Rightist Wish Fulfillment

Arab News (With thanks to Jihad Watch, 22 March 2005, for pointing out this article), Monday, 21, March, 2005 (10, Safar, 1426) , Ministry Intervenes as Writer Sentenced to 275 Lashes
Raid Qusti, Arab News —

We have kept this bizarre tale around, well, because it is bizarre. It also illustrates why it is so great to be an American and to live in America. It also illustrates why we can take sides with the liberal Left on this issue. Wow! That last is really strange to write!

Too many on the Right whip themselves these days into lather after lather decrying "separation of church and state." Their fictions include the notion that separation of church and state is actually a Christian concept coming from the dictum to render unto Caesar, and you know the rest. They also claim that America was founded on strict Judeo-Christian principles and doctrines. Then they march to the Constitution to claim that nothing in it separates church and state, thus we ought to have prayer in schools, etc. They claim that without Judeo-Christian principles, there could be no morality, only rapacious chaos.

Alas they are so full of it that one wonders what would happen to them should they all take enemas en masse.

They cannot quite bring themselves to advocate a theocracy, although one of their number, talk radio host Michael Medved, proudly bills himself as a theocrat.

They, like so many people, have "bee hive minds." By that, we mean that their minds are like honeycomb, in with each cell exists completely separately from the next in a hexagonal mass. I.e., with these people, integration seems forbidden as does direct perception of reality.

So, let's look at some reality, from a theocracy. We must realize that there are not good theocracies to contrast with bad theocracies. Theocracies are totalitarian states which are profoundly anti-individual, anti-rights, anti-reason, anti-freedom and demand that their citizens serve as cells in the organ mass of the state which is also their only reason to exist and the source of any value they might have as individuals.

This article provides direct perception into reality, in this case into the theocracy of Saudi Arabia. It could just as easily been from Iran or medieval Christendom.

RIYADH, 21 March 2005 — The case of a Saudi writer who was sentenced by a
Shariah court in Riyadh to 275 lashes and four months imprisonment after being
accused of being “corrupt” by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has returned to the Ministry of Culture and Information yesterday after the intervention of the ministry, Arab News has learned.

The case is the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Ali Al-Mizeini, an Arabic language professor at King Saud University, was charged by the commission with allegedly questioning the religious institution’s abilities and knowledge in an article written by him in Al-Watan
newspaper. The commission was represented in court by another professor at the
university, Abdullah Al-Barak from the Islamic Culture Department.

The accusers demanded that Dr. Al-Mizeini be tried according to Shariah for
his writings. Dr. Al-Mizeini was later summoned to a court hearing.

Dr. Al-Barak argued that his suit against Al-Mizeini was a private matter and that he relied on a regulation from the Ministry of Justice dated Oct. 16, 2004, after some persons complained about several articles published in the media. The regulation issued by the minister of justice states that “whatever offends Shariah or Islamic ethics or contradicts anything in the Qur’an or Sunnah (the Prophet’s sayings) or is an accusation of a person toward another which demands a religious punishment of lashes or imprisonment according to the nature of the crime is a matter that concerns public
courts.”

The regulation continues: “Public courts or primary courts which are given cases that deal with offenses concerning moral issues or attacks on Shariah that demand religious punishment should not transfer it to other concerned lawful bodies to look into it”

Judge Suleiman Al-Fantooh of the Shariah court sentenced him to a four-month jail term and 275 lashes.

The judge’s ruling violates the Royal Decree No. 37 of the publication law in Saudi Arabia issued in November, 2000, which states that Shariah courts in the Kingdom should not intervene in trying journalists or writers and that all matters concerning the media and publications should be dealt with through the Ministry of Information.

The judge, however, ignored the law and proceeded with his ruling.

According to Al-Hayat newspaper, the Royal Court issued an order to form a committee comprising officials from the Ministry of Information to deal with matters that concern publication of articles in local newspapers and that all complaints concerning publications should be confined to the ministry alone.

The Arabic daily also said that the Ministry of Culture and Information called editors of Saudi dailies and informed them of the new Royal Court regulation by phone. It said that the ministry intended to send a telegram to the Ministry of Justice opposing the court ruling because it violates the publishing law announced by the government last week.

Al-Mizeini’s article angered many Islamists when he said that the method used by the Supreme Judiciary Council in determining the beginning of Ramadan and Eid was “primitive” that still relied on the naked eye’s vision of the moon at a time where the crescent can be determined by telescopes as well by Saudi astronomers who are experts in the field.

Meanwhile, another Saudi writer is being tried by a religious court in the Kingdom for criticizing the commission in another Saudi daily, Al-Jazirah.

Abdullah Al-Bikheit, the writer, published many articles in the daily criticizing the
approach of the people who work for the commission. Arab News contacted the
writer who revealed his story. “In the beginning, I got a call from the police
department to appear in the station to deal with a case filed by a person I did
not know,” he said.

“When I went there and asked who my opponent was, I was told that ‘it did not matter and that I will have to appear in court’ which I did,” he added.

“When I appeared before the judge, I found out that the case filed against me was not signed by a certain number of people...I asked the judge again who my opponent was, but he did not give me an answer. He told me that the Public Prosecutor wanted to intervene in the case. I replied that the case had no basis since it concerned publications and that the case was not within their purview.”

“The Sheikh from the Public Prosecution office later came, and I found myself yet dealing with another person. He told the judge that ‘we want to punish him if the charges against him are proven correct’”.

“I later found out that 80 percent of those who filed the case were members of the commission who were angered by my writings in the daily,” he said.

He said that the court has asked him to reappear on April 12.

Asked by Arab News if anyone from the Ministry of Information intervened to help him, Al-Bikheit said that he was sure that the media was closely following his case. He also said that Turki Al-Sudairi, the head of the Saudi Journalists Association, promised him that he would help. Al-Bikheit said that he has not sought the help of the National Society for Human Rights in the court hearing since he has already told the judge that the case is out of the court’s jurisdiction.

“However, if a ruling is made against me in the next hearing, I need not go to the human rights body to complain. I will go to our leaders to complain starting with King Fahd, then the Crown Prince,” he said.

Al-Bikheit said that he criticized the commission in the Saudi daily as “any other government body that has its shortcomings.” He said that he replied to the negative feedback to his articles in the letters to the editor column of the paper which did not “please the commission’s members”. He intends to publish a book with all the 17 articles he has published in Al-Jazirah.

The old admonition says, be careful what you wish for because it may come true. Those on the Right who have religious blindness need a big dose of this admonition. A few years ago, Jack Kemp, serving in some Republican administration, crowed that "Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion." The article just cited shows a tiny sample of what Kemp's thinking (and that of those who think similarly) looks like in practice in Saudi Arabia, a theocracy.

Whatever value religion has to an individual must be determined by that individual and not by the state. That individual should be free to have religion or not. The state should not reflect any aspect of any religion, nor should it proscribe or prescribe any, it as long as it is not seditious, as is Islam.

Islam is the archtypical fusion of religion with every single aspect of Muslim life, and what we see as a result is not something "hijacked" or distorted. It is what it is. Islam is a perfect manifestation of the dream of those Rightists who want to end separation of church and state. In that sense, they are just another group of jihadists.

Can You Be Moral? (I)

There are two positions on being moral in our culture today, and both are wrong.

The Right say that without Judeo-Christian religion, one cannot be moral. The Left say that the whole matter is subjective and differs from individual to individual. Both sides have made a total mess of the whole matter and have left people either confused or resorting solely to feelings to determine morality.

Since I grew up in a Christian environment, I have a real sense of the Right on morality. In a word, it was and is DUTY, and the religion provides the duties. People get left out except when they run afoul of duties and become sinners. When I think back on what the moral training was and the attitude toward morality as I grew up, I experience nausea and dysphoria. My "I" was always in conflict with the imposed duties, and my "I" was castigated as Augustine put it, "bespotted and ulcerous, sordid and corrupt." In short, according to the religious principles, if I put me first, I was being "selfish," and that was always wrong. Even as a child, I could see all of the hypocritical dancing about by others at the duty-self boundary to satisfy their "I's."

In college, I began running into the morality of the Left. And, you know what? It also was "duty," but differed from that of the Right. The "I" was always castigated as selfish, and groups took the place that religious doctrine took among the Right. It was far less clear what the Left meant by morality other than group standards. The Left firmly "believed" that personal morality could be morality only for each person, without generalizations that could apply to many if not all people. To them, truth was subjective, thus morality was subjective. You have heard the following: What is true for you is not true for me. Likewise, you hear: What is right for you is not right for me.

Interestingly, both the Right and the Left positions completely abdicate themselves from the field of morality. To the Right, morality is intrinsic to religious doctrine, and humans must take it on without question. A really good example of this kind of thinking comes from Rush Limbaugh's "32 Undeniable Truths" list, which I believe can be found on his website.

To the Left, morality can have no personal standard. It may have a group standard, depending on what the group wants to do. The Law of Identity says that something that is, in every case, is something specific, with a specific identity. And, the inverse says, to be nothing in particular is not to be. I did not make that up; Mother Nature did. Since the morality of the Left is nothing in particular, it is nothing. It does not exist. The illusion of it existing comes out in its subjectivity.

So, for the Right, morality is intrinsic, imposed on people from outside their choice. For the Left, morality is subjective, which means feeling based.

What is missing is the concept of "objectivity." That same concept is missing all over the country. Journalists really have little idea about it. Politicians eschew it. Academicians deny it. Religious people at all levels misidentify their intrinsicism as objectivity.

What we have for national leaders, given the state of morality, is President George W. Bush, intrinsicist religionist from the Right, and Senator John Kerry, subjectivist liberal from the Left. No doubt of it. We have a moral vacuum.

As a result, people struggle on their own to internalize a morality the best they can, and they do not do a very good job of it. Nor could they be expected to. The very intellectual leaders who should be making it possible for them to internalize an appropriate morality left the building like Elvis but they long preceded Elvis.

We are left with some big questions, really rather fundamental in nature, and they are not getting answered. In many cases, they are not getting asked.

Growing Good News from Iraqis?

More and more we are hearing about Iraqis coming out to dispatch insurgents and defend themselves. Only some has been verified thusfar, but this process, if continued, will put an end to "insurgency" and literally terrify every Middle East tyranny.

Two Fox News military consultants have given important information concerning the "insurgency." One said that insurgencies tend to last about 9 years. The other said that Iraqis rising up against insurgents will bring peace quicker than any other process, and it can come quickly. Both statements spell the end of the insurgency, of course.

But, we have written pieces in Sixth Column on numerous occasions wondering where the Iraqi citizens are in their own defense of themselves. That has included allowing suicide car bombs into public gatherings of Iraqis. We are aware that these car bombs have become far less frequent, and we hope this means that everybody in Iraq has put 2 and 2 together to get 4.

Now we hear about Iraqis coming out from their homes to gun down insurgent bullies trying to terrorize them. Like gathering drops of precipitation which ultimately become a big river, these are happening in very small groups, in twos and threes. We would not expect non-objective journalists to report these, but there are great stories to be told in these events.

It would be utterly wonderful to see an independent republic of Iraq, governed by democratic principles, with a non-Islamic constitution. So many have said it could not be done, but look at all of the things being done that have been proclaimed as "impossible."

The processes of citizens coming to dispatch insurgent groups on behalf of themselves just reek with merit. Backbone and self-esteem may be emerging. Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc., will fear these processes the most because these horrible governments continue to exist only because the citizens of these countries have been willing to endure tyranny. Satellites and dishes put devastating electro-magnetic radiations into these countries, and the people are not dumb. They have all the potential of all other humans. It won't take much for them to learn the lessons from Iraq if the Iraqis continue to rise to create their own destinies.

The Churchill Twin Sweepstakes!

The Churchill Twin Sweepstakes!, The Churchill Twin Sweepstakes!By FrontPage Magazine,March 28, 2005.

THIS IS FOR REAL. It also is an effective means of shining disinfecting sunshine on these postmodernists and can be useful in other contexts.

Have you had to endure anti-American propaganda in place of a college lecture? Now you can turn your professor's left-wing pontificating into cold, hard cash!

Just submit an essay, in 500 words or less, describing the professor you have had who most resembles Ward Churchill. This professor could have called capitalists "little Eichmanns," like Churchill himself. He could have demonized perfidious, bloodthirsty Jews in Israel, like Juan Cole. He could have prayed for Americans to lose the war in Iraq, like Nicholas DeGenova or Robert Jensen. The professor could even have held an alternative religion exorcism to cleanse the campus of the demons of conservatism, like Oneida Meranto (a major fan of Che Guevara, who eliminated his enemies in another manner). Or she could have spent hours of class time prattling about off-topic political issues, then force students to say Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction on a midterm, like UNC-Chapel Hill's own Anthropology 10 professor Alison Greene.

Whoever the nominee, please indicate the subject of the course and explain why you have chosen this individual and why he or she deserves the coveted FrontPage Magazine Churchill Twin Award.

E-mail your submissions to: Ben@CSPC.org. The winner will receive $500. (It's the capitalist way!) The winning essay and honorable mentions will also be posted on FrontPageMag.com. Get your essays in now! The deadline to win is April 23, 2005.

This is NOT a satire! All submissions become property of FrontPageMag.com. All decisions are final. Many academically abused students will enter; few victims will win.

Google Irony

19:38, 03.27.05, "Google advertises Terror organization uses search engine to promote website of its military wing Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades," By Roee Nahmias and Gal Mor (with thanks to Jihad Watch for publicizing this).

The "irony" we refer to is that this site was turned down by Google's Adsense because of "unacceptable content." Are we on the wrong side, or what?

Terror organizations are advancing their recruitment and public relations methods: Internet surfers who enter the word “Hamas” in Arabic in the Google search engine, will view, in addition to the search results, an AdWord message that links directly to the website of the organization’s military faction Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

The link also appears in a search of several other words, such as the “Gaza,” “Palestine,” “Jihad.”

This indicates that a Hamas source has paid Google, the most popular search engine on the web, for the advertisement.

Google’s AdWord service offer registered surfers the opportunity to purchase search words and post text messages that are linked to certain websites.

The AdWords also appear in G-mail, Google’s email service, and on other websites on Google’s advertising network Adsense.

Google has automatic filters that prohibit the posting of links to “problematic” websites, such as gambling and sex websites, but as of now they can only identify English words.

Company Spokeswoman Debbie Frost said “we took care of the matter as soon as Ynet turned to us,” but Ynet has learned the advertisements have not been removed as of yet.

FIFTH COLUMN REPORT: Indians, Nazis, and the School Shooting by David Yeagley

David Yeagley is the read deal. He is an American Indian with an intelligent independent mind. At the bottom of this good article are the following credits: "Dr. David A. Yeagley is a published scholar, professionally recorded composer, and an adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Liberal Studies. He's on the speakers list of Young America's Foundation. E-mail him at badeagle2000@yahoo.com. View his website at http://www.badeagle.com. "

Does a person's philosophy influence his behavior? This article shows how the seepage of postmodernism into the 16-year old student at Red Lake Indian Reservation helped mold him. We now know what he had become: a nihilist. Like the nihilists of today, he was full of rage, self-pity, and the overpowering desire to destroy anything of value.

David Yeagley speaks from the inside out, free of political correctness, anti-Americanism, and even multiculturalism. He may be American Indian, but he is 100% American. This article deserves reading in its entirety.

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

FrontPage magazine.com :: Indians, Nazis, and the School Shooting by David Yeagley , FrontPageMagazine.com March 25, 2005


American Indians have finally, fully assimilated into American culture: Indian youth are committing the same crimes that blacks, whites, and Mexican do. Monday, March 22, 2005, a 16-year-old Indian high school student on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota came into school and shot down ten people and wounded seven others. He finally shot himself.

