Sgt. "Akbar" Is Oh, So Sorry About Kuwait Grenade Attack

FOXNews.com - Akbar Sorry About Kuwait Grenade Attack, FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A military jury Thursday began deliberating whether a U.S. soldier should be executed for killing two officers in a grenade attack in Kuwait — murders for which the defendant apologized in a brief, barely audible courtroom statement.

"I want to apologize for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you for forgiveness," Akbar told the 15-person military jury before deliberations began.

(Emphases mine)

How about some more crocodile tears for the ol' sarge? He was so "remorseful" that he chocked on his words, or so it seemed. And he felt his life was in jeopardy, he says. He's not lying, is he? Is he calling on one of those Islamic lying techniques? Naw, couldn't be...

Well, with Islam, if you are in for an inch, you are in for the whole mile. "Sarge" killed fellow soldiers on purpose, out of a sense of Islamic duty. Now he is "sorry"? He might be having a spell of the chicken-shits, but he "ain't" sorry. With the help of his hostile, militant parents, he converted to Islam to join the other hostile American blacks who now make up some 50% of American Muslims by conversion.

Islam is not complicated. Were it complicated, centuries of ignorant, illiterate, impoverished sand savages could not have been so successfully brainwashed. "Sarge" was smart enough to become sargeant, even if he was not the sharpest knife in the Army mess. Filled with all of this blacks versus America brainwashing, he found something that could excuse his inadequacies as a human: Islam. Now he could "belong." He had a few dirt-simple rules to follow, and, voila, he was "somebody," because he belonged to the globe's biggest collective, the ummah. At their heyday, communists could never muster this many humans into their collectivism.

"Sarge" put Islam ahead of his oath to the Constitution. This was despite his having been born and raised in some cloaca like Detroit or its equivalent, all of which are AMERICA, and all of which at their worst are better than all of the Middle East taken collectively at its best. He put an ideology more evil than communism+Nazism ahead of his allegiance to America. He identified himself as Muslim, in this case Arab-Muslim, even though he is clearly not an Arab.

Prosecutors have said Akbar launched the attack at his camp — days before the soldiers were to move into Iraq — because he was concerned about U.S. troops killing fellow Muslims in the Iraq war. Akbar is the first American since the Vietnam era to be prosecuted on charges of murdering a fellow soldier during wartime.

The issue of mental illness is just so much persiflage. It's lawyerosis, a stand-in for the truth. He either did it or did not do it, and the jury found that he did it. And, Islam is not a mental illness. Being Muslim does not merit a long-term stay at the funny farm at taxpayers' expense.

Whether they kill him or incarcerate him, he should never see freedom again, nor be allowed to associate with other "prisoners" whom he can "convert" in a likely future role as jailhouse imam.

The prosecutor had it right: (Emphases mine)

"He is a hate-filled, ideologically driven murderer," the prosecutor said, adding that Akbar wrote in his diary in 1997, "My life will not be complete unless America is destroyed." If given a death sentence, Akbar would join five others on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The last U.S. military execution was in 1961.

We must never forget that we have been given the opportunity to see the true face of Islam.

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

Since we wrote the foregoing yesterday, the jury has sentenced ol' "Sarge" to death, and he will go to Death Row. This is indeed good news, in principle. Better news would be that his execution is (a.) unstoppable, and (b.) takes place later today.

Story: Jury Returns Death Sentence in GI Killings on Yahoo! News, by ESTES THOMPSON, Associated Press WriterFri Apr 29, 8:24 AM ET

Jurors took about seven hours to reach their decision Thursday. Last week, the same 15-person military jury took just two and a half hours last week to convict Akbar of premeditated murder and attempted premeditated murder. The sentence will be reviewed by a commanding officer and automatically appealed. If Akbar is executed, it would be by lethal injection.

However, methodical, emotion-free due process must be followed, and that we accept. Sadly, "Akbar" will probably die of old age in prison before any execution can be carried out.

Although the defense contends Akbar was too mentally ill to plan the attack, they have never disputed that he threw grenades into troop tents in the early morning darkness and then fired on soldiers in the ensuing chaos. Akbar's father, John Akbar, has said his son complained in vain to his superiors about religious and racial harassment before the attack. The defense never introduced any witnesses to testify about any such harassment.

Isn't it always that way with losers? "Religious" and "racial" harrassment? Why, he couldn't help it. He was tormented into defending himself. Didn't Marx say that we are all products of our environment? Said the wives of the soldiers murdered by "Akbar":

"Hasan Akbar has robbed me of so many things," said Tammie Eslinger, Stone's fiancee, after the sentencing. "He stole my love, my family, my dreams and my future. But he could never steal my spirit." Seifert's widow, Theresa, said she was satisfied with the military justice system. She called Akbar "a nonentity to me."

The only moral response to this murderer is to administer JUSTICE, and not mercy.

With eyes wide shut to terror

No all journalists are bad. Some journalists are good. Diana West is becoming excellent and outstanding. Here is her recent column. When I read it, I wanted to just shout a huge "YES!" She not only gets, but she gets it in terms of MORAL PRINCIPLES.

Enjoy.


Diana West: With eyes wide shut to terror , Jewish World Review April 29, 2005 / 20 Nissan, 5765, By Diana West

It's amazing what's possible if you close your eyes. An American television news organization — such as ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN or MSNBC — can close its eyes and accept videotape procured by Al-Jazeera in concert with terrorists who kill and maim American soldiers. A Hollywood director, such as Sydney Pollack, can close his eyes and pretend that terrorism is a plot device and the United Nations is an honest broker. Leaps of morality and boundaries of logic may be hurdled simply by turning a blind eye to facts.


To what end? Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dorrance C. Smith connects the bloody dots between terrorists who assist Al-Jazeera in obtaining film footage that appears on the evening news in America. Among other pointed questions, he asks: "Do the U.S. networks know the terms of the relationship that Al-Jazeera has with the terrorists? Do they want to know?"


To date, the answer is a morally reprehensible no. But see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys aren't the best role models for journalists. Then again, maybe this very numbness to facts is in fact a culture-wide phenomenon that our news media merely reflect. Take Mr. Pollack's new movie on international terrorism, "The Interpreter." Stepping back from even the outermost brink of reality, it switched the source of terrorism from a fictional Middle Eastern country to a fictional African country. "We didn't want to encumber the film in politics in any way," Kevin Misher, the movie's producer, told the Wall Street Journal. Politics? How about encumbering the film with a little history or maybe a few current events?


But fantasy-land is where Hollywood lives these days. The world burns and Steven Spielberg remakes the sci-fi chestnut "The War of the Worlds." The producers of last summer's "The Manchurian Candidate" drop an Osama bin Laden-like character for being too "Tom Clancy." Meanwhile, Mr. Clancy's "Sum of All Fears" was also too "Tom Clancy," so the 2002 movie replaced the Islamic terror cell of the 1991 book with some generic old Nazis.


Then there's "The Great New Wonderful," the first movie set in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. But, as newyorkmetro.com reports, "The completed script never mentions Bush, terrorists, Michael Moore, Fox News, or even September 11." Don't look for Afghanistan, the hunt for Osama bin Laden or the fall of the Taliban, either. Why not? As director Danny Leiner put it, "I just wasn't interested in anything didactic." Didactic? What is "didactic" about our cataclysmic national experience? A potentially significant industry revels in its own irrelevance.


Of course, it gets worse. The New York Daily News reports that actress Maggie Gyllenhaal credits "Wonderful" with dealing "with September 11 in such a subtle, open way that I think it allows it to be more complicated than just, Oh, look at these poor New Yorkers and how hard it was for them. " She continues: "I think America has done reprehensible things and is responsible in some way and so I think the delicacy ... allows that to sort of creep in." Creep is right. Good thing "delicacy" is never, ever "didactic" or "encumbered by politics."


Then there's "24." This is the Fox television series semi-notorious for having performed public penance — in the form of a PSA featuring star and co-producer Keifer Sutherland — because it dared to depict minimally identifiable Muslim characters carrying out terrorist activities against American civilians. Early on, the show even featured an exchange of "Allahu Akbar" between two terrorists — mumbled, yes, but a first — just as though the First Amendment applied to television writers setting a story in the era of Islamic terrororism.


But following a no doubt friendly visit from the Council on American Islamic Relations, lo and behold, the Fox show found what you might call "delicacy." Suddenly, the program's circumspectly Islamic gang included a full complement of white, ex-military men, all with the inexplicable urge to shoot down Air Force One. In a recent episode, Marwan, the Muslim terror kingpin the show was originally "encumbered" with, videotaped a statement explaining why he was shooting a nuclear warhead at an American city. He did so standing before a flag covered in Arabic writing — daring for these politically correct times — but without once mentioning Allah, infidels, Islam or paradise. In other words, after all these years of Koranic communiques from assorted Islamic terror networks, Marwan's big moment fell PC-flat. This doesn't mean, though, that "24" isn't the topically bravest show around.


