraq. As much as I detest attacks on our convoys, I get much more disturbed by reports of these car bombs going off at police academies, recruiting depots, markets and other obvious gathering places. I just cannot understand these latter car bombings.

Now, down South, where I came from, we are the people other people are supposed to feel superior to and safe about mocking because we are, as we might say, "eat up with the dumb ass." This son of the modern South, accordingly, is stuck in "Huh?" These car bombings are a real head-scratcher.

I know we aren't "nuanced," but we might deal with the civilian aspect of the problem in a simple way. We would not allow automobiles to get within two blocks of police academies, lines of recruits, crowded markets, and such. If the death-worshippers want to blow themselves and the automobile into oblivion, we'd make 'em do it where they couldn't wreak havoc.

Obviously, our solution suffers from simplicity, thus could never be worth a damn. Yet, you know, if they did it our way, civilian casualties would almost disappear, at least from car bombs going off next to civilian conclaves.

What am I missing?

OUTSTANDING MATERIAL, STARTING WITH: Jihad Watch: Akyol Still Standing for Islam - and Against Terrorism

Jihad Watch: Akyol Still Standing for Islam - and Against Terrorism, by Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, 8 October 2004.

Condensing this battle of ideas into a blog requires more time than I have right now. In fact, I think I will put it on our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, in the near future. Meanwhile, start with this article link; then follow the links from this Jihad Watch article all the way back through Robert Spencer's related articles, the initial article by Andrew Bostom in Front Page Magazine, and Bostom's followup on Jihad Watch. The responses to this point:counter-point discussion on Jihad Watch have been just about the most voluminous I have seen to any issue. These responses are rich with good information as well. The bottom line is Islam-As-It-Is versus Islam-As-I-Want-It-To-Be. This latter position wants to lie Islam into what it is not--a religion of peace. You cannot go wrong reading every word of the articles and the responses, but, in truth, it will take a while. Curl up and read.

A Moral Man Worth Our Honoring Him

"If Saving Lives Means I'm a Traitor, so Be It" , by Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, October 6, 2004

There are incredibly brave and good people in the world, people who do the right things for the right reasons. They face extinction for living their moral codes. These are great heroes, in the finest sense of all that is good in life. Only occasionally do these come to our attention. When they do, like Yunis Owaidah, we need to honor and celebrate them. The following is a wonderful article.


Yunis Owaidah is probably the only Palestinian who's not afraid to admit that he is a "collaborator" with Israel. On the contrary, the 63-year-old father of 12 even boasts of the fact that he has been collaborating with Israel since 1967.

"I've saved the lives of many innocent people," Owaidah said in an interview at his home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras el-Amud. "If saving the lives of innocent civilians means that I'm a traitor, so be it."

Thousands of Palestinians who have made similar confessions over the past three decades have been either killed or ostracized by their families and communities. The last killings occurred in Tulkarm on Monday, when two suspected collaborators in their mid-20s were executed by Fatah gunmen.

The executioners claimed that the two had confessed during interrogation to assisting Israel in hunting down and killing wanted activists. A week earlier, Fatah gunmen in Ramallah kidnapped a young man, also suspected of collaborating with Israel, as he was being escorted to court by Palestinian Authority security agents. The man's bullet-riddled body was later discovered near Al-Amari refugee camp south of Ramallah.

Oweidah, who has two wives and 46 grandchildren, has also been the target of several attempts on his life. Since the establishment of the PA in 1994, he has refrained from entering the West Bank.

"I only move around in safe areas and never leave the borders of Jerusalem," he said. "I'm wanted by the Palestinian Authority and I know that they won't waste an opportunity to kill me."

Owaidah's connections with Israel were first disclosed in the early 70s, when he helped thwart rocket attacks on the King David Hotel and the Western Wall. He is not prepared to talk about the role he played then, but says that his actions saved the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.

"The Palestinians were then planning to fire rockets at the King David to kill [former US secretary of state Henry] Kissinger, who was staying there," he said. "The other rockets were supposed to hit the Western Wall. The rockets could have easily landed on the Aksa Mosque, killing many Arabs."

Back then, Owaidah was living in the Arab neighborhood of Abu Tor. A few years after the rocket attacks were foiled, he discovered a bomb attached to the door of his house. Police sappers detonated the bomb safely.