Indians are so assimilated that the media doesn’t even recognize us as Indians. When the Red Lake story broke, most reports did not say the shooter, Jeff Weise, was an Indian. Naming his ethnicity might have made him seem something other than a person or a full human being. A socialist British report doesn’t even mention the Indian reservation until more than halfway through the report.

It is universally assumed that Indians live on an Indian reservation, especially a remote one like Red Lake, and therefore students, policemen, and teachers are all Indians. But it isn’t true. Neva Rogers, 62, one of the teachers killed at the Red Lake high school, was white. In fact, most of the teachers at the school are white.

But the media wasn’t concerned with this issue. It was early alleged that Jeff posted on a neo-Nazi website. By not mentioning his ethnicity, the media gave the distinct impression that he was a white kid. Red Lake was another Columbine high school story, only on a poor Indian reservation. The media wanted Jeff’s very recent neo-Nazi association to “color” the Red Lake story white—right-wing white.

Jeff Weise was an Indian youth, however, and he shot other Indian youth. The alleged reports of his neo-Nazi leanings only confuse the issue. Why would an Indian, allegedly influenced by Nazi thinking, murder other Indians? After all, reportedly the Nazis did not take Weise seriously in part because he is an Indian.

The media seemed happy with a story about some white supremacist kid, and another anti-gun story. Evil whites are always a good blame. This story gives the ailing leftist media another chance to carp, “If there were no guns, there wouldn’t be such shootings”—and to hate whitey. Washington, D.C., black Chief of Police Charles A. Moose had everyone looking for a disgruntled, single white male in the D.C. sniper shooting, and it turned out to be two black men, John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. More recently, the media assimilated Brian Nichols, the Atlanta murderer. He was not black, but “medium complexion.” In other words, look for a white man, despite the published photo of a black man.

Racial profiling is studiously avoided by the media—unless the suspect is white. No term is used which is associated with a “minority” race. But, in the Red Lake story, to identify an Indian reservation and not refer to persons in the story as Indians is obviously manipulative and insulting to Indians, using them as props in their propaganda war.

Indians are proud of being Indian. No Indian seeks to hide his identity today. (Indeed, people who aren’t even Indian are aggressive about claiming to be Indian, like Ward Churchill.) No Indian wants to assimilate to point of not be called an Indian.

But an Indian Nazi youth? This angle is misleading. Jeff is an Indian kid, from the Red Lake reservation, and he did shoot Indian students. That he allegedly showed a recent interested in neo-Nazism doesn’t mean he was white. (As noted above, he even complained that his interest wasn’t taken seriously because he was an Indian.)

Is this story then just another adolescent incident in the plague of rage running rampant in so many schools throughout the country? Are the Indians of Red Lake really like everyone else?

Jeff allegedly opposed racial intermarriage. That’s hardly assimilation. And Jeff allegedly complained that his teachers (white liberals of the Red Lake high school) condemned him for his ideas of racial purity.

Now the story makes more sense to me, as an Indian. Indians are a vanishing race, vanishing through intermarriage. Jeff opposed this, but he had liberal, white, anti-Indian teachers and counselors, who advocated intermarriage, which he saw as genocide.

I call this a kind of reverse racism, demanding that all cultures lose themselves in the American melting pot. Wiese saw America's leftists demand that the symbols of his heritage be removed from high schools, using Indian braves as their mascots. Now Jeff has committed the same violence as an Indian that other troubled American teens have. The media is anxious to blame whites, and the neo-Nazi bit in the story was their lead, but, in the Red Lake case, the reporters blamed the wrong whites. Politically Correct liberals influenced Jeff as much as the Nazis.

Federalizing the New Mafioso

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Americans, we have to put a stop to these Muslim pressure groups. They have tasted blood and power and have gone into full lusting for all of it.

This week, we published articles on 6th Column Against Jihad on their actions and their fifth columnist supporter tell why they are making progress so easy and fast (see Islamic Organizations Use Public Television to Market Sharia Law to American Youth,
Playing Us Like a Wurlitzer, 2005: While It's Still America, and Busted! The Not-So “Grand Illusion”). Today, Jihad Watch publishes a new scandal from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR Calls the Truth About Islam "Hate Literature").

The fifth column supporting these groups is made up of some of the "good guys" as well as the "bad guys." Sadly, the finger of blame must point to the Bush Administration along with others.

AIM Column - Federal Money Goes to Controversial Muslim Group - March 15, 2005, by Sherrie Gossett, March 15, 2005, has much valuable information, including how courageous investigative journalists are being threatened by some of these Muslim pressure groups.

While the major media have portrayed the president's faith based initiative as a pay-off to conservative Christians, a controversial Muslim group accused of having an association with an extreme form of Islam has also been getting federal funds. The group, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), considers itself moderate and mainstream but has sponsored conferences in the past that included speakers known for violent anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Mary Jacoby and Graham Brink, writing in the St. Petersburg Times, describe ISNA as "subsidized by the Saudi government" and the "main clearinghouse for Wahhabism in the U.S." The New York Times has described ISNA as the umbrella organization for 300 Muslim groups and about one-third of the mosques in the United States.

Sayyid M. Syeed, Secretary General of ISNA, told AIM in a phone interview on March 10 that "For four or five years we've been invited to White House events. We believe all religions have to play a major role in the fight against poverty. Spirituality itself qualifies people to be more compassionate."

Syeed himself appeared at the inaugural conference of the Islamic Universal Heritage Foundation in Kissimmee Florida in December 2003, which I attended. That conference ran into controversy when it was discovered the headliner was to be Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who, in April 2003, while addressing 2 million followers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, prayed to God to "terminate" the Jews. He called them "the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys," according to reports by the Associated Press and Reuters.

Syeed told me, "You will be hurt, you will be pained by this if you continue to write such things." He closed the conversation with this comment, "I am sorry if I sound harsh. But I stand by every word I said."

While Syeed terms AIM's coverage of Islamic radicalism "scandalous" and "criminal," it is the failure of many in the media to report such issues truthfully that is the real problem. Reporters should not be intimidated from reporting the facts.

Syeed emphasized that ISNA is a mainstream organization and he invited AIM to meet with them at their headquarters and to get involved. "We would be very pleased to host you," he said, indicating individuals from various organizations have offered workshops at their conferences. "We are only getting bigger," he said, "You have to work with us."

The White House already does.

It is more than time to get mobilized to stand up to these "school-yard bullies." They meet crumbling resistance from courts and government. Corporations fold and run. Journalists by and large join the fifth column against us. And academia is hopelessly fifth column.

It may become a job that we in the RED STATES take on and win. Let's get going before these Muslim pressure groups become the new mafia.

Another Drive-by "Shooter" Visited Us

Frankly, we love critical comments, positive and negative. Recently, 22 March 2005, "Anonymous" drove by, shot a bunch of word bullets at us, and returned to wherever. We call these "drive by shooters." Why these folks do their one-time hits and disappear, we don't know. They seem to be Muslims or liberals, and neither group seems knowledgeable or willing to defend his or her views with critical discourse. That is a shame. We are very open to criticism, and we will publish it.

"Anonymous" put his comments at the end of D.C.Watson's blog of 22 March 2005, although it had nothing to do with D.C.'s blog. "Anonymous" was commenting on material published a little earlier this month. His comments give us an opportunity to address some things we don't often cover as much as we would like.

Here is the full comment from "Anonymous," just as he wrote all of it, except for emphases provided by me:

At Tue Mar 22, 07:41:13 AM PST,
Anonymous said in the Comments:

"Islam is a hopelessly out of date, tired, boring, absurd, Puritanical religion and evil philosophy which just stifles its adherents."

You are really showing your ignorance here. Every religion has it's fundamentalists and extremists, the majority of Muslims I know are moderate and peaceful. This sort of hateful dirge is just fuelling the fire of the fundamentalists. In fact your views sound as extreme as those of Hezzbullah just from the opposite end of the spectrum. I assume you're not a "terriorist", but then your country isn't occupied by another country's armed forces. I would suppose you would take up your constitutional right to bear arms following an invasion by Islamicists? It's America and Israels foreign policies that have caused the Jihad that you are so scared about. Policies that have directly caused many more deaths than any acts of Islamic "terrorism". How many deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan both civillian and military? Many many more than 911. Why don't you read the Koran? You'll find it to be a sensible balanced and moderate book that's been hijacked and wrongly interpreted by a few crazies. Just like the Bible has been by some people but not the majority.

"It is incumbent upon the individual to find ways to practice his religion that do not step on his contractual obligations, such as providing a day's work for a day's pay".

Tell this to Bush whom I understand likes to pray in the Oval Office

Let's start with what he quoted at the opening of his comments. He took these quotes from our article
The Crazy Aunt in the Attic: Jihad Against Starbucks (http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7552242) , 17 March 2005. Here is the full relevant quote (emphasis mine):

If Muslims are productive human beings, in the really positive and rational sense of the term, they are so in the West, certainly not in Islamia. Islam is a hopelessly out of date, tired, boring, absurd, Puritanical religion and evil philosophy which just stifles its adherents. It even stigmatizes the Muslims who want to improve it by making Islam "moderate." Improvers are called hypocrites" and are subject to murder by the code of shari'a. So the "moderates," who, by and large, seem to want to live and let live get the equivalent of lepers' bells or yellow Star of David badges which Islam and Nazis put on Jews.

How did I arrive at such a conclusion? I did it the old-fashioned way: I earned it. After the events of 11 September 2001, I knew that I knew precious little about Islam. After reading a paperback history of the Arabs, I bought N. J. Dawood's translation of the Koran and read every word of it, and many parts, many times. I was so horrified by it that I set out on a quest to learn all I could about Islam. I read books about Islam and Arabs, and I read the core documents of Islam. That's my story, and I stick by it.

Oh, and the comment by "Anonymous" about reading the Koran? Well I have eight of them, and I have read them, some more than once. Some of the versions are pabulum written to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting Westerner by portraying Islam as peaceful, good, and kind, and are concerned solely with making nice. Others tell it like it is in its fully raw state. The Koran has not been hijacked. It is an Islamic war manual that incites Muslims to do what they are doing as jihadists and otherwise be chronic pains in the ass of the world. Muslims have not misinterpreted it. They "get it" and have always "gotten it" just the way it was written and meant to be gotten.

And, I am the wrong person to ask to defend the Bible.

What's so funny about this "misinterpretation" myth is how evil people use it to create the illusion that the evil they espouse is really not what it is. There is a hilarious parallel. The Democrat Party these days sulks about claiming that they did not get their message out to the American people, and that is why G. W. Bush won his second term. People either did not get the message, or the message was misinterpreted, they whine. Wrong! The Democrats lost because Americans got the message loud and clear. The same goes for Islam and all of its documents.

You know, "Anonymous," we read, study, discuss, and think about stuff like Islam. If you want to consider us ignorant, then be advised: We have your number, and we are coming for you. It's a matter of time 'till we get there. We've got to finish rousing and preparing the troops first.

You bet we would take up arms if you brought overt jihad into America. Our zoo carnivores would become utterly obese from your carcasses. Besides, we have taken up arms to go into Islamia to take the fight to your front door since you can't mind your own business. If you want to wear filthy clothes, sit in infested sand, do nothing, think nothing, accomplish nothing, and bitch at the universe because everybody else has gotten off their dead asses to earn their style of living, then do the entire globe a favor: Keep Islam to yourself, along with your squalor. Had you left us alone, well, you know the rest...

And, while we are at it, let's tackle "the Jihad that you are so scared about." We have dealt with the ridiculous term "islamophobic" before on this blog ["Language Morphing and "Islamophobia," 31 January 3005]. It won't hurt to "play it again." We chose the term "Islam expositor" because we expose Islam to the disinfecting sunshine. We are hardly "phobic," other than some life-long acrophobia. But, to be honest, jihad does frighten us some, but only because we have not yet mobilized the great American people properly. When that happens, and it will, "jihad" will become a game in some distant sand boxes.

Finally "Anonymous" quotes from Some Backbone at Last? ANSWER = "NO!" from 15 March 2005 about the Dell settlement with Muslims in Tennessee, and then quips about Bush praying in the White House. Here is the context from that article containing the passage "Anonymous" excerpted (emphasis mine):

The very simple principle is, separation of religion from commerce of any kind.
That means that people are free in this country to adopt any religion, but it is
never more than an individual matter. It is incumbent upon the individual to
find ways to practice his religion that do not step on his contractual obligations, such as providing a day's work for a day's pay.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism, scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.--you name it--stays outside when the worker enters the job work area. He can pick it up again after work. It is not incumbent upon the employer to be "sensitive" to any religion for any reason at any time. It is incumbent upon the employee not to inflict this stuff on others, particularly the employer. Clearly, the employer has the right to set up prayer rooms and provide religious accommodations, but not the obligation.

President Bush praying in the White House in no way compares to Muslim prayer rug rituals five times a day that interfere with the work that they are being paid to do. The job of Mr. Bush being president does not suffer when he prays because he is still on the job. He is on the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, unlike the Dell employees. If his job performance was physically impaired by praying, I would object.

For what it is worth, the problem with Mr. Bush's religion is not that he takes the time to pray. It is that his beliefs have kept him from seeing the truth about Islam. His religion affects his ability COGNITIVELY to deal with Islam. Had Kerry not been a total Islam appeaser and all around loser, I could have voted for him. However, we had the choice between "bad" and "worse," and I prefer "bad" to "worse." At least Bush will fight the overt jihad, even if he can't see the covert jihad.

Well, this has been fun. To "Anonymous," please write again.

GUEST BLOG from D.C.Watson: BUSTED! THE NOT-SO "GRAND ILLUSION"

[We are pleased to publish another good article by D. C. Watson. Yesterday, we published a different outstanding one on our website.]

Busted! The Not-So “Grand Illusion”

by

D.C. Watson

(originally published http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/DCWatson50323.htm)

· “Hate crime, hate crime, hate crime.”

· “Call the FBI again, call on them to investigate this hate crime.”

· “Alert the media again, tell them of the “Islamophobes” threatening Muslims with this hate speech again.”

· “Quickly, call the State Department again and schedule another meeting about Islamophobia. If they ask why again, tell them it is about hate crimes against Islam, again.”

· “File another lawsuit, this is a hate crime. This is incitement to violence against Islam and an attack against Muslims.”

· “Put this on the website in the “Incitement Watch” section, it is another Islamophobic hate speech.”



Yes, the all too familiar words and actions of a few Muslim advocacy groups operating in the United States .

Make no mistake; the information to follow certainly falls under the category of hate speech, beyond a shadow of a doubt. However, the hate isn’t coming from Americans or Westerners, it’s coming from the minds and straight off of the fingertips of Muslims. Or at the very least, Muslim apologists. While Islamic organizations continue with their crying and whining for the protection of Muslims from so-called “Islamophobia” here in the “Great Satan”, there are those who have figured out a way to sign on at a computer terminal, have allowed their emotions to get the best of them, and in turn have let their true feelings for non-Muslims to be exposed.

With the permission of the Faith Freedom International website, e-mails sent to FFI, submitted by those who reveal that they are anything but peaceful, tolerant, and non-violent, have been reviewed and brought to you in this column.

This information will help to serve notice to Americans, including American Government officials (who are seemingly blind to this situation), everyone living in free societies around the world, and to the decent people in the Muslim community, that there are those claiming to practice the Islamic faith, supposedly religious people who, with their own comments have earned their place in the spotlight.



Disclaimer: The following data contains profanity, threats of physical violence, atrocious grammar, and a blatant refusal to use “spell check.” Reader discretion is advised. (Note: for the purpose of preserving authenticity, spelling in the commentary below has not been altered. Comments in their entirety can be viewed here: http://www.faithfreedom.org/comments/MComments.htm

*****After reading, please feel free to forward this information to Muslim groups in America . Ask them if they will publicly condemn these e-mails.*****

· “ALLAH (SWA) will give you what you deserve in the afterlife and I will watch and smile, while you burn in hell”....