Still, what were the producers afraid of? When networks, movies and television deny the facts of jihad terror, they whitewash killers. Why?

You Don't Say?

Second Child Dies of Injuries From Bus Crash, washingtonpost.com, School's Driver Charged In Unrelated Accident, By Leef Smith and Allan Lengel, Washington Post Staff Writers, Thursday, April 21, 2005; B01

A reader was kind enough to send this Washington Post story to us.

The facts are bizarre enough:

In a separate incident in Alexandria yesterday, a private school bus with faulty brakes and bald tires crashed, but none of the 34 students aboard was injured. Police said the driver should not have been behind the wheel. In yesterday's crash of the private school bus, the driver, Abdelrazeg Abdalla, 31, of Falls Church, was charged with several counts, including operating the Islamic Saudi Academy bus on a suspended license.

Investigators said Abdalla's driving privileges had been suspended at 12:01 a.m. yesterday because of insurance-related issues. He was fired by school administrators shortly after the charges -- including citations for reckless driving and driving a vehicle with faulty equipment -- were issued. "They determined that the bus had little or no brakes at all and that the tires were in fact bald," said Alexandria Police Capt. John Crawford, adding that investigators found skid marks to suggest that Abdalla tried to apply the brakes. The bus struck a Honda Civic, causing a chain-reaction crash involving the bus and three cars.

Virginia State Police determined that the bus was unsafe to drive and said it would remain out of service until the problems were repaired.

The Academy director of education, however, shows that he may have matriculated at any teachers' college:

David Kovilik, director of education for the Fairfax County academy, said the bus was not part of the fleet's normal daily rotation, calling it "a spare." He said that the bus passed its Virginia state inspection in July and that it was subject to daily mechanical checks as well as monthly preventive maintenance. "I looked at the bus [after the crash], and the tire tread was thin, and on one axle the brake was worn down to the metal," Kovilik said. "The other three tires had functioning brakes."

Kovilik said Abdalla was hired as a driver in August after a comprehensive background check that he said included a search for any past convictions and "points on his license." Kovilik said Abdalla's firing was based solely on his driving the school bus without a valid license.

He said he was stunned by news that Abdalla had a court record. "Oh no, no, no!" he said. "I'm going to revisit this."

No wonder he was hired!

The intrigue is just getting started. The Post article adds:

...[A] check of court records in Virginia revealed seven past charges, including several traffic violations for speeding and crossing a double yellow line. Several of the charges had been dismissed. Abdalla also had a misdemeanor conviction in Fairfax for abducting his estranged wife and 3-month-old daughter at knifepoint. He had originally been charged with felony kidnapping, but friends and family -- including his wife -- wrote letters of support to the court on Abdalla's behalf, and he agreed to plead guilty in May 2003, after nearly three months in jail, to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault and battery.

After his release, Abdalla was picked up by Department of Homeland Security officials and detained for about six months, according to court records. It could not be determined why he was detained. (Emphasis mine)

A phone number for Abdalla could not be found yesterday.

You don't say? Really? Abdalla could not be dialed, anywhere? How about 1-800-GO-TO-GROUND?

Is anyone home at the Department of Homeland Security? Just which "homeland" is it securing?
I wonder what Abdalla does when he is not driving the Islamic Saudi Academy school bus?

More, Smiling to Your Face While Stabbing You in the Back

Yesterday, 26 April 2005, Sixth Column discussed Saudi duplicity and reprinted an early article on official Islamic dissimulation methods. We mentioned that the Director of the Saudi Institute exposed an audio tape of a very high Saudi official who thought he was away from Western eyes and ears, urging Saudis to go to Iraq and join the insurgents, i.e., the reverse of what he says in public. The NBC Evening News of the same day identified that official and added to the story.

The official is Sheik Salah Al-Luhaidan, Chief Justice of the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council. Two Saudi "intelligence" officials proclaimed the tape to be a good fake job. However, NBC talked by telephone directly to Al-Luhaidan who confirmed that the voice on the tape was his.

Now, get this: Al-Luhaidan, according to Lisa Myers, a reliable reporter for NBC, says that his words were misinterpreted. He said that he meant that there is no point in Saudis going to Iraq to fight because the Iraqis are managing themselves. This really reminds us of "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."

A reader added a set of terrific comments to yesterday's blog about the Saudis. These comments are just too good not to highlight:

Herein lies a serious problem, which we Westerners have great difficulty comprehending: "...behavior as typically Bedouin: smiling to your face while stabbing you in the back....Deception as behavior preceeded Islam historically, coming substantially from long-standing Bedouin behavior. Islam institutionalized it. Still, so many people just do not want to believe that they are being deceived chronically..." I know from first-hand experience just how friendly Arabs can seem, and even though I now understand the truth, I simply want to respond to their friendly overtures. But let one of them see me reading "The Sword of the Prophet," and watch the attitude change--without any open discussion even when I ASK for rebuttal.

And remember the failures of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy as it related to the Middle East? I've always felt that he just couldn't see through the deception which these people are capable of. As this blog points out, such deception is part and parcel of Islam and even predates Islam. The "religion of peace" is merely a facade; what lies beneath is not peaceful but rather a totalitarian ideology.

A few weeks after 9/11, a Saudi-born colleague and a naturalized American citizen, told me something very like the following: "The Sauds are America's friend only as long as they can sell you oil. Look out after that!" Now we are, once again, faced with a President who actually believes what the Saudis are telling him. Big mistake!

A few days ago another reader discussed the Saudis in an email:

The Saudis just held their elections, "Ha Ha," and, of course, the ruling Islamofacists won out. Here we are in the 21st century, and we still have countries "like Saudi Arabia" still living in the dark ages. Women are not allowed to drive a vehicle "even if they learned how" they can't attend universities and attain a degree. Oh, I'm sure they have classes on how to be a good subserviant Muslim wife and the ever popular class "How to dance around and minimize the blows from your husband." This one I hear is very popular among the newlywed girls.It's becoming something of a national craze! Kind of like the "peppermint twist" was here in the good ol' U.S.--without the beatings.

Seriously though, we are having discussions of letting the Saudis in the World Trade Organization. To me this is bordering on insanity. 40 Christians were arrested yesterday in that cesspool of a country; their only crime not being a Muslim and worshipping a God other than the Allah. Then today the prince arrives in Crawford,Tx. to have a chit chat with the president. I wonder if Mr. Bush asked the great one about the arrests. I doubt it.

How can we as a nation have such double standards? We let the Saudi clerics bring their tripe over here, stirring up hatred for Jews and Christians. One of the pamphlets even stated "not to shake the hand of any unbeliever unless he first comes up to you." Another, "never practice or observe any western holidays." "Don't make friends with the unbelievers" unless it gives you an advantage."

We must tell the Saudi government in no uncertain terms, either you open up let people in your country practice what religon they want. or all Saudi clerics will be deported immediately, and all mosques sponsored by same government will be closed! No more "wahabbism" this is the only way to deal with Muslims. They perceive anything concillatory as weakness. They only understand strength. And while we still have it we must use it.

The president doesn't seem to get it, nor does the State Department. Few in Congress, if any, get it. However, American citizens are getting it better and better, as they have said ever so eloquently. We have got to take our pitchforks and make ourselves heard by our "leaders" so that we do not have to worry about surviving despite them.

Smile to Your Face While Stabbing You in the Back

Monday, 25 April 2005, President George Bush made cozy with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah in Crawford, Texas, and gushed positively about the prince. Fox News at 1715 EDT on the same day interviewed Ali Al-Ahmed, Director of the Saudi Institute, which is distinctly anti-Saudi. The key question asked of the Director of the Saudi Institute was whether Saudi Arabia is truly a friend of the USA. Mr. Ahmed stated plainly "No!"

Mr. Ahmed went on to say that they (the Saudi Institute) had just now obtained a secret recording of a "very high Saudi minister" who thought he was in private urging Saudis to go to Iraq to kill coalition forces and cause total disruption. Mr. Ahmed referred to Saudi behavior as typically Bedouin: smiling to your face while stabbing you in the back.

We common citizens see this as plain as day. Those august bodies and lofty spirits in Washington apparently do not.

We pointed out on 6th Column Against Jihad (in a recent review of Andre' Servier's 1924 book, Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman) that knowing Islamists required first knowing Bedouins, among whom Islam developed. Deception as behavior preceeded Islam historically, coming substantially from long-standing Bedouin behavior. Islam institutionalized it.

Still, so many people just do not want to believe that they are being deceived chronically--or any other perfidies inherent in Islam. They, and other--in high places, just want to be fooled.

For the rest of us, we want to know the enemy. To facilitate that understanding, we are reprinting one of our first articles on this blog, Islam Practices to Deceive (revised).

Islam Practices to Deceive

Saturday, July 17, 2004


Islam kills Muslims off in the worst possible way, by destroying their humanity at the earliest possible age in life. From my perspective, their lives are living hells.