He then decided to move to Ras el-Amud, where he purchased a small piece of land and built a new home. Most of his neighbors have since been boycotting him and his family. "Their children still refuse to play with my children," he said. "Despite that, I have decided to stay here. I don't have any plans to leave."

Owaidah, who works for a maintenance company at the Western Wall, said there was only one time when he seriously considered leaving Ras el-Amud. "In the year 2000, when [then-prime minister Ehud] Barak was talking about re-dividing Jerusalem and bringing the Palestinian Authority into the city, I started searching for a new house," he recalled. "I knew very well that I would not be able to live under Yasser Arafat or any other Arab regime."

Since the beginning of the intifada, masked gunmen have repeatedly threatened to kill Owaidah. In one incident, several shots were fired at his home from a distance, but no one was hurt. His eldest son, Sadek, was kidnapped twice to Jericho and Ramallah, but was released following heavy pressure from Israel.

"He was brutally tortured by the Palestinian security services," the father pointed out. "But they were not after him. They are trying to get to me, and this is what they told my son. They even asked him to draw a sketch of the interior of the house and where I sleep."

In his bedroom, Owaidah keeps a pistol and hundreds of bullets. "You see this pistol?" he says as he brandishes the handgun. "I will not hesitate to use it if they come to get me. I will never surrender. I will kill 10 of them before they get their hands on me."

Asked if he was afraid nevertheless, in the wake of the continued killing of suspected collaborators, Owaidah retorted: "First of all, most of these people who are being killed are innocent and were never working for the Shin Bet. Secondly, I'm not afraid because I know that Israel is protecting me. If I call the police, they will be here in less than three minutes."

Owaidah explained that he decided to work with Israel "because of the injustice we saw when we were under Jordanian rule before the 1967 war."

"When the Jews came to Jerusalem, I saw how they were treating the people in a humane way," he said. "By comparison, we had been oppressed by the Jordanians when they were here. Look how the Jews have built a modern and democratic state, and look where the Arabs still are."

Clarification

Recently a drive-by shooter attacked my 28 September 2004 blog piece. He or she objected to my calling Islamists' assault on the USA as a "religious war." I want to be sure that any reader does not make this shooter's mistake. The doctrines of the religion of Islam declare chronic war (jihad) on ALL RELIGIONS that are NOT Islam. That means that the RELIGION of Islam is attacking all other religions of the world in order to annihilate them and their adherents. If that is not religious war, what is? However, Islam goes to the farthest extreme. Islam declares war on all humans who are not Muslim. That includes people like me, an atheist. A religion, Islam, wants to annihilate or enslave me. That is religious war.

The rest of what the drive-by shooter wrote was clear only as spittle spewing vituperation. All but one statement was so unclear that I could not tell whether the writer is a liberal or an Islamist--and it has become almost impossible to tell them apart. The objector used the name "Anonymous." You can read all of the comment at the end of the 28 September 2004 blog piece.

Peering into the Arab Mind

What a Muslim Learned on Yom Kippur , by Nonie Darwish, FrontPageMagazine.com, October 5, 2004.

Understanding our jihadist enemy requires a good grasp of essentials. First, you need the facts of history as it pertains to them. Second, you need a grasp of the philosophy which shapes their culture and its members. Third, you need to understand how their minds work. On our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, we cite excellent books for the history; we also lay out the basics of Islamic philosophy in plain language; and, recently, we reviewed a masterpiece about Arab-Islamic thinking in Rapheal Patai's, The Arab Mind. Once these basics have been grasped, you start analyzing them well. This article by Nonie Darwish offers some really important information.

I want to focus on just one small aspect of the article, but it is well worth reading. She thinks well and writes well.

She states her background: "I was born a Muslim and raised in the 1950’s in Cairo, Egypt and in the Gaza strip...In 1978, I moved to the United States..."

Then she addresses one of the most serious flaws in Arab-Islamic thinking:

"A new and pleasant life in America soon opened my mind – and allowed me to look objectively at myself and my culture of origin.

"To admit one’s flaws and mistakes, to correct and repent, challenges a person of any nationality. In Muslim culture, however, it is inconceivable. To acknowledge one's shortcomings before first blaming others would bring deep shame and dishonor not only to the individual but to his or her entire family. Those who admit fault, even unintentional guilt, are regarded as foolish. If the mistake is a cultural taboo, one's reputation may be scarred for life and the perpetrator might end up brutally punished."