· “Hey peice of shit....(have the balls, post this letter on your website) My advise to good-for-nothing vagabonds like you around, "plan the way this swine has planned, go and get hold of a major religion which you don't practise, built a website (cowardly) and start abusing right left with notions illogical and out of context. Further, "tell that you are a chicken fearing for your life and there are Muslims out there to get you and that's the reason you are hiding like a rat." Don't chicken,

Post this on your website you mother fucker”...

· “Ali, or shall i say u mad bastard?”

· “1st of all Ali is a muslim name so y use this name. If i met u somewhere out on the street i would love to cut your throat, u dirty bastard. I pray that u rot in hell and u will rot in hell. dont ever call my prophet a peodophile. u scum. when u read this mail of mine i hope have a heart attack and u go cabbage. u dirty son of a bitch”.

· “you son of a bitch! u will be burnt in hell forever. u committed blasphemy. curse on your birth. If I see u I will cut u in million pieces, u bastard, bullshit. May God destroy u soon at my hands”.

· “i know you are bloody jew because only jews are scared from the growth of islam”.

· “well.... instead of writting sumthing against islam & MUHAMMAD (PBUH) u should better see wats in your fucking religeons BASTERD... hinduism is based on cast system (which is totaly inhuman) chritianity is entirely based on the stupid idea that some normal human being was the son of the GOD ...and so is every other religeon!!!... just think about what will happen to u when u will die SON OF A BITCH!”

· “The pictures you put on your website are some of them of Ashura, and i read your comments about it. You wrote bad comments about it. You better delete them, if i findout who you are, i'll fuck you, peace of shiet! You better not say anything about my Imam Ali , and never say a bad thing about day of Ashura. Tear you apart!”

· “Dear Ali Sina,

“Your materials over the faithfreedom.org, is very very offensive”.

· “You have proofed that your a true kafir who will end up in hell.........deep in hell. Your mind have been poised by satan...I taking my chances to track you down......the moment i see you .....you are a one dead meat, thats for true. Go to hell”

Last but not least:

· “Helo, Did u see the video of the american that was beheaded in Iraq ?? Thats what gonna happen to you when i and my friends are gonna catch u. We are currently working on finding information about you, one of my friends is a computer genius. I have gathered muslims all over the world to dispatch any of them to your location. Once u have been beheaded we will use your head to play soccer and your body will be cut into pieces and fed to the dogs. Shut down this website, then we shall not kill you.I give you 1 month to think about it. Make your decision wisely”.

Unfortunate, yet educational. By all means, keep these e-mails coming. They serve as evidence, and lend support to many points.

Apparently, these individuals, instead of working on improving the image of Islam, not to mention their spelling and grammar, have disgraced their faith, and clearly wish to inflict harm on those who have spoken out against Islam. Many of them live among us. American brothers and sisters, have your collective eyes been opened yet?

New Material on 6th Column Against Jihad Website

Many new articles (6th Column Against Jihad). Please visit.

We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us (Pogo)

Jihad Watch: Iraq's Jaafari aims for Sharia rule, March 20, 2005

This is the lead item from Jihad Watch this morning, posted by Robert Spencer. It speaks the truth with luminous clarity. Sadly, it tells us that we (the American government) are our own worst enemy.

"Another I told you so update. It is very much within the realm of possibility that the U.S. has toppled Saddam Hussein and stayed in Iraq for all this time only to see the creation of another Sharia state there. This would not and could not have happened if the Administration and the State Department had properly identified the source of Islamic terrorism in the Qur'an and the Islamic doctrine of jihad, and in the impulse to impose Sharia that comes from and works through those sources. But because they persist in illusions about Islam, and persist in listening to the wrong people, they may well end up creating a problem greater than the one they solved.

"One would think that the example of Saudi Arabia and Iran would be enough to show them that above all they don't want another Sharia state. But of course, Jaafari assures us that Iraq won't be like that; it will presumably be Sharia with a human face. It will be interesting to see where he will draw the lines that will have to be drawn to create and maintain this humane form of Sharia, and how long they will last in the face of inevitable pressure from hardliners."

From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

IRAQ'S frontrunning Shiite candidate for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, said in an interview he aimed to introduce sharia Islamic law and federalism and confirmed Saddam Hussein would be judged by the end of the year.

"It's understandable in a country where the majority of people are Muslim," Mr Jaafari said of the Sharia law, in an interview conducted in Baghdad due to appear in Tuesday's edition of German magazine Der Spiegel.

"Iraq should become a Muslim country but without falling under the influence of Iran or Saudi Arabia," he said.

"Everyone will have the same rights, even members of the many minor religious communities," he said, explaining there would be multiple forms of jurisprudence.

This probably refers to the Sharia provision that dhimmi communities govern their own internal affairs, and are not subject to Sharia courts. But the idea that "everyone will have the same rights" is going to collide with numerous Sharia precepts. How he succeed in creating and maintaining this smiley-face version of Sharia?

He also said women would be under no legal obligation to wear a veil. "They will make their own decisions," the Shiite candidate said.

Same problem again: his statement conflicts with Sharia. Maybe it's because, as noted below, he doesn't want "a strict application of sharia law," but, as I said above, it remains to be seen how he will draw this line and preserve it.

According to results of a poll released yesterday, most Iraqis are deeply attached to their Islamic identity but do not want a strict application of sharia law, as in neighbouring Saudi Arabia or Iran.

About 48 per cent of those interviewed agreed that "religion has a special role to play in the government", while 46 per cent supported a separation of state and mosque.

Humans have such a hard time coming to terms with the metaphysical fact that contradictions do not exist in reality, but can only exist in the minds of humans. People are always trying to live contradictions, rationalize them, and keep some irrational hope alive that this time they can get away with contradictions because reality won't notice perhaps. Sharia and individual rights, freeing Iraq so that it can retyrannize itself, religion is always good--they just won't work, no matter how much they are wished for or tried. Reality always wins. Always.

Some Backbone, at Last? ANSWER = NO!

Muslims reach settlement with Dell on prayer at work - Friday, 03/18/05

I was wrong. I thought I had seen corporate guts and integrity, coming from my Deep South. In fact, I thought that the legal contest had been concluded with the jury finding for Dell. Then comes this:

31 employees will be reinstated, managers to get training

Muslim contract employees at the Dell Inc. plant in Nashville reached a settlement with the company on issues related to a dispute over prayer in the workplace, a national Islamic civil rights advocacy group announced yesterday in Washington.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the 31 Muslim employees, who left work last month in a disagreement over Islamic prayers, will be reinstated, receive back pay, and be granted religious accommodation. Managers also will also receive additional training on existing religious accommodation policies and practices.

This is worse than nauseating. Had it been a simple political correctness cave-in, it would have nauseating. This goes far, far beyond and is ominous for our country.

The very simple principle is, separation of religion from commerce of any kind. That means that people are free in this country to adopt any religion, but it is never more than an individual matter. It is incumbent upon the individual to find ways to practice his religion that do not step on his contractual obligations, such as providing a day's work for a day's pay.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism, scientology, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.--you name it--stays outside when the worker enters the job work area. He can pick it up again after work. It is not incumbent upon the employer to be "sensitive" to any religion for any reason at any time. It is incumbent upon the employee not to inflict this stuff on others, particularly the employer. Clearly, the employer has the right to set up prayer rooms and provide religious accommodations, but not the obligation.

Sensitivity training, prayer rooms, rehiring with back pay--barf! These are particularly obnoxious when they apply to the death cult philosophy called Islam. Because it masquerades as a "religion," it gets kid glove treatment even though it is totally irrational and totally anti-American, and has as its aim the destruction of America, Americans, the Constitution, and our beloved land, way of life, and loved ones.

But, there is something worse in this Dell settlement, much worse. Note that CAIR is involved.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you are watching is the development of an Islamic mafia in America. Muslim pressure groups are meeting with success, thanks to unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia. Americans are caving before these groups who are out to quash all criticism of Islam and to eliminate all obstacles. The goal is first to establish Muslims as superior to all others by virtue of law. Equality under the law is the last thing these pressure groups want. They want dominance under the law.

They push around corporations, courts, television networks and production studios, politicians, journalists, and all others that have power and legal force behind them. Recently, as we shall write about soon, a prominent official with ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), another Saudi funded pressure group, told journalists who have been looking into ISNA's ties to terror and writing about it, that they will be hurt if they do not stop. [AIM Column - Federal Money Goes to Controversial Muslim Group - March 15, 2005, by Sherrie Gossett, March 15, 2005.]

Let that sink in.

Investigative journalists will be hurt if they keep writing.

We are watching the evolution of an Islamic mafia. This is American jihad. Every success emboldens these new mafioso. They wield legal threats and force now because we have so much weakness that we let them exploit.

They will reach resistance points where they cannot harness the engine of the law and its government enforces to overwhelm the resistance. Like the mafia, they will "make offers that others cannot refuse."

Until and unless people take the effort to learn the truth about Islam, they will continue to be part of the problem and not the solution. They are handing America over to a fully evil philosophy and body of practitioners without a whimper. As long as Americans willfully stay ignorant about Islam, they are as much a danger to America as the worst of the jihadists.

Think about it.

Too Good to Pass Up

Yesterday's Best of the Web had this snippet, which I have copied in toto and inserted the actual link to the photo--copyrighted by UFla 2001 (which also qualifies as a bit of an "in joke," if you are a Gator).


From: OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today - March 16, 2005

"Below the Beltway

Yesterday we noted that nostalgic feminists had met at the Florida State Capitol in an attempt to revive the moribund Equal Rights Amendment. Blogger Warren Meyer has a photo of the Florida Capitol, which is, as he notes, a tall tower flanked by two hemispherical domes." In case you're having trouble visualizing it, a picture is here (http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/talcal.jpg). Where is Sigmund Freud when you
need him?"

The Crazy Aunt in the Attic: Jihad Against Starbucks

Jihad Against Starbucks: by Carol Gould, FrontPageMagazine.com March 11, 2005

Carol Gould is an American who has been living in London for several decades and writing cultural commentary. A number of her commentaries have been published in Front Page Magazine, as has this latest. While the whole article is fun reading, here are snippets:

Recently an advisory was sent to one of the writers for “Current Viewpoint” from the Friends of al-Aqsa, a group based in Great Britain whose purpose is to promote the Palestinian cause. The advisory announces with considerable fanfare that the charity Oxfam has terminated its relations with Starbucks.

Explaining that the Islamic Human Rights Commission and Innovative Minds (a group supported by Friends of al Aqsa), the Palestinian Return Centre, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been in meetings with Oxfam, it emerges that the campaign’s target is “pro-Zionist multinational chain Starbucks.” That is news to us. So, all those Frappuccinos we have been guzzling here at Current Viewpoint are in some way supporting rampaging settlers and angry rabbis?

The document from Friends of al Aqsa says the organisations listed above had expressed their concerns to Oxfam regarding its one-year contract with Starbucks. According to the narrative, Starbucks had agreed to contribute ‘100,000’ (a currency is not specified) to Oxfam’s rural development programme in the East Harare coffee growing region of Ethiopia. We are instructed at this stage of the document to read background material.

Then it all begins to take shape: the al Aqsa paper states that Starbucks chair Howard Schultz is a pro-Zionist activist who helps ‘student projects in North America and Israel give presentations on the Israeli perspective of the Intifada.’ We are told that Starbucks has been a sponsor of bowl4israel and supports occupation troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thanks are then proffered to the pressure groups and supporters who had petitioned Oxfam to cease its relationship with Starbucks, stressing that the petitioners ('those struggling for justice') had been instrumental in ensuring that Oxfam adhered to humanitarian values.

These kinds of behaviors in England and America make it impossible to take Muslim organizations seriously except to think that each is up to no good, no matter what it says to the contrary. Yes, indeed, all Muslims get tarred with the same brush because of really scurulous Muslims' behaviors and the fact that Muslims will not separate themselves into those who do not support jihadist activities. That leaves us always wondering about all of them since lying, deception, intimidation, and other behaviors sanctioned by Islam make Islamists seem like Middle Eastern derived mafioso.

So, we have to suppose all are up to no good, just to protect ourselves pro-actively. However, that does not keep us from heaping scorn and derision on the absurd behavior of some Muslims. In that way only, we can not take them seriously.

There is nothing evil in Starbucks, even if its founder is Jewish (that is a big deal to Islam, not me). If Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, strongly supports Israel, he is showing his rational side, and looking at what he has accomplished, he has plenty of rationality aboard. He puts out a damned fine product, and he taken loads of cash we have willingly pressed into his cash registers. My only wish for Howard Schultz is for him to get rid of that liberalism of his, but he never shoves that on me or into my Starbucks coffees, so I can live with it. Unlike Islamists, he seems like a truly kind and very generous man, e.g., tsunami relief in MUSLIM Indonesia, conveniently overlooked and disregarded by these Muslim johnny-one-notes.

If Muslims are productive human beings, in the really positive and rational sense of the term, they are so in the West, certainly not in Islamia. Islam is a hopelessly out of date, tired, boring, absurd, Puritanical religion and evil philosophy which just stifles its adherents. It even stigmatizes the Muslims who want to improve it by making Islam "moderate." Improvers are called "hypocrites" and are subject to murder by the code of shari'a. So the "moderates," who, by and large, seem to want to live and let live get the equivalent of lepers' bells or yellow Star of David badges which Islam and Nazis put on Jews.

Starbucks is immensely wealthy for a very good reason. That reason is that many, but not all, people LOVE its product. Why do they love it? Because it is a true pleasure to consume. It is a titillation in life and is appreciated as such. Why should coffee-loving Muslims cut themselves off from Starbucks? Because they are Middle Eastern Carrie Nation's who fit that wag definition of Puritans as those who live in constant dread that someone, somewhere is having a good time. That makes Islam's product, by contrast to Starbucks, crazy aunts in the attic.

Carol Gould sums up the situation in her final paragraph:

Campaigns like those promulgated by the British al-Aqsa group are retrogressive and counter-productive. When a Muslim company can produce as dynamic a coffee empire as Starbucks, or as clever a fresh food franchise as Marvellous Markets, and then give money and aid to all manner of men and women, I will applaud them. Yes, the agenda of this advisory is ‘Sharon is killing our children whilst Starbucks cultivates Zionist youth in America,’ but the spirit of the world at this moment in time is the earthquake of freedom movements emerging in the Middle East and we urge the al Aqsa Friends to enter that spirit, not boycott those incomparable Frappuccinos which we at Current Viewpoint fully intend continuing to buy with great passion in perpetuity.

Rights versus Responsibilities

Globally these days, rights are commonly fused with responsibilities in discussion, as though one cannot have one without the other. The Left and the Right in America believe in this fusion as dearly as they believe in the concept of involuntary servitude embodied in obligatory national service. Rightly so, rights-as-fused-with-responsibilities is as collectivistic as obligatory national service.

We have discussed the proper concept of rights and some counterfeit "rights" on 6th Column Against Jihad. Readers will find information there and references to other sources for greater detail.

Here, it is necessary to mention only certain key aspects of the concept of rights in order to set the context for blowing the notion of fused rights and responsibilities out of the water.

First, rights are moral principles derived from the facts of human nature, namely that each human must provide for the upkeep and furtherance of his own individual life. That is his basic responsibility. Rights are actions needed for providing that upkeep and furtherance. They are born into each human, and they are, to quote Thomas Jefferson, "unalienable," meaning that they CAN NOT be taken away, given away, or granted. They may be violated, and the proper role of a government is protect each citizen's rights. Thus, all humans individually are born with the four fundamental rights to life, property, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All other authentic "rights" are derivative from these fundamental rights.