Consider one double bind Islam forces them into. On the one hand, they are supposed to have allegiance only to Islam and the ummah, which is the world community of Muslims, and they are supposed to be strict practitioners of Islam. Both make them detestable as human beings. Some rebel, usually only partially against Islam. They want to live and let live, and to enjoy life on this earth. By not being totally consistently orthodox, they become “bad Muslims," by Islamic criteria.

Suppose these "bad Muslims" (by Islamic criteria) express their desires to join the Family of Man instead of killing and conquering the Family of Man? Who among the non-Islamic Family of Man dares trust them?

From where comes this distrust? It comes from Islam itself, which has built into itself all sorts of ways to trap Muslims permanently into its morass. “Good Muslims”--who are “bad guys” to us because they are consistent practitioners of Islam and want to destroy use--use all sorts of official Islamic techniques to fool us into believing that they seek congeniality in order to share life on earth. All the while, these bad guys are fooling us, trying to take us off guard, so they can kill and destroy us.

A Muslim with truly humane intentions also endures distrust engendered by the deceivers ("good Muslims"). These Muslims can’t win, inside Islam or out. Islam makes them universal pariahs. The best course for them is to renounce Islam completely and follow up public renunciation with consistently benevolent behavior over a very long time, but those lining up to join the Family of Man make a very short line.

Despite our best vigilance, we may still be fooled by some Muslims, who pretend to renounce Islam as part of their program of deceit. Some become long term “sleepers.”

It is worth exposing the tactics of deception practiced by Islam, as we find them. I am indebted to Counter Intelligence, Counter Espionage, and Counter Terrorism (http://www.ci-ce-ct.com/Feature%20articles/02-12-2002.asp), for the following excellent material, in “Taqiyya and kitman: The role of Deception in Islamic terrorism.”

“Tradecraft. Persona. Deception. Disinformation. Cover: Western operational terms and techniques. But, Islamic terrorists have their own terms: taqiyya (pronounced tark-e-ya): precautionary dissimulation or deception and keeping one's convictions secret and a synonymous term, kitman: mental reservation and dissimulation or concealment ofmalevolent intentions...

“Taqiyya and kitman or ‘holy hypocrisy’ has been diffused throughout Arabic culture for over fourteen hundred years since it was developed by Shiites as a means of defence and concealment of beliefs against Sunni unbelievers. As the Prophet said: 'he who keeps secrets shall soon attain his objectives.’

"The skilful use of taqiyya and kitman was often a matter of life and death against enemies; it is also a matter of life and death to many contemporary Islamic terrorists. As so often in the history of Islam, a theological doctrine became operational.

“During the Spanish inquisition, Sunni Moriscos attended mass and returned home to wash their hands of the ‘holy water’. In operational terms, taqiyya and kitman allowed the ‘mujahadeen ’ to assume whatever identity was necessary to fulfill their mission; they had doctrinal and theological and later jurisprudential sanction to pretend to be Jews or Christians to gain access to Christian and Jewish targets: ‘the mujahadeen can take the shape of the enemy’.

“Taqiyya is common to both Shiite and Sunni Muslim discourse and has significant implications for understanding Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist operations. The theory and practice of counter terrorism would be counter productive, indeed pointless, and even harmful, without reference to taqiyya and kitman and the crucial role of deception ranging from Islamic jurisprudence to Al Qaeda training manuals, which carry detailed instructions on the use of deception by terrorists in Western target countries.

“According to Christian ethics lying is a sin; In Islamic jurisprudence and theology, the use of taqiyya against the unbelievers is regarded as a virtue and a religious duty.

“Like many Islamic concepts taqiyya and kitman were formed within the context of the Arab-Islamic matrix of tribalism, expansionary warfare and conflict. Taqiyya has been used by Muslims since the 7th century to confuse and split 'the enemy’. A favored tactic was ‘deceptive triangulation’; to persuade the enemy that jihad was not aimed at them but at another enemy. Another tactic was to deny that there was jihad at all. The fate for such faulty assessments by the target was death.”


We must never forget, as we expose the truth about Islam, that many of their best theorists and practitioners lived in, and still live in, Iran. Iran is Shia Islam territory. Shiites broke off from Sunnis about 900 A.D. and the two factions have been in competition since. While there are differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, they are trifles. At the level of basic principles and practices., they are the same.

The best modern theorist of Iranian Islam has been that “fun-loving,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He deposed the Shah of Iran to set up an Islamic theocratic totalitarian state in Iran. With his approval, USA embassy personnel were taken hostage in 1979. He popularized the saying that America is the “Great Satan.” He also issued a fatwa, a religious edict, calling for the death of Muslim author, Salman Rushdie, because he wrote a novel about Muhammad’s alleged encounter with Satan (which the Qur'an itself describes, but from which Rushdie cannot describe even approvingly). And he turned Islamic jihadic terrorism into a formal, BIG business, funded by Iranian oil.

Far too few these days, writing about Islam, note or quote Khomeini. In fact, Iran as the West's foreign enemy number one, seems to be “under-the-radar” far too much. One Iranian author has written telling books about Khomeini and his Iran. Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist, has has written about Khomeini’s decades-long struggle to seize power over Iran as a stepping stone to seizing power over the world. He poins out how Khomeini practiced deceptive techniques masterfully.

In addition to taqiyyah and kitman, Khomeini employed:

Khod’eh, “which means tricking one’s enemy into a misjudgement of one’s true position. Khomeini did not tell direct lies but used many half-truths based on well-established khod’eh tactics.” One of his many pledges was for female equality in Iran, which he qualified with phrases such as “in accordance with Islam.”

Tanfih, “which means misleading everyone about one’s true beliefs in a hostile environment.” These are the promises, such as UN nuclear regulatory compliance, made these days.

(From Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini and the
Islamic Revolution, Adler and Adler, ISBN: 0-917561-04-X, 1985.
Unfortunately, this book is out-of-print.)

The Qur'an and other Islamic documents sanction Muslim deception against infidels (non-Muslims). Our take home lesson should be obvious:

Believe nothing Islamists say or state in any form. Particularly, never believe any promise from them.

Whatever they say or do may serve to you in, so that you will drop your guard: Many of Muhammad’s targets were murdered in just this way.

Dedicated Islamists are true “shape-shifters,” a la Star Trek. They use these strategies and tactics on us continuously. Be vigilant always.

A Painful Anniversary

This article speaks eloquently, too eloquently to abridge.


A Painful Anniversary, By Henry Mark Holzer, FrontPageMagazine.com April 25, 2005

It is said that the boy, now 16, “is a model student, favoring math and Spanish classes. He has been chosen leader of his sixth-grade class...He takes karate lessons and plays ping pong. He...keeps a photo of his mother...by his bed.” Unfortunately, the photo is all he has left with which to remember her—she drowned with ten others while fleeing Cuba. As the world would learn, one of three survivors of that failed escape from communism was 11-year-old Elian Gonzalez.

It was five years ago this month, on the orders of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, that armed federal agents stormed into a modest home in South Florida, ripped Elian Gonzalez from the care of loving relatives, shoved him into a private jet, and delivered the boy to Castro’s island prison.

The Associated Press has just reported that in commemoration of Cuba’s victory in the tug-of-war over Elian’s fate, on April 22, 2005, he “addressed a crowd of thousands...thanking Cubans and Americans alike for fighting for his return to the island. ‘I want to thank everyone who made my dream of being a free boy come true,’ said Elian, whose speech prompted enthusiastic applause from the crowd.”

While the fight for Elian’s freedom in 1999 and 2000 brought out the best in some people, predictably it brought out the worst in others. It coalesced groups of America-haters who hadn’t been so vociferous since they worked for a Communist victory in Vietnam. It revealed the incompetence of the State of Florida, which dropped the ball in not fighting for Elian. It showed the hypocrisy of liberals, who would have fought to prevent an African child from being returned to apartheid South Africa or a Jewish child being returned to Nazi Germany, but demanded Elian’s return to Communist Cuba. It allowed Clinton’s China-loving White House, its accommodating State Department, and handmaiden Justice Department/INS to crush Elian’s quest for freedom in order to build bridges to Cuba, one of the world’s few remaining communist dictatorships.

Also predictable was a phenomenon I encountered two decades earlier when, with Erika Holzer and Julian Kulas, I represented Walter Polovchak, the young Ukrainian defector who refused to return to the Soviet Union with his émigré parents: many otherwise anti-Communist conservatives became so wedded to their version of “family values” – “children belong with their parents,” we were repeatedly admonished in the Polovchak case – that they evaded what they knew about Castro’s totalitarian domination of all Cubans, and that in Cuba the boy’s father and his entire family was under the thumb of Communist thugs.

Even though the federal appeals court that sent Elian back to Cuba admitted that it is “a widely-accepted truth, that Cuba does violate human rights and fundamental freedoms and does not guarantee the rule of law to people living in Cuba,” that “[n]o one should doubt that, if [Elian] returns to Cuba, he will be without the degree of liberty that people enjoy in the United States,” and “that re-education, communist indoctrination, and political manipulation of [Elian] for propaganda purposes, upon a return to Cuba, are not beyond the realm of possibility,” still that court sent the boy back to Castro, to the cheers of too many “family values” conservatives.