Islam teaches what is the key to understanding this thinking fallacy: "Evil was always out there, never in here." (Emphases mine).

In her concluding paragraph, she states: "On this tiny planet, we learn from each other every day." To which, I have to point out that Islam closes the minds of its charges early in life, and few ever make the effort to open them from childhood on. Most peoples do learn from each other. For Islamists, they learn from us how to use our industrial products as weapons against us. They want the weapons, but not the knowledge that makes industrial production possible. Thus they rigidly maintain their squalor while trying to use our products against us to reduce us to their squalor, and they hold us responsible for everything.

Expect no enduring progress from the Middle East until they begin rigorous, objective self-examination, and indentifying things for what they are, including their own role in their own misery.

Is the Tide Rising in Islamia?

Mirror.co.uk - ISLAM HAS TO SILENCE INCITERS OF TERRORISM, Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed, General Manager Of The Al-Arabiya News Channel, Sep 2, 2004.


I save stuff as I find it. This article dates to 6 September 2004, but its message overshadows any question of dated information. Reformation of the Middle East and Islam must come from the dramatis personae themselves. We cannot expect rapid change, but it starts with the intelligentsia, like Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed.

IT is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims.

The kidnappers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.

Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airplanes last week were also Muslims.

Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.

What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?

Let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing. We must cure ourselves.

Self-cure starts with self-realisation and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, the sour grapes of a deformed culture.

Let us listen to Yusuf al-Qaradawi - the Qatar-based radical Egyptian cleric - and hear him recite his "fatwa" about the religious permissibility of killing civilian Americans in Iraq.

Let us contemplate a Sheikh allowing, even calling for, the murder of civilians.

AN ailing Sheikh, in his last days, with two daughters studying in "infidel" Britain, soliciting children to kill civilians.

How can we believe him when he tells us Islam is a religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religion of blood and slaughter?

We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.

We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.

We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise - an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.

We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to send other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

- THIS article has previously appeared in the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

A Mid East American Revolution Is Coming

A Mid East American Revolution Is Coming, by Walid Phares, FrontPageMagazine.com, October 1, 2004

STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.

We may be acquiring new allies among American Muslims and peace-loving Muslims who are joining them. Yesterday, the conference we cited, spearheaded by Free Muslims Coalition Against Terrorism, took place in D.C. It looked beforehand like this would be a first, and reading Dr. Phares' article, reprinted below, certainly confirms this.

I have been wary, hoping to avoid being sucked in by some fifth columnists posing as Muslim allies of America, including being good Americans FIRST. I still am wary, but I am not closed-minded. I will follow along and examine their progress. I could not want anything more than true Americans from among these folk joining us with complete sincerity and energy. I hate thinking of Muslims, Arabs, Islamists of all varieties as hateful people who must be destroyed for us to survive. Some are, and we will proceed to provide the destruction they seek.

But, how much finer in every sense it would be to have conversations, share ideas, and even be friends with them. Were it not for unreformed Islam, we might already have that.

Read Dr. Phares' article. It gives more information than most of us knew about this conference. Then, let us stop to look and listen. Ronald Reagan's quip comes to mind about these groups: Trust, but verify. If they keep doing the right things for the right reasons, let's welcome them aboard--then, they will deserve our fullest support.


Since September 11, 2001, a major question crossed the minds of many U.S. citizens: What would make 19 men from the Middle East hate us so much that they would massacre 3,000 Americans? Every anchor in every media had this question on his or her lips for weeks and months. Intellectuals debated what went wrong in the Muslim world. Academics continued with their rumblings about the so-called root causes, classically simmering with irrational self-guilt. Americans of all walks of life wanted and still want to know about the real feelings and aspirations of the vast Arab-Islamic world.

Despite the gigantic budgets spent on Middle East Studies and international reporting for decades, particularly in the 1990s, average Joes were still swimming in unknown seas of ignorance, having been poorly educated about its history and its political culture. “Are all Arabs Muslims? Do all Muslims follow Osama bin Laden? Why do they hate America so much?” they asked.

American politicians were no better, despite their supposedly savvy advisors. “Iraqis can’t produce a democracy,” shouted the doubters. “We can’t impose our ideals on them,” argued the suddenly turned experts. Bottom line: A gigantic lack of understanding of all that is Middle Eastern has been overshadowing the national debate.