That brings up the second real responsibility. Rights can be violated by the initiation of physical force directly or by the initiation of indirect equivalents of physical force such as fraud. Thus, each person has the responsibility not to violate the rights of any other human, or face civil and criminal action for doing so.

That's it. That is the end of the responsibilities: Responsibility for one's own upkeep and not initiating force against others.

The push globally to fuse rights and responsibilities reflects intent other than these two basic responsibilities because too many humans in America and globally view man from a collectivist perspective. Man, to them, must be harnessed to duties, they believe. These duties are the "responsibilities."

For example, the right to liberty means to these people that liberty contains a dark side. They portray liberty as freedom, sliding it into "license," meaning narcissistic impulsive action. They try to sell this notion as inherent in "liberty," which it is not. The responsibility of not violating the rights of others fully takes care of any rights violating behaviors by those given to it. But, some people have a vested interest in smuggling erroneous elements into concepts such as rights to take advantage of the poor understanding people have in general about rights. It is a softening up process to bilk people into accepting violation of authentic rights as "normal."

What the fusion crowd really objects to is that rights are selfish. They belong to each individual only and may be used by that individual only, solely to serve his own life. No self-respecing collectivist can tolerate that. Why? Well, because selfishness is bad, they say.

Why is it bad? Among other reasons offered, selfishness has no bonding of one human to another in the manner of being one's brothers' keeper. No, rights require each "brother" to be his own keeper and live by voluntary trade with others in freedom. Selfishness is not inherently bad. Narcissism is inherently bad. If it makes the issue clearer, modify selfishness to read "rational self-interest."

To many people, whether coming from religion or a secular orientation, all people must be duty-bound to others. However, duty and rights are polar opposites and are completely incompatible.

Take another example. The full, proper concept of rights permits any human to do with himself whatever he chooses providing he does not violate the rights of others. For example, if he chooses to take street drugs, that is his choice, as long as he is the sole victim. It is not an intelligent or moral choice, but it is his. He must be responsible for his own actions. In a society properly based on rights, most laws and regulations would either go away or never be instituted because the focus would be on the individual being responsible for himself.

Well, look at the uproar about warring on drugs. No one may be permitted, people of the Right and the Left say, to use drugs, to buy or to sell. Society would collapse, they state with completely evidence-free "certainty." So, the principle of living by permission becomes codified in law, and people's property, in the form of their money, is wrenched by force from them to finance drug war failure after failure after failure. What do these people do when they see their laws and wars against drugs are worse than worthless? Of course, they redouble their efforts and spend even more money to get more of the same.

I do not advocate use of street drugs. I see no reason for using these drugs other than some being useful for cancer pain control and the like. I also recognize that there are questions not covered in this discussion such as the care of children and the helpless, but the answers to those concerns does not invalidate the concept of rights--indeed, the answers further validate the proper concept of rights.

Just remember. Rights are sanctions of actions not entitlements to things. If someone has to provide you your "right," then it is no right. It is no one's "responsibility" to provide you the money, goods, property you want because you feel entitled to these, and the government has some law "giving you the right."

Once you understand this down to your toes, you are on the freedom trail.

Some Backbone, at Last?

30 Muslim workers fired for praying on job at Dell - Thursday, 03/10/05: by ROB JOHNSON, Staff Writer.

On the Tennessean website was the following poll: Reader poll Should companies have to make accommodations for their employees' religious beliefs? Two out of three respondents said "NO!" That is in middle Tennessee, where protestant Christianity is strong. How encouraging that was to read.

The kerfuffle was just another attempt by Muslims to wag the dog by the tail. Here was the issue:

Somalis left workstations at sunset.

Faced with that difficult decision, Abdi H. Nuur removed his employee badge and walked away last month from his forklift driver's job at Dell Computer's Nashville plant. He and 29 other Somali Muslims say they were forced to choose between their faith and their employment.

''Employees are allowed time off with pay to pray. We have traffic-free areas for them to use for prayer.''

Sometimes those religious needs conflict with the business, though.

''When granting time off during a shift on a manufacturing line would be disruptive,'' Drury said, ''we have worked out reasonable accommodations, such as a tag-out procedure when employees can leave the line to pray and return, allowing the next employee time to leave the line to pray.''

Even Dell was bending over to grab the ankles too much while other companies in the Nashville area have been utterly spinelessly obeisant to local Muslim demands for all sorts of concessions revolving about Islam. Obsequiousness toward Muslims' demands regarding Islam has reached utterly disgusting prominence everywhere in America, to say nothing of Europe.

An incident on Fox and Friends this morning was typical of American thought disorder regarding Muslims and Islam. The hostess, while interviewing Paul Sperry, author of a very important new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington, was quick to require that the author reinforce that "Islam is a religion of peace." You know the drill: No criticism of any religion, from the Right. Although not fully morally certain of himself, the author did in fact indicate that Islam is a religion of peace FOR MUSLIMS. Obviously, the hostess has abysmal ignorance about Islam and needed to hear something good said about a big religion.

If one is still ignorant about Islam this far past 11 September 2001, then one is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

These Muslims are pushing us around because (1) they can and Islam requires such behaviors, and (2) they regard us as weak. They have found all of the chinks in Americans' armor, and they exploit every weakness. They know that dominant Christians loathe criticizing religion per se and any specific religion. Christians always feel superior to any but their sect, but they turn the other cheek every time.

The author, Paul Sperry, gave examples of how Muslims even in the FBI literally "pussy-whip" that organization, using Islam as a club. And, the FBI lets them get away with it. The FBI is not alone.

Dell in the Nashville area stood up to these practitioners of the evil cult of Islam, and it won--while the spineless ran for the hills. Americans and America can win, but winning requires an attitude adjustment.

The tenets of Christianity itself sow the seeds of its own destruction with all of its paralyzing moral homilies. Unless Christians wake up, they will hand America to Muslims and perish as Christians and Americans.

There is a remark attributed to the late John Wayne: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Religion (any) as Catch-22. Salman Rushie's Wisdom

Politics In bad faith, Salman Rushdie, Monday March 14, 2005, Guardian


[Summary: Today Tony Blair will try to force a law against incitement to religious hatred through parliament. Beware, says Salman Rushdie - the rising power of religion could end up destroying the western alliance.]


"I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a religion came after me. Religion was a part of my subject, of course; for a novelist from the Indian subcontinent, how could it not have been? But in my opinion I also had many other, larger, tastier fish to fry. Nevertheless, when the attack came, I had to confront what was confronting me, and to decide what I wanted to stand up for in the face of what so vociferously, repressively and violently stood against me. Now, 16 years later, religion is coming after us all, and even though most of us probably feel, as I once did, that we have other, more important concerns, we are all going to have to confront the challenge. If we fail, this particular fish may end up frying us.

"For those of us who grew up in India in the aftermath of the partition riots in 1947, the shadow of that slaughter has remained as a dreadful warning of what men will do in the name of God. And there have been too many recurrences of such violence, in Meerut, in Assam, most recently in Gujarat. European history, too, is littered with proofs of the dangers of politicised religion: the French wars of religion, the bitter Irish troubles, the "Catholic nationalism" of the fascistic Spanish dictator Franco, and the rival armies in the English civil war going into battle, both singing the same hymns.

"People have always turned to religion for the answers to the two great questions of life: where did we come from? And, how shall we live? But on the question of origins, all religions are simply wrong. No, the universe wasn't created in six days by a superforce that rested on the seventh. Nor was it churned into being by a sky-god with a giant churn. And on the social question, the simple truth is that wherever religions get into society's driving seat, tyranny results. The Inquisition results. Or the Taliban.

"And yet religions continue to insist that they provide special access to ethical truths, and consequently deserve special treatment and protection. And they continue to emerge from the world of private life, where they belong, like so many other things that are acceptable when done in private between consenting adults but unacceptable in the town square, and to bid for power. The emergence of radical Islam needs no re-description here; but the resurgence of faith is a larger subject than that.

"In today's US, it's possible for almost anyone - women, gays, African-Americans, Jews - to run for, and be elected to, high office. But a professed atheist wouldn't stand a popcorn's chance in hell. Hence the increasingly sanctimonious quality of so much American political discourse: the president, according to Bob Woodward, sees himself as a "messenger" doing "the Lord's will", and "moral values" has become a code phrase for old-fashioned, anti-gay, anti-abortion bigotry. The defeated Democrats also seem to be scurrying towards this kind of low ground, perhaps despairing of ever winning an election any other way.

"According to Jacques Delors, ex-president of the European Commission, "The clash between those who believe and those who don't believe will be a dominant aspect of relations between the US and Europe in the coming years." In Europe, the bombing of a railway station in Madrid and the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh are being seen as warnings that the secular principles that underlie any humanist democracy need to be defended and reinforced. Even before these atrocities occurred, the French decision to ban religious attire such as Islamic headscarves from state schools had the support of the entire political spectrum. Islamist demands for segregated classes and prayer breaks were also rejected. Few Europeans today call themselves religious (just 21%, according to a recent study); the majority of Americans do (59%, according to the Pew Forum). The Enlightenment, in Europe, represented an escape from the power of religion to place limiting points on thought; in America, it represented an escape into the religious freedom of the New World - a move towards faith rather than away from it. Many Europeans now view the American combination of religion and nationalism as frightening.

"The exception to European secularism can be found in Britain, or at least in the government of the devoutly Christian and increasingly authoritarian Tony Blair, which is presently trying to steamroller parliament into passing a law against "incitement to religious hatred", in a cynical vote-getting attempt to placate British Muslim spokesmen, in whose eyes just about any critique of Islam is offensive.

"Journalists, lawyers and a long list of public figures have warned that this law will dramatically hinder free speech and fail to meet its objective - that religious disturbances will increase rather than diminish. Blair's government seems to view the whole subject of civil liberties with disdain - what do freedoms matter, hard-won and long-cherished though they may be, when set against the requirements of a government facing re-election?

"And yet the Blairite policy of appeasement must be defeated. Perhaps the House of Lords will do what the Commons failed to do, and send this bad law to the scrapheap. And - though this is more unlikely - maybe America's Democrats will come to understand that in today's 50-50 America they may actually have more to gain by standing up against the Christian coalition and its fellow travellers and cohorts, and refusing to let the Mel Gibson view of the world shape American social and political policy. If these things do not happen, if America and Britain allow religious faith to control and dominate public discourse, then the western alliance will be placed under ever-increasing strain, and those other religionists, the ones against whom we're supposed to be fighting, will have great cause to celebrate.

"Victor Hugo wrote: "There is in every village a torch: the schoolmaster - and an extinguisher: the parson." We need more teachers and less priests in our lives; because, as James Joyce once said, "There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being." But perhaps the great American lawyer Clarence Darrow put the secularist argument best of all. "I don't believe in God," he said, "because I don't believe in Mother Goose."

Fair Warning: the "disease" of the Left may be no worse than the "cure" of the right.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights = WRONG, not right, Part 2

On 7 March 2005, we presented Part 1 of this two part article. This is the concluding part.

The importance of untangling this confusing mess of the concept of "rights" cannot be overstressed. Most people think nowadays that rights are some sort of entitlements, some things dispensed by the government, rather like largess. People who should know better fan the flames of this confusion because it creates pressure groups within populations demanding to the get their "fair share."

The truth is, if something called a "right" is a thing, a concrete, something created by someone such as money or products, then the thing called a "right" is not a right at all. Rights cannot be given by anyone to you, and they cannot be taken away by anyone. Even you cannot give away your own rights. Why? They are "unalienable," as the Declaration of Independence says.

Rights may be violated, abrogated, or be unprotected by one's government. Your neighbors may take your property, even your life or freedom, but you never lose your rights. And, if governments take your money and property to give to others without your consent, your rights have been violated by your government. And what the recipients of your productivity have is not satisfaction of their rights, but mooching of that looted from you.

If none of this is important to you or anyone else, you most surely will have your rights stiffled, one way or another.

DO NOT SUPPORT THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

(Part II of Two)

VIOLATING RIGHTS

Suppose, however, that one or more individuals decide that their lives will be advanced by taking the belongings of a neighbor or neighbors. We know that is wrong, but why is it wrong, in terms of rights?

Someone once said, “Your rights stop at my skin.” I.e., you are properly able to take any actions which do not violate the rights held by others. Rights apply evenly to all persons.

Remember, rights are freedoms of action in a social context, and as long as those actions do not violate the rights of others, this means ANY AND ALL ACTIONS, even those which others may not approve of at all, or those others may think unwise. However, if these others’ rights are not being violated, their approval is irrelevant. Someone’s actions, within the scope of rights, might result from poor choices, but, in a free society, those who engage in poor judgment are the only ones to suffer as long as they do not violate the rights of others. Many people have grave difficulty understanding this. Thus, many people advocate all sorts of governmental restrictions and laws against all sorts of actions they consider repugnant or immoral but which do not harm them directly. Once you finally grasp the concept of rights, you no longer have this hang-up.

It is only around other people that violation of rights even becomes an issue. A castaway on an uninhabited island faces no questions about his or her rights, even though he or she has them. There’s no one there to interfere with the castaway’s rights. However, let even one other person join the castaway, and the question comes up over and over. Alone, the castaway experiences no violation of his right to life if, for example, he fails to find sufficient food or shelter. His failure is not a result of some other person’s blocking his attempts to find food or shelter. The new arrival, however, introduces the possibility of force being initiated against the castaway. For example, if the new arrival steals the castaway’s food and shelter or tries to break his arms and legs whenever the castaway tries to hunt, fish, plant, or harvest, then the castaway’s rights to life, liberty, and property have been violated, along with his right to pursue his own happiness.

What if the new arrival just intimidates, or even makes verbal threats, to the castaway, but takes no physical action? If he does not follow through by initiating physical force, he is unpleasant, but he does not violate the rights of the castaway. Do you remember this expression from your early years? “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Thus it is with rights. Only the initiation of physical force can violate rights, and understanding this is crucial to understanding rights.

As obnoxious as the new arrival’s “psy-ops” may be, they cannot physically impede the castaway’s right to life. However, when the new arrival acts to stop the castaway from supporting himself, then the castaway’s rights have been violated.

It is important to differentiate the two types of physical force. To violate rights, someone must start—i.e., initiate—physical force against someone else in order to block that person’s freedoms of action. Until that physical force starts, no rights are violated.

The other type of physical force is retaliatory; if someone injures you or steals from you, you have the right to respond in order to restore your rights, as an application of justice. You obviously have the right to defense as well, to minimize or prevent violation of your rights.

Criminals may also use the intellectual equivalent of physical force: deceit and fraud. Both physical force and deceit-fraud prevent you from acting on your own behalf. If the castaway and the new arrival agreed to search for water, for example, and the new arrival found it but lied to the castaway, that would violate the latter’s rights. Enron is a larger and very well known example of deceit-fraud.

There is a pertinent statement in our Declaration of Independence, “…for these reasons [the protection of individual rights], governments are instituted among men…” Citizens delegate the use of physical force to a governing institution in exchange for freedom from that duty, so they can pursue their lives without that distraction.

Rogues and criminals exist in all societies, and they pose threats to the rights of citizens. However, their threat cannot compare either in quality or quantity to that posed by the actions of a rogue government. For example, just because there is a law does not mean that it is morally valid. When that government passes laws and regulations authorizing it to violate individual rights, it changes the moral use of force which has been delegated to it by its citizens into a legal one that is immoral, and then uses it. It may thus imprison, confiscate, tax, force into labor, kill, maim, starve, and enslave citizens in violation of their rights. A government like that of Saddam Hussein violates rights in egregiously obvious ways. Societies somewhere between being fully free (capitalism) and fully unfree (totalitarian) violate rights through a progressive mix of controls and legal distortions until the government ultimately acquires enough power to act openly against its citizens and without regard for the rights of those citizens.