It has now been five long years since Elian was “reunited” with his grandparents, father, and other relatives. How is he doing? A Castro-friendly article by Vanessa Bauza – bylined Cardenas, Cuba – recently reported that Elian has finished psychotherapy (read: “reeducation”). “[T]o help him cope with the stress of his ordeal, several plainclothes security officers are stationed in front of Elian’s home to keep strangers from getting too close.” (Read: to prevent interviews with unfriendly journalists). In a perverse consequence of that family reunification, “Castro takes a special interest in [Elian’s] schooling.” Indeed, Elian’s father – a waiter who somehow was elected to the Communist National Assembly – “is often seen in the front row of government-organized rallies,” (read: propaganda tools) “sometimes accompanied by Elian.” As the Associated Press reported yesterday, Elian has been trotted out by Castro’s PR machine to laud the Communist dictator and his tyrannical regime.

Even now, five years after his kidnapping, there are several lessons to be drawn from the Elian Gonzalez story. But for those of us who fought the successful battle to save Walter, and who waged the unsuccessful battle to save Elian, none speaks as loudly as this: Although “family values” are important and children usually belong with their parents, a clear line protecting the child must be drawn when, as in Elian’s case, parental custody is inimical to a child’s best interests — a lesson too many conservatives have yet to learn. It was the failure of many conservatives to have learned that lesson that contributed to Elian Gonzalez losing his freedom and becoming a ward of the Cuban state and a pawn of its dictator, Fidel Castro.

You Can't Shine S__t or Polish a Meatball

Which is worse, the United Nations or Islam? Talk about a Hobson's choice! Each is in the back pocket of the other, as this cited article indicates.

Yahoo! News - U.N. Calls for Combating 'Defamation' of Islam, Tue Apr 12,10:46 AM ET,by Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights called on Tuesday for combating defamation of religions, especially Islam, and condemned discrimination against Muslims in the West's war on terrorism.

The 53-member state forum adopted a resolution, presented by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), deploring the intensification of a "campaign of defamation" against Muslims following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Utter corruption at the UN is hiding behind the skirts of "religion." Get this:

"In a recent report, the U.N. special investigator on racism, Doudou Diene,cited examples including "Islamophobic violence" after the murder last Novemberof Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh, and an "alarming number of expulsions ofimams" in Europe."

Pause on this a moment. "Doudou"? How utterly appropriate.

That utterly worthless organization called the United Nations, deciding by group collusion that Islam is a poor, picked-upon,and discrimated religion creates only nausea, not surprise.

So, by contrast, how did the "good guys" do in this encounter? Well, according to this article, they left their balls at home. Says the journalist writing this piece, "Western countries, including the United States and European Union (EU), voted against the text, calling it unbalanced for failing to address problems suffered by other religious groups."

Utter cowardice from the Western countries leaps out of this statement. They did not challenge that poisonous ideology of Islam as having any validity whatsoever. No, that would have taken fortitude.

They hid behind the lack of inclusion of Buddhists, Hindus, Klingons, Zoroastrians, Romulans, scientologists, creationists, Christian Reconstructionists and Identity Christians, shintoists, feringis, Jews, and whomeverelse can be pulled out of the air. How utter postmodern: We are all victims, if we are religionists, and we all need protecting. Implied in this is that all religions are valid.

Setting aside for the time being whether religion is valid, and defining just what "valid" means, how can anyone look at Islam through the lens of reason, its history, its doctrines, and its modern behavior, and think this Nazi-like ideology needs protection?

For a moment just substitute "Nazism" for "Islam" and "Nazi" for "Muslim." Then ask yourself if Nazis and Nazism needed protection. This is no idle substitution. Nazism and Islam are uncannily alike right down to fundamentals and right up to practices.

Looking at current events and world history, who has needed protection among these pairs? Islam-Christianity. Islam-Judaism. Islam-Hinduism. Islam-Buddhism.

Among the ferocious religions, which is the most ferocious? Are there Christian sects any longer that are really aggressive? Other than running their mouths, these days, Christians just mill about smartly, resembling Brownian motion. How about those Hindus? Well, some Hindus burn their women, and that is morally intolerable, but most just wallow in their squalor in silence. How about those Buddhists? Of course! They are a ferocious group, with their vows of utter passivity.

We are running out of choices. Those Ferengis, Romulans, and Klingons, well, they are rather remote, you might say. Yes, too remote to be of concern.

And the militant atheists? The who? Where? Talk about your unprotected minorities!

Who is left? Why, bless my soul, it is the Muslims. Well, surely it is the Jews who keep them stirred up, right? It must be so because the Muslims say it is so. Right? Unfortunately, history shows that it is just the other way around: the Muslims almost single-handedly created Jew-hatred and persecution, right from their beginnings. Like Hitler, they need Jews to hate, for exactly the same reason Adolf did.

In fact, Muslims have carried the torch of hate for any religion that is not Islam, even for those who have no religion at all. Wherever there are Muslims, there is chronic strife.

Muslims parasitize from everyone and destroy all progress. They have created nothing and can do nothing that they have not taken from someone else. Even then, they can't progress beyond whatever technician level of knowledge they have parasitized. They have been really good at murder, rape, pillage, conquest, and slavery. They have never been at peace with anyone who has had the misfortune to be near them.

Says the journalist, quoting UN eggheads: "Stereotyping of any religion as propagating violence or its association with terrorism constitutes defamation of religion. It unfortunately breeds a culture of hatred, disharmony and discrimination," Pakistan's envoy, Masood Khan, said in a speech on behalf of the OIC, which links 57 Islamic nations.There was "a growing trend of defamation of Islam and discrimination faced by Muslims and the people of Arab descent in many parts of the world," he said, citing attacks on places of worship and religious symbols."

Don't you just want to cry rivers of tears?

Adding to this was that great tower of gelatin from Holland, "Discrimination based on religion or belief is not confined to any one religion nor to any one part of the world," said Dutch ambassador Ian de Jong."

These UN people, including our own, are the kind of people who can fall face first into a hot, steaming pasture paddy and get up with big grins on their faces. These are people who just take up space on the great continuum. They are not the best we have--they are the worst.

A set of governmental balls would identify Islam as the real "terror" problem and act for the defense of America accordingly. Those Muslims not already citizens would be exited stage right back to wherever they came from, or at least out of America. Any Muslims who are citizens acting covertly or overtly on behalf of jihad would feel the full force of American law, not this spineless stuff we have now. Those Muslims at peace, respecting rights of fellow Americans, and who really are not supporting the Muslim bad guys with money and materiel, would have no problem with any of us. They would have to realize that Islam makes being a Muslim and being an American totally incompatible, which keeps Muslims under a cloud of suspicion interminably. (None yet renounces the ferocious tenets of Islam).

A set of governmental balls would take us out of the UN immediately and cancel any and all payments. We would immediately give the UN two weeks to vacate personnel and materiel from the building and be gone by the end of that two weeks. We would then auction off the property to private enterprise, pay the New York City parking tickets from the auction proceeds, and watch something good be made by private enterprise of something that is very, very bad.

Would would the members go, and what would the UN do? As long as they get the hell off of USA soil, who cares? As a suggestion, maybe they could go to one of those beloved Middle Eastern countries where they could preserve and protect that poor delicate religion of Islam. Now that would be justice.

VERY GOOD NEWS: "Akbar" Convicted of Murder

FOXNews.com - Akbar Convicted of Murder, Friday, April 22, 2005

Army sergeant "Hasan Akbar,"was convicted Thursday by a military jury of premeditated murder and attempted murder in a grenade and rifle attack that killed two of his comrades and wounded 14 others in Kuwait during the opening days of the Iraq war.

Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve "maximum carnage" on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division (search).

Defense attorney Maj. Dan Brookhart countered that Akbar was concerned the invasion of Iraq would result in the deaths of Muslims and that U.S. soldiers would rape Iraqi women. Akbar's father issued a statement this week saying his son was the source of harassment by fellow soldiers because he is a Muslim.

Now the only better news is that this son-of-a-bitch dies--as his sentence. As the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland would say: Off with his head! How fitting that would be!

We MUST NOT ALLOW UNVETTED MUSLIMS IN OUR MILITARY. And, the vetting process should be prolonged and get into every nook and cranny of the life of any Muslim wanting to be in our military, however long this takes. IT MUST BE OBJECTIVE.

For all of you minimizers and apologists of Islam and Muslims, here is the piece de resistance:

The mothers of the slain soldiers wept during closing arguments as prosecutors flashed pictures of their dead bodies on a screen. When a prosecutor pointed at Akbar, nearly yelling that he was responsible, Akbar sipped from a coffee mug. The mothers declined to comment after the verdict, as did Akbar's parents.

(Emphasis mine)

A Citizen Sounds Off

A concerned citizen shared some thoughts with us recently.