In addition, with radical organizations grabbing the power to represent the mainstream institutions of Mideast-American communities, the American perception of these Arab immigrant communities got more complicated. Years before the Mohamemd Atta massacre in Manhattan, a network of political entities rose to claim the aspirations of immigrants from the Middle East. They hijacked all representation and excluded all others from White House visits and media dramatizations. The Arabist and Islamist lobbies took over Washington’s political space initially allocated to more than 4 million Americans from all Mideast descent.

With the smoke covering the ashes of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a hillside in Pennsylvania, the temperature was rising over the “Mideast Question.” Are all peoples from that region enemies? Do we have friends among them? More pressing questions haunted the public: "What about Mideastern people living among us?" The issue became critical to most Americans as cells were dismantled, and terrorists were arrested, both inside the country and overseas. Are Jihadists infiltrating our Mideastern and Arab communities?

Unfortunately, not only have the Wahabbi lobbies been supportive of the ideologies of the perpetrators against America, but several Middle Eastern groups have acted against this nation. Dramatically, large segments of Americans started to lose trust in those originating east and south of the Mediterranean.

Mideast Americans needed to be freed from the chains of mistrust. They needed to be represented by new faces. The American public needed to hear a different message than the decades of anti-Americanism and pro-Jihadist sentiment prevalent among the aging Establishment -- which is mostly supported by totalitarians overseas.

Now, finally, after three years of hard work since the tragedy of 9/11, another face of Mideastern Americans is surging to the forefront. Slowly but surely, American groups from Mideastern descent, in disagreement with the established political elites of the 1980s and the 1990s, came to the surface. Four days after September 11, a powerful letter of support was sent by the World Lebanese Cultural Union (WLCU), a diaspora-based organization, to President Bush. "Millions of Lebanese around the world are standing with the United States against Terrorism," wrote the authors.

At a time when Washington-based Arabist groups were circulating analysis indicting America and its policies for the actions of al Qaeda, other Mideast-Americans took the fight to the public sphere. Lebanese-Americans were the first to break the wall of American Jihadism. With the longest standing historical experience in this regard, their community organizations pioneered all aspects of the efforts against Terror: translators, analysts, experts, poured into government agencies.

Next were the Chaldo-Assyrians, mostly concentrated in Chicago and Detroit, who were followed by the Copts from Egypt. These American groups had good reasons to join the campaign. For decades, their mother nationalities had been brutalized in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Then came Muslim and Arab groups who rejected the diktat of the dominant Wahabbis and Ba’athists. Shiites who have suffered under Saddam and Sunnis who have suffered under Assad felt America was wounded by the same forces of Terror, which caused them and their communities great harm.

A new wave of Muslim groups against terror appeared. Isolated and constantly intimidated by well-financed radical Islamist lobbyists and organizations, American Muslims began to gather together in smaller associations. Syrian Reformists, Lybian democrats, Yemeni intellectuals, and Palestinian dissidents declared their own entities.

As the new anti-terror Arabs struggled to affirm themselves, Iranian-Americans and Kurds came to the front of the American debate to confirm the thesis that the peoples of the Middle East "want freedom and democracy."

Meanwhile, the African side of the Mideast communities of America rose to visibility. First Southern Sudanese, followed by Mauritanian and joined by the exiles from Darfur. This tiny African American immigrant community exposed the regime of horrors in North Africa. Berbers came to witness as well. Day after day, between 2002 and 2004, a new "community" of activists made it to the national media, the US Government and finally to the edges of the global debate.

Today in the United States, thousands of Americans of Middle East descent are joining forces to answer the anxious questions of their neighbors: "Yes we are fully Americans and we feel this is our country which we love and want to defend against Terrorists," said the organizers of a historic conference to take place in Washington DC on Friday October 1, 2004. "It is time for our communities to break the silence imposed by the oil backed elite," said Tom Harb, a member of the American Lebanese Alliance, a group that co-sponsored the event. John Michael, a medical doctor from Chicago revealed that, "tens of thousands of Assyrians and Chaldeans have sided since day one with the U.S. when it decided to liberate our mother country – Iraq – from the bloody Saddam."