Conservatives, more than others, are quick to tag “rights” with corresponding “responsibilities.” THE ONLY RESPONSIBILITY—ONLY—ENTAILED BY “RIGHTS” IS FOR EACH PERSON TO RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS AND NOT VIOLATE THEM. There are NO social, religious, group, state, or collective “responsibilities.” How do I know? I know because I know the source and meaning of “rights,” i.e., that they derive from reality and pertain to the nature of human beings, not groups or states, or others.

THE RIGHTS TEST

There is a simple test which differentiates counterfeit “rights” from authentic, fundamental rights. The test is based on the fact that rights are freedoms of action in a social context. As Ayn Rand defines rights,

"Rights" are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual's actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.[7]

The “test question is: “Who provides these?” If the answer is “you,” meaning that you take the actions for you, then you are dealing with a right. If the answer is “someone else” or “others,” meaning that the money, property, or effort of other people are required to provide you with money or other property, then you are dealing with bogus rights. Your rights refer to your freedoms of action, not to the products of the actions of others.

THE U.N.’s COUNTERFEIT RIGHTS

Let’s apply the test question. We can use the bogus rights upheld by the United Nations in the UDHR as arch-typical examples. In briefest summary, the UDHR cites these “rights”:

· Social security

· Guaranteed employment and protection against unemployment

· Guaranteed social protections

· Periodic holidays with pay

· Guaranteed standard of living, food, clothing, housing, medical care, necessary social services, and security against unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, and any circumstances beyond one’s control

· Free education

About each item and each sub-item in the foregoing list, let us ask the question, “Who provides?” Each time we get the same answer. Someone else, other than the recipient, must provide. It is always those who “have” who must provide to those who, be definition, “have not.”

No one whose thinking comes up with or approves such lists ever asks whether those who “have” if they want to subsidize those who “have not.” Ayn Rand said it perfectly:

Jobs, food, clothing, recreation (!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to enslave."

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort.[8]

Implementation of these “U.N. rights” means taking the property and labor of some by force to give to others. To accomplish these ends, governments must initiate physical force against their citizens to get their property, labor, and even their lives to be able to “redistribute” to others. The fact that the providers might be willing to donate the fruits of his labor without the use of force in no way excuses the potential for the use of force.

Humanity always has groups of pseudo-moralists who use guilt to soften up the “haves” with moral pabulum so they will not resist the confiscations. This is never more than partially successful. Most people see the hypocrisy.

Inevitably, the power-lusting control-freaks turn bogus rights into legal (but not moral) entitlements that completely invert morality. The act of earning something through terms that are mutually and voluntarily agreed upon is an authentic right. Earning becomes a tangible value in the form of money; money certifies that something of value has been accomplished. The government, which takes this earned money to give it to someone else who did not earn it but who is given claim to it by the use of force on the part of the government, literally loots and steals, then “redistributes” this “stolen property” as a bogus “right,” justified by fiat.

Non-free nations engage in looting behavior as a matter of policy. Stealing is as much a way of life as breathing. Corruption dominates life. In such societies, citizens are free to do only what they are permitted to do because the state and its wards have legal but not morally valid claims to the lives, labors, and property of the citizens. People in Islamia have no recognition of their rights whatsoever; everyone lives by permission, following commands from the dispensers of force.

When relatively free countries engage in the manufacture of counterfeit rights, they become less and less free. Entitlements grow. Bogus rights replace authentic rights. Down the slippery slope such countries go; where they stop, WE KNOW. If they do not stop, the logical conclusion is to become an unfree society in which all individuals’ rights have been abrogated.

The morphing of the legitimate “Rights of Man” into the illegitimate “economic rights” (or any other set of bogus rights) establishes a fatal principle: The life and property of its citizens belong to the state, not to the individual. Totalitarian states fully implement this principle.

“NEEDS” VERSUS “RIGHTS”

Another source of confusion surfaces here. It always takes the form of asking, “What do those in need do in a free society? Who takes care of them, and how?”

Helping those in need is very important to most people. This benevolence contributes mightily to civilizing life among free peoples (it is scarce among non-free peoples). Americans, as the freest people on earth, are by far the most caring, helpful, and generous, both among themselves and toward others.

Is it a measure of generosity, though, if money and property are forcibly seized from those who have something to “redistribute”? Many people are ill at ease with such seizures, because they are fundamentally unfair. Yet, there are people who are still in need.

How do we resolve this problem? The answer, happily, is “easily.”

Let’s develop an answer that resolves the “need problem” by clarifying the question of “needs” versus “rights.” This clarification shows how well the “needs problem” gets addressed and resolved in a society while fully protecting the fundamental rights of every one of its citizens.

One ground rule is that a “need” is not an authorization to abrogate the rights of someone else. People must be left free to seek solutions. People must be left free to give whatever they choose to help those who are in need. And, if they choose not to give, then they must be left free not to give, since that is their right as well.

People who have a vested interest in spreading bogus rights want to distort the concept of rights into becoming a give-away system which they use to acquire power and influence. They play upon confused persons’ emotions about “helping people.” They fog the issue to exploit the benevolence and common decency of the confused in order to harness them to the exploiters’ purposes. They would have you believe that few people have compassion for those who are not as well off, and so must be compelled to help out. But, in fact, compassion is one of our best human sentiments. Compassion exists in all societies, but only in free societies is the means for them to blossom as well as strongly developed desires to help.

A free, moral society is a society where rights are universally recognized, and has a government which exists to protect those rights.

The freer the society, the more of your property (including your money) you keep. You and others build up savings (“surplus funds”) quickly when government is restricted in what it can take from you.

This surplus money routinely plays into the benevolence toward others that an estimated 85% of us have: the more people keep of what they earn, the more they can give to charities. Conversely, the less “surplus” money people can keep, the less they are able to donate. Ask any charity how well their coffers are filled during the “highs” and “lows” of economic cycles.

[Perhaps it is unnecessary to state this, but just in case it is not, remember always that government produces NOTHING, including money. What government has, it must extract from its citizens.]

The surplus money in a free society always goes to work; it buys better standards of living, and, through investing in the creation of businesses, results in widespread employment. Thus, those at the low socio-economic end of life find many more opportunities to earn their sustenance and to meet their needs.

A very small core of those who have met with unmanageable misfortune for whatever reason, and truly cannot help themselves at all, will always remain. In a truly free society, though, the numbers of the helpless become fewer than in any other kind of society, and they are easier for the rest of us to help since they are small in number. A free society is an OPPORTUNITY SOCIETY, and includes almost endless opportunities to help others.

This is not idle, pie-in-the-sky, wish-fulfillment theorizing. History bears this out. A free society always has the fewest dependents because it is the best able to provide opportunity for people to support themselves at many levels, and more people have sufficient “surplus” available to help.

BE BLOODY CAREFUL WHAT YOU ENDORSE

The UNUDHR wobbles unfocused between the Rights of Man, derivative rights, and counterfeit rights. Furthermore, it never defines “rights.” This is a failure which allows it to corrupt freedom. Given how little people understand “rights,” the UNUDHR package deal gets sold and bought, with well-meaning advocates and supporters being none the wiser. Those trying to build an edifice of freedom, based to any extent on the UDHR, build on a fatally flawed foundation. You cannot replace some of your money with counterfeit money and expect enduring good results. Nor can you smuggle in bogus rights and expect to get away with it over the long range. Reality always wins in the end.

The bogus rights of the UDHR are so-called “economic rights.” They are the core of all forms of socialism: “democratic” socialism, fascism, and communism. Bogus rights inexorably pave the way to totalitarianism unless the bogus rights are thrown out and replaced with authentic rights.

Those who are rebelling from the utter totalitarianism that is Islam must not sabotage their truly noble goals and efforts. Islam is a horrible religion and a vicious philosophy. It abrogates the rights of all Muslims. It destroys the minds and lives of everyone it touches. Escaping from Islam and rejecting it are among the highest moral actions possible to any human being. Those who escape and oppose Islam are exceptionally courageous and admirable people. Those who fully reject Islam in favor of reality, reason, and rights will serve as role models to inspire others in their struggle for freedom, and their ultimate success.

The opposite, the antithesis, of Islam (and any incipient or fully developed totalitarian ideology) are the famed rights of man: Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The derivatives of these basic rights are also actions; they are decidedly not what the UNUDHR offers--social security, housing, health, groceries, income, education, and so on. These are not actions; they are products that must be provided by others. Other people must be forced to produce and provide the concretes the UN regards as “rights,” which means enslaving some to serve others.

What I am saying to ISIS and all others escaping Islam, I say also to the United States of America, which must pursue the same corrective policies.

But to those escaping Islam: Yes, run from Islam. And, run from the UN’s UDHR as well. Replace this document with a philosophically valid concept of “rights” that benefits all persons on earth. This will set you and all people on earth free.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] http://www.secularislam.org/,

[2] http://www.un.org

[3] Peikoff, L.: Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; Meridian Books, NY, ISBN: 0-452-01101-9, 1991, page 353

[4] Rand, A: The Virtue of Selfishness; Signet Books, NY; ISBN:0-451-12931-8, 1964; page 93

[5] Ibid, page 94

[6] Peikoff, op. cit., page 350

[7] Rand, op. cit., page 92-93

[8] Ibid, page 96

Appeasing Ourselves into Nuclear War

Iran says no external pressure will stop its nuke program, Associated Press, March 12, 2005, IRAN0313

TEHRAN, Iran — Neither threats nor incentives will alter Iran's
pursuit of its nuclear program, the Iranian foreign ministry said today, defying new moves by the European Union and the United States to ensure Tehran never develops a nuclear bomb.

The show of bluster and defiance came a day after the Bush administration softened its stance on how to thwart Iran's suspected nuclear arms program, agreeing to support a European plan that offers economic incentives for the Tehran government to give up any weapons ambitions.

Why does all of this "negotiating" take so long? Why are the results always so pathetic? The answer is always the same: You cannot negotiate with bullies from a position of weakness.

Iran knows that we can be pushed around. Syria knows the same. No one but us really cares what the spineless Europeans think; they quit being strong many decades ago and may never be strong again.

Using the ports, rails, roads, utilities, and government buildings in Syria for bombing practice would get the attention and respect of Syria, thus their cooperation. It would go just so far because we have played the weakness game since World War II, and all of the world sees us as exploitable and cowardly--until some ne'er-do-well pushes us to complete extreme, causing us to react. Even then, we take limited measures like Pres. Bush is doing.

Taking out Iran's ports, rails, etc., and its oil delivery systems would be a good start. Add to that the complete obliteration of Qom for maximum symbolic value. Then, we could stage Israeli aircraft from our Middle Eastern bases and aircraft carriers and support their taking out ALL of Iran's nuclear whatevers. There would be considerable symbolic value in that as well, and we would get their attention. While doing this, publicly incite and publicly and matierially support revolution in Iran, and take full responsibility to see that the right people get in, and make the mullahs "disappear."

For dessert, tell the Saudis that they have one week to close all their (Wahhabi) madrassas worldwide and all of their organizations and "schools" in America. Sheets and towels would fly--because they would know that we meant it.

None of this will happen. What will happen is that we will wring hands, try to buy off the baddies, and talk-talk-talk with Europeans and the baddies. They will grow stronger, develop nuclear weapons, and they will use them--on us.

Coulda-shoulda-woulda.

Telegraph | News | Spanish Muslims issue fatwa on bin Laden

By Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid, (Filed: 11/03/2005)

Muslims in Spain issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden yesterday.

The ruling by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the nation's one million Muslims, came on the eve of the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, which were linked to the al-Qa'eda network.

The commission's leader, Mansur Escudero, said the group had consulted Muslim leaders in other countries, such as Libya and Morocco - home to most of the suspects in the March 11 bombings.

The fatwa said that, in accordance with the Koran, "the terrorist acts of Osama bin Laden and his organisation al-Qa'eda... are totally banned and must be roundly condemned as part of Islam".

The fatwa is believed to represent the first major condemnation of bin Laden by a mainstream Muslim organisation.

The statement was intended as a move to rehabilitate the reputation of the Spanish Muslim community after the attacks, when Islamist terrorists exploded 10 bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 and injuring 1,500.

The fatwa condemning bin Laden has particular resonance for Spain because after the attacks a group allied to al-Qa'eda, the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, stated that the attacks on Spain were revenge for the loss of the Spanish Muslim kingdom of al-Andalus in 1492. The statement said: "This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader and America's ally in its war against Islam.''

There is something delicious about this fatwa from Spanish Muslims. It may be the first of its kind since 11 September 2001 from any Muslims anywhere. I do not recall any others. Most Muslims, including those living plush lives in America, have sat on their hands on their prayer rugs in silence, strengthening the idea that silence is assent.

Muslims have it in their power to put a stop to most, if not all, of this Islam inspired and directed war against everybody who is not them. They are human beings who possess the same kind of volitional consciousness that all other humans have. They have the same choice each of us has: to use that consciousness to think or not.

That single choice--to think or not--makes ALL of the difference, 100%. And that applies to each human on earth. Exercising that choice can make a profoundly positive difference in every home, every town, every country, every continent. The forms making that choice takes are as many as there are people and thoughts, and there is no guarantee of correctness or outcome. However, making the choice makes it possible to detect and correct errors, and that makes all the difference.

Whether the Spanism Muslims' fatwa affects other Muslims elsewhere remains to be seen. It could be a flash-in-the-pan, or, like the voting in Iraq, be the formative drops of what can become a big river of change. Muslims are religious robots by choice. They can become positive citizens, by choice. It hangs on a single decision repeated until the job is done: to think.

Khartoum

The Sudan has been in a state of roil at least as long as Islam has had it by its vitals. Khartoum, a principle city, sits where the White Nile and the Blue Nile Rivers join. The name "Khartoum" has suggested exotic intrigue and adventure as much as "Marrakesh" on the western side of Africa, and that importance has been heightened for centuries by the importance of the Nile River and its major African feeder rivers. A movie named "Khartoum" would be a natural, one would think, and in the case of the 1966 film, this was true.

The film had an Oscar nominated script and a stellar cast which pitted Charleton Heston as famous British General Charles "Chinese" Gordon against Muhammad Ahmed who had proclaimed himself to be the "Mahdi, " and the plot involved the survival of Khartoum.

Ahmed was an ascetic Muslim Sudanese smitten with messianic needs. He preached Islam along lines suggesting a kinship with Wahhabism, and he fell totally in love with himself, to the point that he declared himself to be the "Mahdi," meaning "the expected one." He was to be the Muslim version of the returning Jesus, and he envisioned himself second only to Muhammad. Unlike Muhammad who died before the era of Muslim conquest could get underway fully and then peak, Ahmed saw himself as coming to rule all of Islamia. His goal was to purify laggard Muslims and to purge the land of infidels. Sound familiar?

Gordon, who had rid the Sudan of slave trading in the 1870s, was sent by the British government, Prime Minister Gladstone, to evacuate the Egyptians from Khartoum along with himself, and leave the city to its fate. Gordon was given no army of any size and had no support from the British government. He worked with what he had. Despite holding out ten months against the seige from Ahmed, militarily unsupported Khartoum was overrun in January 1885, and Gordon was murdered. Two days later, a johnny-come-lately British army which had been purposely dallying in Egypt for months arrived in Khartoum to save Gordon and the city. It was too late.

That story is worth telling by itself. The modern parallels are striking. Obviously, politicians took no lessons from the seige of Khartoum.

More striking however is the script for this movie. Gordon and Ahmed are drawn boldly as polar opposites contestants. One represents Western civilization and its values, and the other represents the full meaning and expression of Islam. The lesson is timeless: You cannot win against a committed enemy unless you have the will and the means to win.