Im absolutely disgusted with the Bush admin. I have been a life long conservative,yet this president stumbles over himself to give aid to the P.L.O.. Yes other past presidents have given aid to this terror toilet, but after 9/11 we should be a little pennywise and not pound foolish. Further,I have read a report on the web stating that the president and all other admin. personnel are not allowed to use the term "terrorist" in the same breath as Islam! Like a bumper sticker I seen years back: "your right mr. scott, there is no intelligent life here, BEAM ME UP! What the h-- are these morons thinking? Every where you look,everyday a terrorist either blows up innocent people or some guy insulted Allah, and gets killed,beheadings going on everyday, the nightmare the Clinton admin. pulled in Bosnia.Now christians are being slaughterd trying to protect their homeland,while muslims run willy nilly destroying churches that have been in existence for hundreds of years.The Sudan, same story. And this president doesnt want to connect Islam with terrorism? Tell me where are we missing it?What is it going to take? We must rid ourselves of this cancer! Another story concerns a muslim group in some city in Arkansas, that wants to create their own community complete with schools! And the worst part is the city is going to allow it! What happened to intergration? What happened to assmilation? I can just imagine what the imans will be teaching to "the future of America." Is this not racism in its purest form? What if I wanted to start an all white community, complete with teachers schools, homes with a wall surrounding it? How far would that fly? It is time to take action, I write my senators almost daily concerning this and other issues,such as illegal immigration, and I encourage all my friends to do the same. Bombard them with emails reminding them of their responibility, not that does any good. But yet I persist, and will continue to do so.

Don't tell us that Mr. and Mrs. America are not catching on. Welcome aboard to the truth, and invite more to get on board.

What We Are About--A Re-Look

Over time, persons entangled in protracted engagements run the risk of blurring and sliding, almost imperceptibly, away from their starting vision. For this reason, we pause periodically to go back to ground, to put to “paper” just what we are doing with this blog and its companion website.

First off, why do we have both a blog and a website? When we began publishing in July of 2004, we were learning how to create a website. In the process, we discovered the Google Blogger, which allowed us to have a quick site, using a canned template, and they offered these services without charge. By contrast, our website host offered us a more complex, canned system for newbies, like us, which had a steeper learning curve. Nevertheless, it enabled us to have a website while learning to have one.

Quickly we discovered that Blogger offered us the opportunity to be more attuned to current events and publications and to write more casually. We decided to stick to one point per blog and to key off existing news items, op-eds, and other articles. We would choose either to use some existing item in whole or in part or to write something de novo. We could write much more quickly by writing directly, in a “shoot from the hip” mode, and be much more casual. Something in each of us needs that kind of outlet. We knew we could publish multiple times a week, depending on available material striking our interest--and sometimes depending on available writers. We are happy with SIXTH COLUMN.

The website, 6th COLUMN AGAINST JIHAD, we explain on its About Us page. It has the same orientation and purpose as SIXTH COLUMN, but its publications are longer, cover areas more in depth across multiple points, and add new material once or twice a month. Generally speaking, the website is where we cover background issues and principles in greater depth. The majority of articles we publish are original to the website and are not usually reprints of existing articles. Some have referred to the website as the place for “thought pieces,” although that should not indicate that the blog pieces do not involve thought.

From the first, we have been fighting wars within wars. Islam and its activism known as "Jihad" have clearly been ONE OF THE ENEMIES. We have studied it, using its own materials and many excellent materials which tell the truth about Islam, and we understand Islam right down to its fundamentals. We have not gotten hung up or distracted by bogus issues such as the fact that Islam masquerades its real identity and nature as a religion; we are not religionists of any kind. We also have not succumbed to bogus matters such as “political correctness” and “multiculturalism.” We see Islam for what it is, and we tell it like it is. But, Islam is not all of the problem.

A co-existing war within the war comes from elements we call the Fifth Column, meaning those persons, institutions, and ideas which intend destruction of America and Western culture by their efforts alone and in concert with Jihadists. All unite in hatred for America and the West, something we won’t stand for. The best name for this combination of anti-American and anti-Western elements is the Unholy Alliance, given by David Horowitz of Front Page Magazine. We cannot just deal with Islam without also dealing with these fifth columnists. Islam would always be too weak ever to pose a threat to the USA without the preexisting damage caused by fifth columnists and what they have done to American and Western culture. These postmodernist fifth columnists are cashing in on two centuries of philosophical erosion of America and Europe which have produced the cultural rot of North America and Europe by their war on reason itself.

Our approach is unusual among blogs and websites which deal with these same subject areas. We focus on the fundamental ideas involved in the diagnoses as well as the cure for these problems. Most sites deal with lots of facts. While lots of facts are vital and necessary, they are not sufficient to a proper level of understanding. Both the philosophical principles of our enemies and those needed for us to win will determine the outcome of these wars. Thus, we dwell on the whys which produce the hows.

We celebrate those who expose all the facts which serve as intellectual ammunition for all of us. But, it is the philosophies involved where the BIG MONEY and BIG GUNS are. This is a war of ideas that we are in, and no one in Western governments and their militaries seems to have sufficient appreciation or expertise.

We have the same focus now as when we started, and we will keep the same focus. We want to get as many people as possible, nationally and internationally, to start thinking about Islam and the fifth columns IN TERMS OF PRINCIPLES. Why? Because understanding at the level of principles cuts right through the various obfuscatory distractions, such as: Islam being a religion, political correctness, multiculturalism, moral and epistemological relativism, and the endless academic, journalistic, and political excuses trying to substitute for leadership. We know that everyone is capable of thinking his or her way through these wars within the war to reach crystal clarity of understanding about what the problems are and what to do about them.

We are fully open to ideas and contrary opinions and commentary. We are open to publishing both the pro and con from others, nationally and internationally. We encourage readers to email us their thoughts and opinions, rather like stopping by for a chat.

The Morality of Muslim Joy Coming from Martyring Their Children

We have been exploring morality on Sixth Column. This article from the Palestininian Media Watch Bulletin provides us another opportunity to look at other facets of morality or ethics. This article provides tremendous opportunity to examine what comes from one's choice of moral code--for good or for bad.

Creating a supportive social environment for terrorists has been a critical factor in the Palestinian Authority’s successful promotion of suicide terrorism. To this end, PA policy has been to honor terrorists as Shahids (Martyrs for Allah), and to teach Palestinian mothers to celebrate when their children die as terrorist Shahids. Categorizing these dead terrorists as Shahids grants them the highest honor a Muslim can achieve, and is therefore cause for a mother to celebrate, according to this PA teaching. This pressure on Palestinian mothers to celebrate their dead sons as Shahids continues under the regime of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and even increased this past week with repeated PA TV promotion connected to International Woman’s Day.

One thing we have stressed is that the human need for morality is inescapable. Human nature requires it because we humans have conceptual consciousnesses which require us to take charge of our choices and actions on behalf of our lives. We either internalize such a code carefully, deliberately, and remove contradictions, or we take in some pot pourri of contradictory and self-destructive principles, mixed up inextricably with whatever good principles we manage to internalize. This latter kind of morality is an ununderstandable blur to individuals who possess it. Unfortunately, that covers many people.

Preaching before an audience that included Abbas, Sheikh Yusuf Juma’ Salamah said in Friday’s sermon on PA TV that the ideal Palestinian woman is like Al Khansah, the heroine of Islamic tradition who celebrated her four sons’ death in battle by thanking God for the honor. Salamah, the PA Minister of Waqf, quoted Al Khansah: “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.” [PA TV, March 11, 2005]

What we have not said enough is that humans have the inescapable need to believe that their choices and actions are RIGHT, i.e., correct, by the standard they have accepted. People will follow their standard by acting in accordance with it no matter what it is, because adherence to it will register as being "right" or "correct" in their minds. A bad code will authorize bad behavior, just as a good code will authorize good behavior in one's evaluative mechanism. Many people have done utterly ghastly things in the name of the morality they accepted [Communists, Nazis, Muslims, Inquisition, and so on].

This is no trivial point. It cannot be overemphasized. People must feel right about what they do, and their moral code directs their behavior. If they do what is ghastly but in accordance with their moral code, they feel "right." Contradictions lurking in those with an evil morality, contradictions absorbed implicitly from positive, pro-human life moral codes, will dilute their "feeling right" with guilt.

It’s important to note that this was the first Friday sermon broadcast since the PA announced last week that it would control and vet all Friday sermons delivered in West Bank and Gaza strip mosques. This portrayal of the ideal Palestinian woman as one who willingly sacrifices her sons as Shahids, therefore, continues to represent official PA ideology – especially since this sermon was delivered in the presence of Abbas.

Two days later, PA TV broadcast a theatrical skit that included veneration of the same Al Khansah. A father taught his son her declaration: “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.” [PA TV, March 13, 2005]

Both the sermon and the play portray Al Khansah’s celebration of the deaths of her four sons as superior to the way she mourned the deaths of her two brothers, who died before she adopted Islam.