More than 30 organizations, from all ethnic and religious backgrounds, have been meeting and planning for what will become a "beginning for a new era in Mideast-American history" as qualified by Dr Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim activist heading the American Muslim Forum for Democracy. "The mass graves in Iraq shook off the basis of our consciousness" said Zainab al Suwajj, the courageous Arab female leading the Islamic American Congress.

Walking hand in hand with Muslim moderates, Coptic groups are raising the issue of persecution of Christians in Egypt at the hands of fundamentalists. Michael Meunir, President of US Copts said "it will be interesting to see that this new wave of Americans from Mideast descent will show the world and the fanatics that Muslims would stand by Christians when persecuted and the other way around." Moyammed Yahia from Darfur's exiled community agrees: "We saw Christians coming to our help, when we Black Muslims were massacred by the Janjaweed.”

This talk wasn't politically correct a few years ago. Now it is out in the open. Soon, it will have a national umbrella. The "Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy" will hold its sessions on this first Friday of the Fall of 2004. According to the press release issued by these organizations, "Americans of Middle Eastern descent will gather in Washington, D.C., to show their support for the efforts to defeat terrorism and radicalism and to create a free and peaceful Middle East."

The forum will include speakers from different affiliations, a mosaic never seen before in Middle Eastern America. “At these dangerous and critical times, we want to provide a forum for all Middle Eastern Americans who support the United States in the war against terror and applaud the fact that the Middle East has one less tyrant after the fall of Saddam,” said Dr. Joseph Gebaily, the Convention’s executive director. “As primary victims of the prevailing intolerance in the Middle East, we strongly support the war on terrorism and efforts to promote democracy in all nations of the Middle East.”

This convention will allow participants to exchange views and ideas with longtime veterans of the struggle against terrorism and tyranny. Despite their diverse backgrounds, the participants share a historic and deeply motivated allegiance to the United States and aspire to see a free and peaceful Middle East.

The convention includes a discussion forum from 5 to 6:30 p.m. that will address U.S. foreign policy, Iraq, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Syria’s occupation of Lebanon, the genocide in Darfur, women’s rights, and democracy. From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., the discussion will continue over dinner. A representative from the Bush administration and Members of Congress have been invited to attend. The Convention is sponsored by American associations from Arab, Kurd, Chaldo-Assyrian, Iranian, Sunni, Shia, Christian, Sudanese, Maronites, Mauritanian, Berber, Aramaic, Jewish, and other backgrounds, including:

American Islamic Congress
American Islamic Forum for Democracy
American Coptic Association
American Lebanese Alliance
American Lebanese Coordination Council
American Libyan Freedom Alliance
American Maronite Union
American Middle-East Christian Association
Assembly for Lebanon
Assyrian Academic Society
Assyrian American National Federation
Center for Islamic Pluralism
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Mauritania
Committee in Support for Referendum in Iran
Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism
Iraq America Freedom Alliance
JIMENA, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa
Kabyle Berber Movement
Kurdish Patriotic Union
Lebanese Information Center
Reform Party for Syria
Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom
Sudan-Darfur Organization
The American Coptic Association
The Saudi Institute
US Alliance for Democratic Iran
US Copts Association
Washington Kurdish Institute
Women's Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran
World Lebanese Cultural Union - USA
Forum speakers include:
Dr Ali Attar, Iraq America Freedom Alliance
Dr Najmedine Karim, President of the Washington Kurdish Institute
Farid Ghadri, Syrian Reform Party
Michael Meunir, US Copts Association
Mrs. Jila Kazeronian Women’s Forum against Fundamentalism in Iran
Elie Khawand, American Lebanese Coalition
Dr Zuhdi Jasser, American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Ali Ahmad, the Saudi Institute
Barbara Anne Ferris, Mideast American Women
Yahia Mohammed Adam, RMCE, Massaleit Community in Exile, Darfur
Jimmy Mulla, Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom
Mohammed al Jahmi, American Lybian Freedom Alliance
Kamal Nawash, President, Free Muslims Coalition Against Terrorism
Resa Bulorchi, US Alliance for a Democratic Iran
Emmanuel Benhmou, JIMENA, Jews Indigenous from the Mideast and North Africa
Dr Mohammed al Maitani, Middle East Forum for Democracy, Yemen
Mansour Kane, President, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Mauritania

Also, four heavyweight Human Rights and Democracy groups are coming to witness the speeches. They are Freedom House, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the American Anti Slavery Group and Christian Solidarity International.