The script has the men meeting twice. In fact, they never met, but that is factually immaterial to the art. As Westerners, we can imagine Gordon quite clearly as a powerful military leader upholding Western values. As Westerners, we do not so clearly imagine Muhammad Ahmed, aka the Mahdi. This is the great value of art because it reduces the Mahdi to perceptual form which we grasp immediately and fully as a concrete.

Laurence Olivier portrayed the Mahdi and did a superlative job. He voiced megalomaniacal Islam in its full, bloodthirsty form. He showed the type of thought disorder so common to this type of self-appointed Islamic leader who fuses his persona or self with Islam to become the selfless embodiment of the full meaning of Islam, thereby himself living in delusions of grandeur. Like every other megalomaniac, his thirst for blood and conquest became even more insatiable with every success. Like Muhammad, he personalized physical features to be stigmata of his destiny--he proclaimed that he was the Mahdi because of a mole on his cheek and a gap between his teeth. That suggests mental aberration close to, if not into, the psychotic level.

Mahdi insisted on killing the thousands of Egyptians in Khartoum so that the Nile would run red for a hundred miles. Why? He said they were not believers in him being the Mahdi. Muhammad was guiding him as were the sacred texts.

I suspect that Olivier's portrayal closely suggests what the original Muhammad may have been like in his Medina phase, the final and blood-thirsty stage of his career as despot.

Could this movie be made today, in 2005? Perhaps that can be answered by asking who in the film industry still has "cashews." The film industry has been cowed by the effects of postmodernism percolating into the culture the poison of political correctness and multiculturalism. The film industry of today, in general, now crawls.

"Khartoum" is film history and is available for viewing. It was made before political correctness and multiculturalism had become as prevalent as they are today. However, the effect of these was becoming felt as illustrated by the statement from film introducer on Turner Classic Movies, Robert Osborne. Mr. Osborne said that the film producer apologized to the Mahdi's grandson because the movie fictionalized meetings between Gordon and Ahmed. The grandson, we are told, said that the two men should have met. No apology of any kind was needed, and I apologize for writing that--it should not be necessary, but this is 2005.

A Notice to All Non-Muslim Parents

This is a "News Alert" to all non-Muslim parents visiting this Blog. Did you know that your child might be a Muslim?

Many Muslim organizations, such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, help the teachers in our government schools by creating lesson plans to guide them in teaching your child about Islam. Members of such organizations often come into the classroom personally to help teach these lessons. Another means of help involves visits by students from nearby Muslim schools; the student-visitors help to teach non-Muslim students about their faith. Sometimes a Muslim "multicultural trainer" will come into the classroom to help implement the lessons.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee says that a "Muslim" is "one who freely and willingly accepts the supreme power of God and strives to live his or her life in accord with the teachings of God" (http://www.adc.org/index.php?id=249).

That sounds very benign. You might even think that if that's all there is to being a Muslim, then what does it matter?

There's more to being a Muslim, however, but in the characteristic manner of Islam, Muslims engaged in the conversion of everyone on the planet Earth to Islam do not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To do so would reveal tos much suspicion, and create too much opposition.

One kind of lesson brought into our schools by Islamic groups involves the "role-playing" of traditional Islamic activities. One role-playing activity is the recitation of a prayer called the "Confession of Faith." Sometimes this prayer is uttered in sacred Arabic words, and so it cannot be understood by most non-Muslim children.

Whether recited in English or Arabic, the goal of the "Confession of Faith" is accomplished. It doesn't matter that the classroom teacher, you, or your child knows what the effect of uttering the "Confession of Faith" is. All that matters to Muslims is that the prayer be uttered.

And just what IS the effect? It is this: The recitation of this prayer automatically makes of your child a convert to Islam. The conversion is irrevocable, even if you or your child say you didn't know about this, that you didn't agree to it, or that you deny that you are, or want to be, Muslims.

How many such unwitting/unwilling "Muslims" do we have in our public schools? How many of our children have become subject to the Islamic law that says that an "apostate," which is a Muslim who rejects Islam, can be put to death for his rejection of the True Faith (Islam)?

While no such execution of American public schoolchildren has yet taken place (or is likely in the foreseeable future), the religious authority to make it happen exists.

Parents, if you would rather your children be of your own religion, or without any religion, please quiz your school. Find out if there have been lesson plans provided by Islamic groups. Find out if the "Five Pillars of Islam" are part of the lesson plan (the First Pillar is a prayer, a "Confession of Faith"); find out about role-playing exercises where prayers are recited in English or in any other language. Read your child's textbooks to see if this kind of information is included in them; see if there is anything about the consummation of Muhammad's marriage to a nine-year-old girl is mentioned; see if the slitting of throats we have heard so much about on the news is mentioned as a revered religious ritual in Islam; see if they mention that Muslims consider all other religions to be "false religions," and must be destroyed; see if world conquest/conversion is mentioned as the holy purpose and obligation of every Muslim.

Insist that any time anything about Islam is taught in your child's classroom, that you be notified in advance, and that your child have your permission to take part in the lesson.

Above all, educate yourselves; your child's future depends on it.

The Muslim "helpers" do not find it necessary to tell you about any of this, or anything else about Islam's very active campaign to impose Islam on every person on the earth, by whatever means necessary. In fact, they try their very best to deny it and to convince you that it isn't so. They even use terms such as "racist" to intimidate people trying to alert you to these practices and goals. "Deception" is one of Islam's time-honored methods of attaining the goal of world-conversion/conquest; it was Muhammad's command to use deception, which in Arabic is "taqyya."

You and your children are not immune to "taqiyya," and Muslim groups prey upon our good will and tolerance of all belief systems to use it to great effect.

The NY Times' Wahhabi Apologists

The NY Times' Wahhabi Apologists , by Erick Stakelbeck, FrontPageMagazine.com March 7, 2005.

This article is too good to be condensed or abstracted. It is a real "keeper."


The indictment of American citizen Ahmed Omar Abu Ali for terrorism-related charges that include conspiring to assassinate President Bush made headlines last week in the New York Times. And as it has done previously when reporting on the War on Terror, the Times failed to get the real story.

Abu Ali attended the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia for high school and also spent a year at the Institute for Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America (IIASA). Both of these schools receive funding from the Saudi government and both have been the subject of repeated concerns regarding the intolerant, extremist Wahabbi material they use to “teach” students.

In a February 24 piece, the Times dutifully reported on Abu Ali’s student days and noted that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had previously complained about the Islamic Saudi Academy’s use of a textbook for first-graders that disparaged Judaism and Christianity. This left the unmistakable impression that CAIR is a moderate voice for American Muslims—and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the Times neglected to mention a recent statement by CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper actually defending the Academy despite its attempted brainwashing of first- graders:

“The fact that one sentence in one book, out of an entire curriculum, needs to be changed or clarified hardly justifies sweeping charges of extremism.”

The Times also missed the point that CAIR, like the two schools that were the subject of the story, has received Saudi funding. Missing, too, was the fact that CAIR has a long track record of defending extremist Islam and has accepted donations from terror-linked organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization that has been indicted for providing material support to Hamas.

Had the Times bothered to launch its vast army of investigative reporters—or do a Google search—it would have found a mountain of examples of absurd, black-is-white denials by CAIR that have at their core the defense and promotion of Wahabbi Islam and those that act on its behalf.

CAIR’s national legal director, Arsalan Iftikhar, recently wrote an op-ed attacking last month’s acclaimed Freedom House report—which detailed the bevy of extremist materials funded by the Saudi government found at U.S. mosques—as “more hysteria than substance.” And Hooper even denies the existence of Wahabbism, saying it is “one of those terms which is invented to scare people about Muslim bogeymen. It’s just all part of the extremely powerful right wing and their agenda right now to demonize Saudi Arabia and demonize anything associated with Saudi Arabia.”

Similarly, CAIR officials have attempted to recast jihad as a peaceful activity akin to an anti-littering campaign. CAIR’s co-founder and current Executive Director, Nihad Awad—disregarding centuries of Islamic conquest in the name of jihad—has said it “never means holy war.”

“The United States army, when it goes to defend innocent people, that’s a form of jihad,” Awad told National Public Radio in 1998. “Whenever a conductor tries to save the life of a baby, is a—is a jihad. A mother to raise her children is jihad. You know, an honest person who wants to get good life is jihad.”

It would appear, then, that the Bush administration has it all wrong: Al-Qaeda’s frequent calls for jihad against the West aren’t motivated by genocidal hatred, but, rather, a sincere desire for friendship and solidarity.

Awad’s deceptive reasoning isn’t limited to jihad apologia; for CAIR, the War on Terror is really a war against Islam. For example, Awad has decried “the racist policies and practices being carried out by some branches of the U.S. government,” while Hooper has said that the Department of Justice has a “general policy of targeting Muslims because they are Muslims.”

Perhaps no one exposes the disingenuity of CAIR better than Ibrahim Abdul Mu'min of the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism. Speaking of CAIR and its persistent claims of America’s “victimization of Muslims,” he notes:

“The real victimizer is CAIR itself...Muslims are not in danger from America or in America. America and Muslims are in danger from CAIR.”

Rational people acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of Islamist terrorist activity is carried out by Wahhabi devotees. And yet, when asked about Congressional hearings held in 2003 on Wahhabi influence in America, Hooper complained, “elected representatives like Senator [Charles] Schumer and Senator [John] Kyl…are jumping on this issue in order to demonize all Muslim groups and all Muslims in America.”

Hooper’s condemnation of Schumer and Kyl comes as no surprise, given the two men’s repudiation of CAIR. Schumer has stated that CAIR “has ties to terrorism,” while Kyl has written that CAIR’s “terror-related activities are being scrutinized by my [Senate Judiciary] subcommittee as well as the federal government.”

Despite all of this, the Times chose to limply portray CAIR as a benign moderate Islamic group devoted to civil liberties and interfaith harmony. This does a grave disservice to the legitimate Muslim groups in America that want no part of medieval Wahhabi extremism and to readers who expect what they read to have at least a passing relationship with the truth. Whether due to laziness or a stubborn refusal to admit that its past characterization of CAIR has been misinformed, the Times dropped the ball—once again.

Erick Stakelbeck is senior writer at the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based counterterrorism research institute.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights = WRONG, not right

There is a serious shortage of knowledge about rights, what they are, and what they are not, in North America, the U.K., and Europe. To the extent that their governments even acknowledge the exitence of rights in the Middle East, Russia, China, Korea, and other centers of barbarism, their notion of rights fits the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) best.

Too many of the chattering class prattle about "human rights," as if they know what they are saying. What they mean by "human rights" is a mix of authentic rights and collectivist statism, in which the latter provide the means to destroy the former. Prattlers about "human rights" usually also prattle about "social justice," which is a code term for collectivism, statism, the total state, i.e., socialism. There are some good people and organizations which believe themselves to be opposed to Islamic domination of the world, and they do very good work. But part of their belfry remains utterly cluttered by lack of knowledge about rights and their ignorant affirmation of the UDHR. Unknowingly, they are nullifying the very fine work they are doing by their advocacy and acceptance of the UDHR. If they knew better, they would stop advocating the wrong rights and advocate the correct rights.

Understanding rights is not hard, but it takes some time, and the rewards are plentiful. Once grasped, one has the feeling of having one's brain scrubbed to squeeky clean.

To follow is a reprinting of part one of an article first published on the website 6TH COLUMN AGAINST JIHAD. Next week, we will publish the concluding part two.

DO NOT SUPPORT THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (UNITED NATIONS)

(Part I of Two Parts)

Some excellent anti-Islamic, anti-jihad, pro-freedom and pro-rights groups and individuals seriously damage themselves by their public dedication to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). They believe they are taking a moral stand for rights, but they do not grasp the profound contradiction and violation to morality that they create by supporting documents like the UDHR. Little do they realize that they are opening the door to the very horrors, miseries, and degradations that made them leave Islam.

I found one excellent example of such a problem from a group that I like, and I want to be very clear that I present this only in the spirit of wanting this group—and all others making the same error--to expunge this terrible contradiction. The group is the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS)[1] founded by Ibn Warraq, a former Muslim, and a man greatly and properly revered.

This group’s Mission Statement says in part: “We believe that Islamic society has been held back by an unwillingness to subject its beliefs, laws and practices to critical examination, by a lack of respect for the rights of the individual…The Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) has been formed to promote the ideas of rationalism, secularism, democracy and human rights within Islamic society.” This is a powerful statement.

ISIS then offers a five-part “Statement of Principles.”

Statement Three inserts the deadly virus into their principles: “We endorse the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants without qualification.”

Had ISIS properly qualified its endorsement of UDHR, it would have avoided the damage. The qualification might accept part of the UDHR as is, but would totally reject the counterfeit “rights.” However, ISIS states its endorsement “without qualification,” thus it drinks the entire draught of poison.

What is the UDHR?

THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The United Nations makes information about UDHR available on its website[2]. It also gives UDHR history and background information. For example, the UN states that UDHR was adopted on 10 December 1948, and that Eleanor Roosevelt was the American “key contributor.” At the end of the question and answer section it has for children, it asks, “Why is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights important to you?” And, it answers, “Because it protects and promotes your individual rights.”

Protecting and promoting anyone’s individual rights is exactly what it DOES NOT DO.

How does UDHR say that it “protects” and “promotes” persons’ individual rights?

Following an eight paragraph preamble, UDHR specifies thirty “rights.” The UN authors who created this document knew little to nothing about rights; because of this ignorance, the issue is fogged and allows bogus rights to go undetected. Judging from the quality of the thirty “rights,” the list reads like a committee creation. The language is often as fuzzy as the document is definition-free. Enumerated “rights” vary from the fundamental to the derivative to frank anti-rights; no guide delineates which are which.

The worst stuff shows up in the last third of the UN “rights” list. Item 21 says in part, “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government…” This imprecision opens the door to ochlocracy because government is neither defined nor constrained in any way from any tyranny.

Item 29, paragraph 3, states, “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” Which of the applicable individuals, governments, or nations, then, is the supreme entity? It is, of course, the United Nations, from which are dispensed the UN’s versions of rights and responsibilities. What the UN giveth, the UN can taketh away—unlike authentic rights which come from human requirements for existence, as we will elaborate.

THE BOGUS RIGHTS OF THE UDHR

ITEM 22 “right to social security’ “economic, social and cultural
rights”

ITEM 23 “protection against unemployment” “Everyone who works
has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his
family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by
other means of social protection.”

ITEM 24 “periodic holidays with pay”

ITEM 25 “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age
or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

ITEM
26 “right to education” and “Education shall be free”
Education “shall
further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

(All emphases mine)



It would be easy to nitpick Items 21 – 30 severely, but we will focus only on the items in the foregoing table because these items completely undo all of the rest of the UDHR.

The real meaning of these bogus rights comes from understanding the meaning of rights.

RIGHTS PER SE

Many Americans “sort of know” what “rights” are. Those who were able to learn enough general knowledge, despite “public” or “government” schools, can usually parrot “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but they seldom go further. Confusion clouds their minds as they try to tease out “the right to ____ [you fill in the blank].” Politicians, educators, and cultural sources are both confused and up to no good in providing bad answers. Most accept that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are compatible “somehow” with the “right to education, right to unemployment checks, social security, welfare, and health care,” among others.

The term “rights” gets tossed about like some kind of largess, particularly during election cycles. As a result of profound ignorance, a “right,” to most people, means something along the line of an entitlement.

There is a price to pay for this ignorance—ultimately, reality always wins. Sometimes, victory takes time as the logical consequences move inexorably to conclusion, but logic and reality always hold the upper hand. The price being paid for mixing up real rights with bogus rights is the replacement of real rights with the bogus ones, as we will demonstrate, and the unhappy consequences resulting from it. This replacement process applies to all societies which move from greater individual freedom progressively to fewer and fewer freedoms, and finally to no freedom. For example, contrast free America as a young republic with the semi-statist America of today. Then contrast the latter with Islamic and other totalitarian societies, where no individual rights are respected, where the life of the individual is subordinated to the whims of the state.