Islam, like every religion on earth past and present, preaches the moral code of self-sacrifice. The only differences in these systems consists of which "others"are to receive these sacrifices. And, let us make clear, "sacrifice" is a dirty term, one which properly should produce shame. "Sacrifice" means the giving up something of higher value for that of lesser value--Christianity and Judaism would go out of business without this ethics. Philosophers have called this ethics "altruism." Altruism does not mean normal concern for the well-being of others. It means selfless sacrifice-- by force, if necessary.

What if you can get people to sacrifice themselves voluntarily, as a moral ideal?

Promoting the Al Khansah ideal for Palestinians is a very powerful message for Muslims. Al Khansah was a poet in the early Islamic period. Before she converted to Islam, her brothers died, and she grieved. However, Islamic historian Ibn Athir writes that after she converted to Islam, she delivered a fiery speech encouraging her four sons to march into battle for Allah. When all four were killed, the poem she wrote was one of joy, rejoicing that Allah had honored her with the deaths of her sons.

This kind of ethics holds death as its standard, not life, and duty, not choice, as its mode of operation. Islamists make no argument about either. They have said over and over that they worship death, while we in the West worship life. They could not be clearer.

Al Khansah is considered the archetypal mother of Shahids, a woman glorified by Palestinians for encouraging her sons to kill and die for Allah, and rejoicing when they achieved their Shahada deaths.

Ordinarily, we value our children. We see so much of value in their very being, and in their potential. It takes one hell of an intellectual force to change that in humans. Islam provides such a force.

From a very young age, Palestinian girls are taught to adopt Al Khansah as a role model with her message of celebrating death in combat – which in contemporary Palestinian society includes death while committing acts of suicide terror. A music video for children, broadcast hundreds of times over three years on PA TV, included the farewell letter of a child Shahid, including the words: “Mother don’t cry for me, be joyous over my blood.”

Open Sesame! Make way for the shahids! The shahid (martyr) voluntarily sacrifices his or her life for the cause of Islam. To them, they are doing the right thing because they do not value themselves. Islam is all.

These children become living bombs. They die, and they kill others, all in the name of Islam, Allah, Muhammad, and so on. And, some actually believe they will live after death, but in a "better place."

Muslim mothers, exhibiting extraordinary feats of denial, repression, displacement, and a host of other psychological mental mechanisms, crow with pride over the suicidal bombing actions carried out by their children. These mothers consider such actions to be fully moral, thus fully good. Their standard of value is Islam, and this is what Islam values: DEATH. This is one of the meanings of EVIL.

Note that most of these bombers are immature children, not yet at the conceptual level of consciousness. Note that the supply of adult shahid volunteers seems to have dried up. Imposing suicidal impulsiveness on impressionable children is just one of the many, uncleansable sins of Islam.

There is another principle worth mentioning here as well. How do you deal with people who willfully abandon reason and will not use it? The answer is: You don't deal with them. You do not deal with them because you cannot. Without reason, there is no basis for communicating, understanding, or operating objectively among people. People who avoid reason are dangerous, so one deals with them solely in accordance with one's own rational code of values. If they pose a threat to you, you neutralize them--force is fully rational under these circumstances.

The Israelis have far too much trouble understanding this principle when dealing with the so-called "Palestinians." And, the U.S. seems incapable of understanding at the policy-making levels. Most of the so-called "Palestinians" advocate the morality of Islam, which is totally irrational, and because of this, they have earned their opportunity to visit Allah, and the sooner, the better.

Read the rest of this article now with the foregoing in mind:

The Joy of Killing Your Kids, by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, March 16, 2005

The following are the transcripts of these and other portrayals of the ideal Palestinian mother as one who celebrates her son’s death.

1. Friday TV sermon, Sheik Yusuf Juma’ Salamah, Minister of the Waqf, in the presence of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other senior PA members.

“Al Khansah, this noble woman… The day she lost her brother Sakher [before she adopted Islam] she began crying, shouting and feeling pain. She recited poetry: “The sunrise reminds me of Sakher, and I remember him with every sunset, and had there not been around me all the mourners for their brothers, I would have killed myself”. This was during the Jahiliyah [pre-Islam period]. When Allah filled her heart with love for Islam, and it became full of faith, things changed. She sent her four sons, her offspring, to battle, to Qadisiyah [near Iraq] as a service to this religion.

When she was notified that they had become Shahids (Died for Allah), she said, “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths. I pray that he will take me to them at the place where His mercy dwells.”This is the great woman. This is the noble woman. Have you seen how Islam changed her behavior, her virtues, and her poetry?...“ [PA TV, March 11, 2005]

2. Theatrical Skit: Educational TV program “My knowledge, your knowledge”:
A young child asks his father: “My father, my father, who is this woman?”

Father: “This is the poet Tumarid, who is known by name Al Khansah. She was one of the prettiest women of her time. ..”

Female host: “When [before she adopted Islam] her brother Mu’awiya died, and after that her brother on her father’s side, Sakher, she became extremely mournful because of them”

Al Khansah: “I was extremely saddened for Sakher, until my eyes became blind. In Al-Qadisiyah battle, four sons of mine became Shahids.”

Father: “When she was told of her four sons’ deaths, she pleaded to the Creator, to him be the glory and power, and said, “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.” [PA TV, March 13, 2004]

3. The Dean of Al Aqsa University Faculty of Media [on behalf of the University’s Dean], Dr Hussein Abu Shanab:

Dr Hussein Abu Shanab, the Dean of the Media Faculty at Al-Aqsa University [on behalf of himself and of the University’s Dean]:

“The Palestinian woman –our hearts all full of respect and admiration for her, as she is a unique woman for several reasons: she is the Shahid’s mother; and she is [the one] who shouts for joy on the day of the Shahid and she is [the one] who shouts for joy, while her son is a prisoner, and she is [the one] who shouts for joy, when her son is arrested...” [PA TV, March 10, 2005]

Additional examples from the PMW archives:

4. Interview with the mother of two killed terrorists.

Host: They [Israelis] accuse the Palestinian mother of hating her sons and of encouraging them to die.

Mother: No. We do not encourage our sons to die. We encourage them to shahada [death for Allah] for the homeland, for Allah. We don’t say to the mothers of the shahids, ‘We come to comfort you,’ rather, ‘We come to bless you on your son’s wedding, on your son’s shahada. Congratulations to you on the shahada.’ For us, the mourning is a [joyous] wedding. We give out drinks, we give out sweets. Praise to Allah, our mourning is a [joyous] wedding. [PA TV, November 17, 2004]

5. A Suicide Bomber’s Imaginary Letter to his Mother

Introduction:

In the literature section in the official Palestinian daily, Al Hayat Al Jadida, a poem written as an imaginary letter from a suicide bomber to his mother, glorifies and idealizes every action of his murder and suicidal death.

A letter from a Shahid to his Mother” / By Abdul Badi Iraq

“My Dear Mother,
...I wrapped my body with determination, with hopes and with bombs.
I asked [reaching] towards Allah and the fighting homeland.
The [explosive] belt makes me fly, strengthens me to make haste.
I calm it [the explosive], we should stay steadfast, we have not yet reached.
I freed/launched myself; I freed/launched myself, [detonated myself] like lava burning old legends and vanity,
I freed/launched my body, all my pains and oppression, towards the packs of beasts...
I freed/launched, oh mother, freed the chains and the shackles.

And you found me rising and rising like a candle that was lit with precious olive oil.
And you saw me sending a loving kiss above the mosques and the churches, the houses and the roads.
Flocks of pigeons flew above the porches
And Al-Aksa smiled and gave me a sign that we will not sleep.

Dawn is close, oh mother, and it shall rise from the guns, from the shining spears
It will be lit from a bloody wound...
The wedding is the wedding of the land.
Sound a cry of joy, oh mother, I am the groom...”
[Al Hayat Al Jadida, official Palestinian Daily, Feb. 27, 2003]

6. Palestinian Mother Proudly Prayed for her Son to Die, during her Pilgrimage [Haj] to Mecca

Below are excerpts from her interview:

"[My second son Naji] became a Shahid on Mar. 23, 2002, at the age of 20. Before I made my pilgrimage [to Mecca], he put his hands on my head and said: “Be calm, mother, be calm, this is my wish. Pray for me, that I will be a Shahid [Die for Allah].” When I did the circuit [an Islamic pilgrimage ceremony], in Mecca and Medina, I swear to Allah, that I prayed for him... And said: Praise Allah, my children asked for Shahada, and it is better than the way we will die. Their death is for Allah, death for our country, death for our Jerusalem …”
Presenter: “Of course, we are always very proud of all of our Shahids.” [Palestinian Television 5/12/02]

Links to videos of more mothers expressing their joy and honor on the PMW web site [ED: SEE ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOR LINKS]:

1. It brings honor to all the family members "People say -'There is the mother of the Shahid'..."

2. A mother wants the best for her son, and as a Shahid he achieves the maximum. Also Allah wills he go on Jihad.

3. He had no one to marry in this world so he wanted to marry the 72 "dark-eyed maidens" of Paradise.

4. Mothers Express Joy at son’s Death for Allah


We have said before and say again: Islam is evil. Again, why is this true? The evil is the anti-life, anti-human, anti-this world, and anti-reason. Minimizers keep looking for the "good" in Islam, but there is none.