The Dinner speakers include:


Ms. Zainab al-Suwaij, American Islamic Congress
Attorney Robert Dekelaita, Assyrian American National Federation
Dr Joseph Gebeiley , Director, Executive Committee of the Convention
(The author of this article)
Walid Maalouf, USAID, Public Diplomacy, Middle East Office
Senior Official representing President George Bush
US Congress Messages



In sum, the alternative voice of Middle Eastern Americans is rising. Americans and others will at last be able to bear witness to a captivating and vital moment of post 9/11 history, where Arabs of all walks of life come together to show their solidarity against terror.



Convention Information
When: Friday, October 1, 2004
Forum, 5-6:30 p.m.
Dinner, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Where: Wardman Park Marriott Hotel
2660 Woodley Road, NW, Washington, DC 20008
Email at Mideastoctober1@aol.com


Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington DC. www.walidphares.com

Kerry: Quintessential American Pragmatist

Don't be fooled by debate spit-and-polish. Kerry's mind and values are the same shambles we have come to recognize. He was as stuffed and cooked by a legion of handlers for that debate as is the turkey for Thanksgiving.

Earlier in the week, John Fonda Kerry was interviewed by Diane Sawyer for Good Morning America. Kerry spewed out a classic. When Ms. Sawyer re-asked him--in an unsuccessful effort to clarify some gobbledegook which had fallen from Kerry's mouth--if he thought going to Iraq was worthwhile, Kerry said that it all depends on how it works out: If we did well, it was worthwhile; if not, then not.

Many point to Kerry's verbal excrescences as possibly the Ninth Wonder of the World. People grounded in reality and common sense find what he says as resembling the expressions of Korsakov's Disease patients. The best-intentioned of those attribute these to his failure to be clear and stable in his positions and principles; others note Kerry's hollow moral core and his flip-flopping. And, guess what? All of them are right.

John Dewey would be proud. John Kerry is THE quintessential poster boy for that uniquely American philosophy called "Pragmatism." John Dewey spread Pragmatism throughout our educational systems, and we see its results in its progeny, which include John Kerry. Dewey's progressive education has been an outstanding success, and this success has crippled America internally and externally. John Kerry is one of the cripples.

Many people think--ERRONEOUSLY--that pragmatism means something like "being practical," i.e., not tied to unrealistic and unrealizable ideas. What a snow job modern philosophy has pulled on people to get them to think this. Given the lack of mental tools they can get from American education, it is a wonder most Americans can even speak above the level of ebonics.

Old Kerry's remark to Diane Sawyer was right out of the pragmatism playbook. Turn to the section on epistemology, the science of knowledge, and thumb down to "truth." Before going further, ask yourself, what is truth? No bullshit now, no New Age crap. I think most of you would say that truth is that which is factually correct, i.e., that which fits reality and is provable. If you said this, you would be absolutely correct.

That is not what Kerry meant.

Pragmatism says that truth is "that which works." In short, if something works out the way you wanted it to, then "it" was "true." That means, among other things, that you cannot know or project any course of action in advance. No, you have to wait until after the event to determine if it "worked" according to your desires. Pragmatism means action. Act first and see if it was OK afterward when you see the results. This same principle drives psychopaths.

Pragmatism tears the identity of anything from everything. It also inverts cause and effect. In reality, it is a notion as far from reality as one can get and not be a literal psychotic.

Note also, that this notion of "truth" makes it an issue of emotional gratification. That reduces "knowing" to the basal animal level of raw gratification, akin to existentialism. You can see the results of this "version" of the "truth" all around us every day.

Pres. Bush lined up all the existing evidence and made a decision based on the quality and quantity of existing intelligence. On the principle of national defense, he invaded Iraq -- as the RIGHT thing to do ON PRINCIPLE. Nothing could have been more opposite for Kerry and all other pragmatists like Clinton.

Pragmatists have no need for principles. If their action met their desires, they did right. No principle works for this subhuman approach to life and knowledge.

Through Kerry, John Dewey, Peirce, and William James live on. We do not want at the helm anyone whose mind is turned this inside out and upside down. This man, because of his patho-philosophy deserves no berth in the White House. For that matter, he deserves no place in power and influence in America. Send him back to France on 2 November.