The “package deal” of the UNUDHR tries to mix real rights–both fundamental and derivative--with counterfeit rights such as social security, education, health, guaranteed income, and so on, as though the two were interchangeable.

Few terms reflect the confusion better than does the expression “human rights.” Many intelligent people think that they have said something useful when they use that expression. Jimmy Carter, as an example, has prattled often, but not eloquently, about “human rights” for decades, and to this day does not know anything about the “rights” he talks about.

“Human rights” is a qualified term. “Human,” when used as a modifier, implies that there are other “rights.” To a socialist like Carter, there are lots of rights. There are “property rights, economic rights, environmental rights, voting rights,” and so on, ad infinitum, and all are assumed to be equal. In reality, however, there is just ONE fundamental right and three derivative rights.

THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS

The fundamental right is the RIGHT TO LIFE. The derivative rights are the RIGHTS TO LIBERTY, PROPERTY, and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. (Please note the exactness of the terminology: “pursuit of happiness,” which acknowledges that there can be no guarantee of happiness). No other fundamental rights exist because these four spawn all authentic rights as derivatives and specializations of these four.

Philosopher Ayn Rand, THE great clarifier of rights, illustrates the trap made by contrasting “human rights” with “property rights,” which all manner of leftists (i.e., collectivists) love to do:

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality—to think, to work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property…Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that "human rights" are superior to "property rights" simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of "human."[3]

(Emphasis mine)

Think of “right of way.” A “right” is just that. It is an ACTION. Better said, it is a freedom of action.

Who acts? Individual humans do. What kind of actions do they take? They take actions to support their lives. What are they acting to do? They are acquiring the material means to sustain and further their lives. All people live in a material world, and they need physical materials to keep living. Without these physical materials, their physical bodies cannot survive, and their lives end. The obvious basic physical materials are food, water, clothing, and shelter. People need the freedom to act to acquire these and many other things. They need to have full authority to use what they earn. They need to have full use of the materials they acquire to own--PROPERTY.

Each person needs the freedom to act on his own behalf in order to fulfill his life as much as possible. People need the freedom to determine which actions fulfill their lives and to make changes when they think they can fulfill themselves in better ways. They must be free to PURSUE their HAPPINESS.

A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.
The concept of a "right" pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.[4]

(Emphases mine)

Rights are moral principles derived from the need for each person to support his own life by his own actions.

SOURCE OF RIGHTS

Confusion pops up here because of two misconceptions people hold. These misconceptions come in the form of two questions: (1) Where do rights come from? And (2), who gives us our rights? The proper answers are, to question (1): You are born with your rights and retain them forever; the Founders understood this when they wrote that rights are “unalienable.” Rights are an integral part of our nature as humans and cannot be separated from that nature. The answer to question (2) is: Because rights are an integral part of our nature; no one can give them to us, take them away, or give them away.

If rights “come from” anything, it is from the demands of REALITY. Rights come with every human at birth in every era and in every culture. Our fundamental nature as human beings is the same for all humans everywhere. Any social system faces just one HUGE basic decision: to protect individual rights or not.

The second question which confuses so many people pertains to the source of rights. Conservatives say that rights are given by a supreme deity. Liberals say that rights come from society. Neither is correct.

Rights come from the nature of human beings. As Ayn Rand said it so well:

The source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work.[5]


A human is what he is. His nature and the requirements that enable him to live are inseparable parts of his identity. Whether one believes in God or not, rights are integral to the identity of humankind, and because of this, they are inalienable. This means that neither society, groups, collectives, nor governments can “give” rights. Similarly, and we will elaborate more later, rights cannot be taken away; nor can one give one’s rights away. RIGHTS CAN ONLY BE VIOLATED! Reality sets these requirements, and there is no way around them.

INALIENABILITY

America’s Founders were absolutely correct when they said that the Rights of Man are inalienable. Rights can be violated, but they remain, even if unrealized because some people deny others their freedom to act.

Rights translate morality into the social (political) realm. Living together can be very valuable to people, in the proper kind of society, or horribly dangerous in the wrong kind of society. A society is legitimate only when it does not interfere with people’s freedom of action, provided their actions do not violate the same rights held by others. A moral society protects the rights of its citizens, who delegate the use of force to that government (society) in order to have their rights protected.[6]

[1] http://www.secularislam.org/,
[2] http://www.un.org/
[3] Peikoff, L.: Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; Meridian Books, NY, ISBN: 0-452-01101-9, 1991, page 353
[4] Rand, A: The Virtue of Selfishness; Signet Books, NY; ISBN:0-451-12931-8, 1964; page 93
[5] Ibid, page 94
[6] Peikoff, op. cit., page 350
[7] Rand, op. cit., page 92-93
[8] Ibid, page 96

Click here to continue to Part II

FEC to extend campaign-finance to Web

To view the entire article, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43140, Friday, March 4, 2005, FEC to extend campaign-finance to Web,
Posted: March 4, 2005, 1:00 a.m. Eastern

This is really dangerous. A few days ago, we blogged about your property rights being up for grabs. Now your First Amendment rights are in as severe danger, and you should fire off emails, letters, and telephone calls to your representatives.

Read some of this:

The Federal Election Commission is beginning the process of extending its controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet, potentially threatening political blogging and online punditry, a member of the panel warns.

The Internet was exempted from the McCain-Feingold regulations in a 4-2 vote by the FEC in 2002, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly overturned the decision last fall, reports CNET News.com. (emphasis mine)

The judge wrote in her opinion that the commission's "exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes.

The panel's three Republican members, including [Bradley] Smith, voted to appeal the Internet-related part of the judge's decision, but they needed four votes and were unable to convince one of the Democrat members to join them.

The campaign finance law has a press exemption, but the panel is considering whether bloggers or online journals fit that description.

Smith said questions will arise, such as whether a Web page's link to a candidate's site constitutes a contribution.

How would that be calculated? The FEC already has received an advisory opinion suggesting the value placed on a blog that praises a politician or links to a campaign website might be based on what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.

"It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did," Smith told CNET. "And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in. Line drawing is going to be an inherently very difficult task. And then we'll be pushed to go further. Why can this person do it, but not that person?"

Smith said Kollar-Kotelly's opinion is not limited to ads: "She says that any coordinated activity over the Internet would need to be regulated, as a minimum. The problem with coordinated activity over the Internet is that it will strike, as a minimum, Internet reporting services."

[G]rassroots Internet activity is in danger unless someone in Congress is willing to stand up and say, "Keep your hands off of this, and we'll change the statute to make it clear..." "...[I]t's very likely that the Internet is going to be regulated, and the FEC and Congress will be inundated with e-mails saying, 'How dare you do this!'"

Speak out now or suffer in silence. This is a very big deal. Not only must we protect the internet, but we must roll back this McCain-Feingold Campaign law.

Not only should each one of us be individually responsible for our words, but we should also be responsible for whom we support for public office and how much we give. This is not a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, etc. issue: It is an American issue. And while we are at it, it is time to end judicial activism.

Pain and Suffering

How can any rational person be religious, given the kind of thinking in the following article?

The style and content of thinking fully comply with "postmodernism," the current nihilistic philosophical and cultural fad that throws away reality, reason, freedom, and the magnificence of capitalism. This is the voice of the Dark Ages (or Medieval times, if you will).

We are castigated for sucking up scarce resources just to be well, prosperous, happy, and to advance. Well, shame on us. To those who think like this, wealth is always static, as is progress. To those of us liberated from this Augustinianism, we know that wealth must be created, and there is an unlimited potential for that, provided people are left free.

Postmodernists, whether disguised in raiments of some church or ranting in some liberal arts department at some university, hate capitalism. Theirs is power politics, to take over the sources of those resources, and create their nirvana, socialism.

Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons: "March 02, 2005, Pain and Suffering, From The Boston Globe (AP): Vatican decries 'religion of health'. (Hat tip Joe Wright via HBL email list)

Vatican officials on Thursday [Feb. 17] held out Pope John Paul II's stoic suffering with Parkinson's disease as an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all, calling this a 'religion of health' that is taking hold in affluent countries.

'While millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care, in rich countries the concept of health as well-being figures in creating unrealistic expectations about the possibility of medicine to respond to all needs and desires,' said the Rev. Maurizio Faggioni, a theologian and morality expert on the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.

'The medicine of desires, egged on by the health care market, increases the request for pharmaceutical and medical-surgical services, soaks up public resources beyond all reasonableness,' Faggioni said. ...

Psychiatrist Manfred Lutz, a Vatican academic, hailed John Paul, who for years has struggled with Parkinson's, as 'the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness.' ... 'Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death one can, instead, perceive the truth of life in a clearer way,' Lutz said. 'The pope's message is 'suffering is part of life and has meaning,' the doctor said.

The cure for the problems of these "millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care," comes in one word, one concept. If you understand that concept, you belong to the future. If you do not and will not learn it, you join the Pope's school of thought and revert to the dismal past. The concept is: CAPITALISM.

From Liberty Matters: Your Vanishing Right to Your Property

This how they do it, like Winston Churchill said of the Soviets. He analogized the Soviet efforts to eating a roast of beef. No, they did not go for the whole roast. They took a little slice at a time, until all that was left was the string. Then, they took that too.

In this case, the "they" is the American government, yours and mine. Here is another slice, which if successful, sets the precedent for taking all of your rights to property at a time and place of the government's choosing, local or federal.

Arguments Heard in Kelo v. New London

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case that could impact the rights of property owners for years to come. The Court will decide if the City of New London, CT can lawfully take private property only to turn it over to another private entity that will generate more tax revenue. Early media reports have given a negative slant to the Justices' questions and have given rise to speculation the case is going badly for property rights' interests. Justice O'Conner asked Wesley Horton, representing New London "If the prospect of higher tax revenue justifies the forced transfer of property from one owner to another, would it be appropriate for a city to decide that a Motel 6 must give way to a Ritz-Carlton?" "Yes, your honor, it would be," replied Wesley Horton, New London's lawyer. Justice Scalia asked Horton; "You can take from A and give it to B, if B pays more in taxes?" Horton answers; "Yes, if it's a significant amount." However, Steven Anderson, spokesman for the Institute of Justice representing Suzanne Kelo, told Liberty Matters that they remain quite positive about their chances. He indicated the Justices were "clearly troubled by what the City of New London advocates, which is complete access to any property anywhere as long as there is the mere possibility it will make more money for the government." A decision from the U.S. Supreme Court is not expected until June. Hopefully the Court will agree with Justice William Paterson who wrote in the 1795 case, Vanhorn's Lessee v. Dorrance that the state must not invoke the "despotic power ...of taking private property...except in urgent cases. Where is the security, where the inviolability of property, if the legislature...can take land from one citizen, who acquired it legally, and vest it in another?" The Pirates of Eminent Domain

Few people know anything useful about the concept of "rights," so they can look at the foregoing paragraph, maybe sense something not quite right, then move on to something else they cannot figure out.

Here is a quick course. Rights are principles of action needed by humans to fulfill their lives by their own decisions and behaviors. Rights come, not from God or any other non-real source, or from governments or other humans. They come from the nature of human beings. They are born into us as humans because we are humans. The are "unalienable," as our Declaration of Independence states because they are an inseparable part of us, or metaphysical, as rational philosophers will say. No one can take them away, i.e., alienate them from us or us from them. They can be violated and often are. The most basic right is the right to life, which means that humans once born must be free to engage in all activities to sustain and further their lives except one: They may not violate the rights of other humans by initiating force or fraud against others.

Right behind the right to life is the right to property because the right to property is how one implements the right to life. Rights are intangible only as concepts. In reality, they are as real as the right to food grown or bought, or the money earned to buy the means to stay alive and prosper, or the right to anything one creates. That right to property includes the right to full use and to disposal. If you own an automobile or piece of property, then, by the right to property, you may use, sell, discard or do whatever you want with that automobile or piece of property provided your actions do not violate the rights of any other citizen.

When you have laws and courts which authorize legal theft of your property, you have immoral laws and governments, and you must change them back to the moral or perish from them.

To take someone's property by force, which is the only action open to government, either properly to protect you or improperly to violate your rights, you are establishing the principle that people's right to life will no longer be protected. The next short step is to declare people and their belongings to be property of the state. After the glorious regimes of the 20th century which did just that, declaring citizens just cells in the organ of the state and having no value except to serve the interests of the state, only the profoundly ignorant and the profoundly dependent personalities would not rise to exercise another basic right: The Right to Liberty.

It is coming to that.

Christians, What Do You Think? 10 Commandments = Qur'an

The daily email from CAIR reprinted the following op-ed. Since I am neither Christian or Muslim (or Jewish, etc.), I imagine this op-ed, which tries to draw an identity between the Ten Commandments and the Qur'an, to be nettlesome to Christians. One things Muslims are doing relentlessly is trying to erase any differences between Islam and Christianity in the minds of Christians to make their conversion to Islam easier and destroy their resistance to Islam. Is it working?

ISLAM-OPED: ISLAMIC VALUES EQUATE TO BIBLE'S; TEN COMMANDMENTS
Arsalan Iftikhar, Myrtle Beach Sun-News, 3/2/05
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/11028301.htm

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a monument engraved with the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol "is an impermissible establishment of religion in violation of the First Amendment."

Reaction from religious groups is mixed - Jewish and Christian groups seem divided, and Muslims are largely absent from the debate.

Muslim silence on the issue should not be misconstrued as ambivalence toward the Ten Commandments. In fact, the Quran, Islam's revealed text, contains injunctions similar to all the commandments.

A few examples:

Commandment: Thou shall have no other gods before Me.

Quran: Know therefore that there is no god but God. (47:19) Do not associate another deity with God. (17:22)

Commandment: Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image.

Quran: No visions can encompass Him, but He encompasses all visions. (6:103)

Commandment: Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Quran: Glorify the name of your Lord morning and evening. (76:25) Do not use God's name in your oaths as an excuse to prevent you from dealing justly. (2:224)

Commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother.

Quran: You shall be kind to your parents. ... You shall lower to them the wing of humility and pray: "O Lord! Bestow on them Your blessings just as they cherished me when I was a little child." (17:23-24).

Such remarkable similarities are not surprising, because Muslims believe that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all originate from the same God. God's laws are universal but their adoption is a matter of choice. The Quranic order that there be "no compulsion in religion" (2:256) reverberates in James Madison's, "The eligion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man."

Opposition to the public display of the Ten Commandments should not imply disavowal of their validity, just as support for the display should not be an excuse for religious exclusivity.

I love all the commandments, for their values are my values as a Muslim. I also respect the Constitution and its support for religious pluralism. Just as I want my government to not establish a particular religion, I also desire that they not prohibit its free exercise. It is a delicate balancing act. Getting that balance right is what makes American freedom unique and enviable.

The final paragraph of that op-ed has been carefully written to suck in the susceptible. This good ol' boy is just a friendly neighbor, full of live and let live. He's a full bore Muslim, but he is a patriot to the Constitution. And he don't care no how what yall's religion is--they's all good, so long as it is not some official state religion.

Now, given the state of knowledge about the world, which states are the only ones with state religions? If you said, Muslim states, you would be right. And that religion is what? If you said Christianity, you would be wrong. If you said, Islam, go collect your prize.

The op-ed is pure subterfuge. You, whoever reads this, is expected to be sucked right in. Let the "buyer," or in this case, the reader, beware. You had better learn about Islam before you go losing your head over propaganda like this.