WorldNetDaily: Jihad comes to Small Town, USA

SPECIAL MESSAGE FOR THE COMPROMISERS, MINIMIZERS, AND OTHERS WHO PERMIT THEMSELVES TO BE BLIND TO ISLAM AND ITS PRACTITIONERS: Face the problem now and deal with it before it gets bigger and much more difficult. Start by reading this article by Laura Mansfield, reprinted in its entirety. What this woman writes about is TAQIYYA, Muslim dissimulation, i.e., putting the veil over your mind.


WorldNetDaily: Jihad comes to Small Town, USA,Tuesday, April 19, 2005, By Laura Mansfield
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© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

It happened again this week. I came out of the office to find a flyer under my windshield wipers inviting me to a special informational presentation on God and family values, and how to bring them back to the forefront in America.

I'm a parent so the flyer caught my interest. But as an analyst for the Northeast Intelligence Network, my eyes were riveted to the address on the flyer: The session was being held at a nearby mosque.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided it would be a good time for some onsite investigations of the mosque. In order to not attract undue attention, I dressed conservatively, wearing a navy jumper with a long sleeve white blouse, and low heels. I debated whether or not to put on a hijab (head scarf) then decided not to – after all, I was going to "learn," not to pretend I was a Muslim.

I checked the mosque schedule on the Web, and discovered there was going to be an Arabic language session an hour before. So I showed up an hour early. The imam met me at the door, and told me that the presentation didn't start for an hour, and suggested I come back in an hour. Fortunately, I had anticipated this. I explained that since I had quite a bit of reading to do for a class I was taking. "Can I just sit here and read?"

He hesitated a moment, then agreed. I sat in the back of the room, with my book open, and made a mental note to remember to turn the pages every so often, as I listened to the speakers in Arabic.

The first speaker was the head of the Muslim Students' Association at the nearby university. Although I missed the beginning of the discussion, I caught up quickly. He was talking about the problems he had encountered on a recent trip, when TSA flagged him for extra screening. He joked about the fact that they had stopped him for extensive screening. He had anticipated that he would be screened and he had filled his carryon luggage with printouts of the Quran from the Internet, and had 15 or 16 CDs labeled in Arabic, and he had a notebook computer with him.

As he expected, he was delayed – he thought it was very amusing that while several TSA personnel were scrutinizing his personal belongings that his classmate from Jordan was able to walk through security, along with his American girlfriend, without any problems whatsoever.

One of the men said, in Arabic: "Blonde Americans are good for something!" Another man advised him to be cautious, since there was an American woman in the room. The imam spoke up and told everyone I didn't speak Arabic.

At that point, another student took the podium. His name was Khaled, and he began to recount his recent trip to New York City. Khaled and three of his companions had gone to New York for several days in January. He told of how uncomfortable his trip up to NYC had been. He felt like he was being watched, and thought he was the victim of racial profiling.

Khaled and his friends were pretty unhappy about it, and while in New York, they came up with a plan to "teach a lesson" to the passengers and crew. You can imagine the story Khaled told. He described how he and his friends whispered to each other on the flight, made simultaneous visits to the restroom, and generally tried to "spook" the other passengers. He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying.

The others in the room thought the story was quite amusing, judging from the laughter. The imam stood up and told the group that this was a kind of peaceful civil disobedience that should be encouraged, and commended Khaled and his friends for their efforts.

He pointed out that it was through this kind of civil disobedience that ethnic profiling would fail.

One of the other men, Ahmed from Kuwait, gave a brief account of his friend Eyad, who had finally gone to Iraq. Ahmed was in e-mail contact with Eyad, and hoped by the following week to be able to bring them more information about the state of the "mujahideen" in Iraq.

As the meeting drew to a close, the imam gave a brief speech calling for the protection of Allah on the mujahideen fighting for Islam throughout the world, and reminded everyone that it was their duty as Muslims to continue in the path of jihad, whether it was simple efforts like those of Khaled and his friends, or the actual physical fighting of men like Eyad.

As the meeting broke up, several women in hijabs came in the room, and two of them sat with me. They were very warm and friendly and welcoming, and appeared to be clearly thrilled that I was there. They asked me questions about who I was, and why I was interested in the session.

By the time the session began, there were half a dozen American women, four of them African-American. Where the previous session had definite anti-American tones, this session was all American and Apple Pie. The earlier session had been in Arabic – this one was in English.

The woman leading the session, Nafisa, told of the concerns she had regarding her daughters in the public-school system. She complained about the influence of the MTV culture, and seemed concerned about the rampant sexuality that pervaded all facets of American life, from television to movies and on into the school system.

She explained her personal solution – the local Islamic school, beginning with kindergarten. Instead of worrying about her daughters dressing provocatively and behaving inappropriately with boys, she talked about the modest school uniforms they wore, and the single-gender classes her daughters attended.

She then began to discuss Islam, focusing on the commonalities it has with Christianity. The sales pitch had clearly begun. While in the previous section, the men had quoted over and over again sura from the Quran calling for violent jihad, the women's session focused on the "gentler" side of Islam.

The same imam who demanded that the men continue in the path of jihad did a complete 180-degree turn in this session, stressing instead the suras that promoted the "brotherhood" between Muslims, Christians and Jews. "After all, we worship the same God, and follow the teachings in the books he gave each of us. We are all the same, we are all People of the Book," he stressed.

The differences between the sessions were striking. Clearly the second session was a recruiting session.

Were the women aware of what was being taught in the first session? Certainly those women who spoke Arabic should have been.

The reason for concern is obvious: Two different doctrines are being promoted. One peaceful, friendly, warm and fuzzy doctrine is being used to draw people in, with a focus on the well-being of their children.

But the Arabic-speaking sessions clearly have an anti-American tone.

It shows clearly that as much as we'd like to pretend it hasn't, jihad has reached Small-Town, USA. This mosque isn't in Washington, D.C., or New York City. This is a small mosque in a small town in the deep South.

And if it's in this tiny little quiet southern town, it's probably in your hometown, too.

HOW CONSERVATIVES AND MODERATES ARE AS DANGEROUS AS LIBERALS: Morton Kondracke: Obesity epidemic calls for measures like tobacco war

Morton Kondracke, Jewish World Review, April 18, 2005 / 9 Nisan, 5765, by Morton Kondracke

Obesity epidemic calls for measures like tobacco war

And the government should help, by adequately funding physical education for children, getting fatty and sugary foods out of school lunchrooms (and healthy foods in), and imposing taxes on fat and sugar.

As conservatives often say, if you tax something, you get less of it. Cigarettes used to cost 25 cents a pack. Now, in New York, they cost $8. We should try that with fat.

Mr. Kondracke seems to be one of those "moderates" with a slight tilt to the right, so the notion of this being a typical big government liberal notion does not fit. He demonstrates the prevailing mindset of people from most sections of the political spectrum in that his solution is government. Notice that I started with the solution and did not start with the question. In gov-think, the answer to everything is government, and questions are irrelevant.

No one with at least one toe anchored in reason could doubt the problem of obesity any more than they could doubt the problem of tobacco, street drugs, and so on. All of these became significant problems in proportion to the development of big government in America, particularly beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but really accelerated during and after the FDR administrations.

Reliance on the self was replaced by reliance on the government which quickly became the sole definition of "society." This process began in our educational system under the necrotizing influence of John Dewey and his ilk, from the deteriorating health of our universities. Today, the prevailing notion is Marxian, "I couldn't help it. These outside influences did it. I am not responsible." From there, the short step is to complete reliance on the government to kiss it and make it all better, and give something to compensate.

One of the biggest wars within the wars we must fight in America comes from anti-self-responsibility against pro-self-responsibility. Most people, whether right, left, or middle, expect government to do something, not themselves. And, of course, many people crave political power and are only too willing to take up the Let Government Do It cause. Meanwhile, more and more, people cease fending for themselves. AND THE LESS RESOURCEFUL WE BECOME.

Behind the vast litigation industry is widespread psychological dependence among citizens, and the trial lawyers clean up. They and the legislators clean up. However, THE PROBLEMS JUST GET WORSE.

Whether anyone likes it or not, obesity is a personal problem not involving government in any way. The same goes for tobacco and most all of the other so-called "evils." At most, it is a problem between PRIVATE insurers and PRIVATE insurees, and should not have any government "safety net." Then, responsibility would fall where it should.

We must reignite self-reliance as the cultural norm, with government pushed back into the only job it should have, protecting our rights. By that I mean our objective rights and not the gobbledegook about governmental activism so popular today. Government must become a passive agent, acting when rights have been violated with police and court functions.

Taxing fat and other food components, school food funding, and the whole lot of stuff that Mr. Kondracke thinks are so proper should never occur because they are fully improper. Government activism puts government into the role of being the perpetrator of rights violations.