Canadian Tragedy: Trying to Live Contradictions

"Sharia law is being practiced in Canada," Article, by Margaret Wente, Saturday, May 29, 2004.

A friend sent this older article to me recently, and I find this article to be one of the more vexing articles I have read in some time. Yes, I know Canada has become a spineless, almost formless, moral jellyfish. Yes, I know Canada has been destroying itself faster than anyone from the outside could do it. Yes, I am disappointed and disgusted with what used to be our fine neighbor to the north. I am also aware that there are fine Canadians who hate the "liberal" degeneration of Canada as much as we do down here. We wish they would wrest control back.

Until then, it is clear that Canada has decided to kill itself, and there may be nothing we can do about it. We can understand it because what Canada is doing shows how and why contradictions cannot be lived.

Homa Arjomand knows what it's like to live under sharia law. She, her husband and two small children (the youngest was barely one) escaped on a gruelling trip by horseback through the mountains. That was in 1989. Today, she lives in a suburb northeast of Toronto. Her job is helping immigrant Muslim women in distress. And now she is battling the arrival of sharia law in Canada.

"We must separate religion from the state," she says emotionally. "We're living in Canada. We want Canadian secular law."
(Emphasis mine)

Homa Arjomand expressed this fundamental principle of separation of state from religion very clearly and correctly. What is she reacting to?

The province of Ontario has authorized the use of sharia law in civil arbitrations, if both parties consent. The arbitrations will deal with such matters as property, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance. In theory, their decisions aren't supposed to conflict with Canadian civil law. But because there is no third-party oversight, and no duty to report decisions, no outsider will ever know if they do. These decisions can be appealed to the regular courts. But for Muslim women, the pressures to abide by the precepts of sharia are overwhelming. To reject sharia is, quite simply, to be a bad Muslim.

Canada is trying to be free and to be dhimmi. The two are totally opposite and mutually exclusive. Liberals, however, long ago abandoned truth for subjectivity, for the deformed belief that truth can be whatever they want it to be, without consequences. Watch reality assert itself.

Canada is running to shackle itself into dhimmitude without waiting for the Muslim takeover. Canada is devaluing its sovereignty to become just another society of non-Muslims living in a Muslim dominated society. No, not one law for ALL Canadians. And, just as Orwell said in Animal Farm, some pigs will be more equal than others, with the Muslims holding all the power, and the Canadians holding an empty sack. And to think they did it to themselves.

The law permitting a sharia court was passed in 1991, when Ontario sought to streamline the overloaded court system (and save money) by diverting certain civil cases to arbitration, including arbitration conducted on religious principles. Jewish courts have operated in the province this way for many years. "People can agree to resolve disputes in any way acceptable," said Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the Ontario attorney-general. "If they decide to resolve disputes using principles of sharia and using an imam as an arbitrator, that is perfectly acceptable under the arbitration act."

Promoters of Islamic law in Canada have been working toward this goal for years. Last fall, they created the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which has already chosen arbitrators who have undergone training in sharia and Canadian civil law. The driving force behind the court is a lawyer and scholar named Syed Mumtaz Ali, who was quoted last week saying "to be a good Muslim," all Muslims must use these sharia courts.(Emphases mine)

What is missing here? Objectivity, thinking, standards, and above all REASON! There are still people who think you can get away with contradictions. Many people try. All fail. Every child has this way of thinking. Adults are supposed to grow out of this thinking mode.

Check this out:

Many Muslims, including many women, are enthusiastic about giving Islamic law an official place in Canada, and they emphatically deny that it will harm women's interests. On the contrary. They insist that under Islam, a woman's rights are protected. "We follow the Islamic law, secure with a perfect sense of equality between the sexes," wrote Khansa Muhaseen and Nabila Haque in a letter to the Toronto Star, where the sharia debate has been raging fiercely. (Emphasis mine)

Here are some others trying to get away with contradictions. In this case, they are trying to get away with lies about the rights and equality of women under Islam. Islam operates by means of lies. The foregoing represent that unique form of Islamic lying called taqiyya, or dissimulation. It is lying for gullible Western minds.

If you believe that Islam stands for equality among the sexes and women's rights, you will buy the Brooklyn Bridge from me just because I say it is a good deal for you. But, if you know any truth about Islam, you know how factually and morally wrong this intentionally deceptive statement is, claiming that "women's rights are protected" under Islam. Islam recognizes NO rights for anyone. And, in Islamic hierarchy, women are treated as rightless inferiors.

If you think Islam is a religion and should be shielded from objectivity because it is a religion, maybe even one of the great three religions, you and all of those who think like this are part of the problem,not the solution. Anyone who thinks like this is trying to make 2 + 2 = 5. Islam is a totally evil philosophy which has your annihilation as one of its central goals. If this thought pleases you, stop reading right here.

Here is a common contradiction that Islam exploits. Understand it well.

"This is a very difficult position for us to be in because we are believing women," says Ms. Hogben. "But to apply Muslim family law in Canada is not appropriate." In Britain, she adds, the government has flatly rejected councils for sharia law.

Both Ms. Hogben and Ms. Arjomand say that we are sacrificing these women on the altar of multiculturalism.

"This is an abuse of multiculturalism, says Ms. Hogben. "There is a lack of courage [on the part of governments], and also a fear of offending Muslim sensitivities."

"I chose to come to Canada because of multiculturalism," says Ms. Arjomand, who gave up a career in medical science to work with women who are victims of abuse. "But when I came here, I realized how much damage multiculturalism is doing to women. I'm against it strongly now. It has become a barrier to women's rights." (Emphases mine)

This last statement, "[Multiculturalism] has become a barrier to women's rights," augurs well for the future, but only potentially. It means that reality might be seeping into these women's minds, and reason might have a chance with them. That means all is not necessarily lost, although one cannot know given the Canada's degeneracy.

What these women face is not some eccentric variety of Islam. No, indeed, they face Islam as Islam. YOU CANNOT HAVE RIGHTS AND HAVE ISLAM TOO. That is an insupperable contradiction. Reality will out.

If you accept any of Islam, you accept it all. And, this is what Islam means. No, it is not some extreme, or political, or fundamentalist, or radical Islam, no, no--it is Islam, Islam, Islam, period! Buy in a little, you buy in all the way. You cannot do less, in theory and in fact.

You cannot have Islam and freedom too, not in the sense of the fundamental freedom every individual needs because of his human nature and need to fulfill his life.

Contradictions do not exist in reality. Hegel tried to replace reason with a universe of contradictions. What the world got from Hegel and his descendents was Nazism and Communism. These were the logical outcomes necessitated by Hegel's principles.

Contradictions cannot exist. It is not a function of what one believes; it is the metaphysical nature of reality. Think about it. Things are what they are. Each thing is an entity, and each entity has an identity. than entity can act only in one way--in accordance with its nature, i.e., its identity.

You cannot have your cake and eat it, as the old saying goes. Nothing can be anything but what it is, and that applies to all that exists. Contradictions try to get around that profundity, so that things, like Islam, can be what they are not, but success doing this is not possible.

These women want the Muslim faith, and they want Western laws, with rights protected. They are trying to live a contradiction. It cannot be done. You can have one or the other. Reality forces the choice.

Islam is anti-reality, anti-life, anti-values, and anti-human and all those imply. You can have Islam and death, but you cannot have Islam and life. You can try to live the contradiction, but you will run into what these women have run into. Either these women resolve the contradiction in favor of a rational solution, or they will live under shari'a and Islam. Their only hope is apostacy and reason.

If you understand this, then you understand why Canada is committing suicide and taking its best down with it.

Dhimmi Watch: DC Watson: CAIR's Perpetual Twists & Turns

February 28, 2005
DC Watson: CAIR's Perpetual Twists & Turns

Longtime Jihad Watch reader DC Watson's latest:

The CAIR Mission Statement declares that "CAIR's mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."

Fair enough. But let's revisit some statements made by members of this group -- in public and on the record -- about their vision of America, and how they’ve put in practice their mission of "encouraging dialogue, and building coalitions that promote justice and understanding."

Omar M. Ahmad, CAIR's Board Chairman: "Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth." (Ahmad began to deny having said this, over five years after it was first reported, but the original reporter sticks by her story.)

Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

Nihad Awad, CAIR Executive Director: "I am in support of the Hamas movement."

How's that for American patriotism, respect for our Constitution, and tolerance of all religions? Oh, but there's more.

1) Muslim cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted and is now in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

CAIR’s response: Despite the vast evidence of Sheikh Omar's guilt presented in the case, CAIR called the conviction a "hate crime" against Muslims.

2) 2001: President Bush orders the closing of a Muslim charity, the Holy Land Foundation, after it was found to be raising money to support Hamas terror attacks.

CAIR’s response: It called Bush's move "unjust" and "disturbing," and circulated a petition exhorting the government to unfreeze HLF assets, claiming "there has been a shift from a war on terrorism to an attack on Islam."

3) Tuesday, February 15th, 2005: Fox’s "Hannity & Colmes" featured Ahmed Bedier, Communications Director for the Florida chapter of CAIR. From the program:

Hannity: "Did you not have a spokesman for your group at one time, a guy by the name of Royer that was on your staff that was convicted?"

Bedier: "I think several years ago we had that individual in our group. And if you're inciting that somehow we're responsible for the actions or behavior of the individuals after they left our organization, that would be similar to somebody that worked for FOX five years ago and then commits a crime and FOX would be responsible for it."

The "guy by the name of Royer" that Hannity asked Bedier about is Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, former CAIR Communications Specialist. He is now serving a 20-year prison term for terrorist plotting.

But did Royer really, as Bedier claimed, commit his terror-related crimes after he left CAIR? Timelines listed in Royer’s indictment, specifically for September 2001, and a news article that demonstrates Royer speaking as a representative of CAIR on September 18, 2001 are on record. His crimes took place at around the same time. (See pages 15-20 of the pdf.)

If Royer’s conviction were an isolated incident, Bedier’s response to Hannity’s question might have had some legitimacy. However, it is by no means isolated:

In September 2003, Bassem K. Khafagi pleaded guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud in federal court in Detroit. At the time of his arrest, Khafagi was Community Affairs director with CAIR.

12/17/2002: Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, according to his indictment, was involved in selling technology, goods and commodities to designated terror-sponsoring states.

In July 2004, the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity organization, was shut down by our Government and indicted on charges of providing material support to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Lo and behold, the name of the Holy Land Foundation’s Chairman of the Board was ... Ghassan Elashi.

Details of all this can be found here. See pages 6-12.

And again, who petitioned the U.S. Government to unfreeze HLF’s assets? Wasn't it CAIR?

(On page 8 of the indictment, incidentally, the name Sheik Ahmed Yassin appears. This is the same individual whom CAIR is on record as labeling an "Islamic religious leader." This is the same "religious leader" who was instrumental in founding the jihad terrorist group Hamas.)

Ghassan Elashi also has an interesting family member. He is the cousin of Nadia Elashi, aka Nadia Marzook, who happens to be the wife of Mousa Abu Marzook, aka Abu Omar, Deputy Chief of the Hamas terrorist organization’s Political Bureau. For details, see:

http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/infocom/uselashi121702sind.pdf (Pp. 6-9)
http://www.4law.co.il/hlf2.htm
http://www.dallasarena.com/t040730cbs11.htm
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13175
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=9981

No matter what side of the political arena we are on, it is of the utmost importance that we always recognize when and from where an enemy is coming at us, retain the ability to turn in their direction -- and relegate the enemy to history.

We would be dishonored if we ever allowed the United States to be brought down from within. Unless, of course, all of the information about CAIR in this column is purely coincidental.

Please keep this information in mind. Be aware: there are foxes in our henhouse, and their removal has become necessary for the good of the country.

Understanding the WardChurchill Syndrome

People and organizations like Students for Academic Freedom, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the Academic Bill of Rights, and DiscoverTheNetwork along with Front Page Magazine and some other publications, both in print and online, are smoking out Ward Churchills. Not only are these people phony, they are intellectually second class (if that good), and utterly subversive if you advocate reason, reality, individual rights, capitalism, and America. They and their Leftist straphanger supporters in journalism, academia, and politics are screaming in agony right now because they are experiencing the disinfection that comes from exposure to sunlight and fresh air, parts of the reality they disavow.

You will, however, never understand them just by dealing with just the nefarious concretes of their lives and behaviors. You may be able to describe them, name them, and even detect them, but you will not understand them. Without the intellectual ammunition you need, you will not be able to deliver the coup d'grace, unless you find out what makes them tick mentally and where they came from.

You can begin this discovery by learning that these are "postmodernists." They represent a philosophical and cultural orientation giving us the Ward Churchills, and they are absolutely as thick as cockroaches in Florida in academia, the arts and entertainment, journalism, and even in politics.

You can begin to come to terms with postmodernists and postmodernism by reading our review, Deconstructing the Fifth Column Left, of a thoroughly clear and outstanding book, well worth your time and effort. That book is Stephen Hicks', Explaining Postmodernism.

Here are some tidbits from the review and Dr. Hicks' book:

“Postmodernism is … first a political movement.” (Hicks, page 186) At root, it carries the spirit and influence of Marxism. “ … [E]verything is relative … nothing can be known … everything is chaos.” (Hicks, page 189) “…[U]ltimately nothing matters.” (192) “Nihilism is close to the surface in the postmodern intellectual movement in a historically unprecedented way.” (Hicks, page 192)

Those who express postmodernism, I am subtitling as having the "WardChurchill Syndrome," in case postmodernism seems too abstract.

Highly characteristic of postmodernists is they use words as weapons. Note how these Leftists hurl extreme insults, epithets, accusations, and will not allow reasoned argumentation. They scream "racism," "sexism," "McCarthyism," and vulgarities as they shout down people who oppose them in any way. They will not argue; they FIGHT VERBALLY. Howard Dean's chronic bombast comes to mind as a cultural and political example, but he is no means alone. Postmodernists, e.g., love to call Pres. Bush "Hitler" and America "fascist." The truth does not matter to these people because their desired ends justify any means to achieve them. Besides, in their dim philosophy, there is no "truth." Some hurl objects at people and attack people physically while mouthing scatalogical invectives. It is all about political power, taken by any means and used by all means, without reason refereeing.

To repeat: To postmodernists, all is politics, and their goal is political power, by any means possible. Since postmodernism and postmodernists have totally disavowed reason, theirs is absolutely nothing but expressed FEELINGS, EMOTIONS. Theirs is an infantile narcissism obsessed with feelings and immediate gratification.

Well, if they are "postmodernists," what, then, is "modernism." Modernism means reality, reason, human autonomy, individualism, and “liberal capitalism.” These are the values of the Enlightenment and “neo-Enlightenment.” (Hicks, page 178).

What is the object of postmodernists' desires? It is SOCIALISM, the same socialism which has been tried and failed in absolutely every instance since it appeared on the scene some two centuries ago, as some panacea. But, postmodernists crave it like addicts crave heroin, with the same degree of rationality. They even reformed their philosophy so that it would justify socialism after their previous philosophies failed to support their socialist nirvana.

We are just getting started with postmodernists in this blog and on our website. We cannot leave them out of any concern with Islam because they have joined Islam at the hip (the "Unholy Alliance," as David Horowitz writes) because both seek the destruction of values, the highest of which is America.

On 28 February 2005, Front Page Magazine published another excellent article about those with the WardChurchill Syndrome, FrontPage magazine.com :: Churchill's Champions by Jacob Laksin. It is an article well worth reading because it supplies so many examples of what universities hire and tenure because alumni, donors, and legislators have been asleep at the switch.

It is time to wake up and take back America. Begin with factual articles like those on Front Page Magazine and DiscoverTheNetwork which tell the "whats" and the "hows," then digest Dr. Hicks' tremendous book Explaining Postmodernism why tells you the "whys." Then you will be ready to take some really effective action.