Rights belong to individuals, not to groups, and certainly not to the government.

Jihad Watch: DC Watson: OKC: No Mideast connection? Not so fast

This one is worth reprinting in its entireity. Many thanks to Jihad Watch, its publisher.


Jihad Watch: DC Watson: OKC: No Mideast connection? Not so fast

April 18, 2005
DC Watson: OKC: No Mideast connection? Not so fast
Jihad Watch reader and contributor DC Watson gathers some provocative new information on the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995:

In a follow up to addressing the joust between CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper and Rocky Mountain News columnist Vincent Carroll, additional evidence has been produced in regard to who else may have actually been involved in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
http://religion.upi.com/view.php?StoryID=20050412-124811-1156r
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_86_3697983,00.html

Were Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols the only perpetrators of this atrocity? For years, that’s what we’ve been told. However, with the nation marking the ten-year anniversary of this cowardly act, new or at least newly publicized evidence points out that these two America-hating domestic terrorists had some very unsavory associations with those who are tied to Islamic terrorism.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153635,00.html

There’s also the issue of John Doe number two, the all-elusive accomplice that more than two dozen witnesses say they saw in the Ryder truck with McVeigh. He has never been captured. There were two composite drawings made of this individual.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153644,00.html

The first composite was that of a thuggish looking man with a dark complexion.

http://www.greatdreams.com/john-doe-2.htm

The second composite, which has proven to be nearly as elusive as John Doe number two himself, was said to have been that of a white man, and looked absolutely nothing like the thug in the first composite.

On June 14, 1995, the Justice Department announced that it had all been a big mistake. One of the witnesses, Eldon Elliot of Elliot’s Body shop, had been confused when he gave his description of John Doe Two. He had mixed him up with a completely innocent, burly army private who came to the office a day later.

Back to the first composite drawing -- which many have stated bears a strong resemblance to dirty bomb suspect and Muslim convert Jose "Ibrahim" Padilla.

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/jose-padilla/
http://www.greatdreams.com/john-doe-2.htm

4/17/2005: Fox News ran a program involving the OKC bombing. The show detailed incriminating phone records, which included repeated calls from the home of Terry Nichols to a place called Star Glad Lumber in the Philippines.

Star Glad Lumber is operated by a man whose brother and cousin were both notorious terrorists, involved in "splinter groups of the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines."

Nichols also repeatedly called a boarding house in Cebu City, an establishment that has been linked to 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef. For the record, the same kind of ANFO fertilizer fuel bomb was used in New York and in Oklahoma City.

This may or may not come as a shock: Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, who has been named co-defendant in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of over 500 families of the 9/11 victims, also founded the Philippines branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which has been designated a terrorist financing organization by the United States and other countries. There have also been some formerly classified Philippines investigative documents that have provided the basis for almost all major media reports concerning Khalifa's ties to al Qaeda and Abu Sayyaf.

Apparently, our government decided to deport Khalifa seven days after the Oklahoma City bombing, despite a jailhouse confession and documents relating to bomb construction. The entire story can be read at http://intelwire.egoplex.com/khalifa100603.html.

Although much of this information has been available since the OKC bombing, many questions remain unanswered. Are all of these ties simply coincidental? Is there some sort of government cover-up? Or should Islamic terrorist apologists postpone their claims that the idea that "Middle Eastern terrorists" carried out the OKC bombing was a "faulty assumption"?

Today Is Tax Freedom Day

Such a good job our public education system has done that few Americans can conceive of any other way to have and to run a government except through confiscatory taxation. Because of the same fine group of "educators" over three or four generations, few Americans realize that a government doing what it should, as determined by objective criteria, would cost about 10% of what it does now, if not less. Most Americans think that the system for looting the fruits of their productivity is proper, just, and above all, unavoidable. That's why they keep getting suckered year after year.

Money is the blood which sustains governmental operations. Even tyrannies need money to do what they do, even when doing what they do is doing wrong in everything.

Think about for a moment. What would these politicians and bureaucrats do for power if they could not take your money and the money of others? I will provide one utterly titillating answer of several: They would have to earn governmental finance creatively and morally because they would not have yours to steal. So what would they do for power? They would have NONE!

Americans have little concept of the necessity for and the proper role for a government. As a result, we have the mammoth socialist-moderate faction on one end of the spectrum and ridiculous liberatarian anarcho-capitalists on the other. Both belong in the trash can.

I will leave discussing what constitutes a PROPER government and WHY, as well as HOW, until later. Right now, digest TAX FREEDOM DAY. Note, I did not say "enjoy" it.

WorldNetDaily: Tax Freedom Day April 17 this year , THE POWER TO DESTROY Tax, Freedom Day, April 17 this year--Date Americans stop working for government later than 2004, Posted: April 15, 2005, 1:00 a.m. Eastern, by World Net Daily.

Each year, the Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day – which compares the number of days Americans work to pay taxes to the number of days they work to support themselves. The nonprofit group points out that while this year's day is two days later than last year, it is "still considerably earlier than in 2000, when the boom and bubble pushed tax burdens to a record high, and Tax Freedom Day was postponed until May 3."

Said the group's president, Scott Hodge, in a statement: "The federal government cut taxes every year for the last four years, and because the bubble in 1999 and 2000 boosted tax collections to artificially high levels, the drop since then is all the more dramatic. Now the tax burden has resumed its more typical upward course. As economic growth pushes people into higher tax brackets, tax collections grow
faster than incomes."

"Despite all the tax cuts that the federal government has passed recently, Americans will still spend more on taxes than they spend on food, clothing and medical care combined," said Hodge.

In 2005, Americans will work 70 days to afford their federal taxes and 37 more days to afford state and local taxes. Other categories of spending measured in the report include housing and household operation (65 days), health and medical care (52 days), food (31 days), transportation (31 days), recreation (22 days), clothing and accessories (13 days), saving (2 days) and all other (44 days).

Four out of the five states with the heaviest tax burdens and the latestTax Freedom Days are in the Northeast: Connecticut (May 3), New York (April 29),New Jersey (April 25), Massachusetts (April 24) and Wyoming (April 24). In general, where the cost of living is high, and salaries are commensurately higher, taxpayers are hard hit by the federal income tax's progressive structure. As a result, they must work longer to pay their disproportionate share of the tax burden, and they wait longer to celebrate Tax Freedom Day, the group points out.

The five states with the lightest total tax burdens celebrate Tax Freedom Day the earliest. Alaska's April 2 is the earliest of all. Alabama (April 4) and Tennessee (April 6) have the second and third lightest tax burdens. South Dakota and Mississippi round out the five most lightly taxed states, celebrating on April 7.

Sgt. "Akbar"

CNN.com - FBI: GI wrote of killing comrades - Apr 14, 2005, U.S. soldier accused of deadly 2003 attack on comrades

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (AP) -- Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a Muslim convert, charged in a deadly grenade attack on his comrades at an encampment in Kuwait in March 2003 wrote in his diary that his fellow soldiers were mistreating him, and that once he was sent to Iraq, "I am going to try and kill as many of them as possible," a jury was told Thursday. His lawyers are scheduled to begin calling witnesses in their insanity defense Monday.

Prosecutors have said Akbar told investigators he was worried that U.S. forces would harm fellow Muslims in the Iraq war. In the entry dated February 4, 2003, Akbar referred to mistreatment by his fellow soldiers:

"I suppose they want to punk me or just humiliate me. Perhaps they feel that I will not do anything about that. They are right about that. I am not going to do anything about it as long as I stay here. But as soon as I am in Iraq, I am going to try and kill as many of them as possible."

Another entry said: "I will have to decide to kill my Muslim brothers fighting for Saddam Hussein or my battle buddies. I am hoping to get into a position so I don't have to take any crap from anyone anymore." Elsewhere, he wrote: "I may not have killed any Muslims, but being in the Army is the same thing. I may have to make a choice very soon on who to kill."

Killed in the attack were Army Capt. Christopher Seifert, 27, who was shot in the back, and Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, who suffered 83 shrapnel wounds. Another 14 soldiers were injured.The court-martial is the first time since the Vietnam War that an American has been prosecuted on charges of murdering a fellow soldier during wartime.

It still mystifies me how people can keep on pretending that there is anything good about Islam and that Muslims can be taken at face value and routinely trusted. Why do the converts to Islam become indistinguishable from those who grew up Islamic? The general answer is that they already had the personality profile that made them a "natural" for Islam, which is why they converted in the first place. Paul Sperry points out in his new book, Infiltration, that half of American converts to Islam are blacks. Seeing the Nazi-like fascists surrounding Louis Farrakhan and others, one sees a common denominator. All are hostile blacks. They are filled to the brim with hatred, and they are full-bore nihilists. To date, I have not seen an exception.

They come to Islam because Islam is tailor-made for this type of personality. Any goodness that might lie latent in the personality of the convert quickly gets Islamized. Islam is not for the bright bulbs of society, although some of them might be bright, but that is a coincidence, not a necessity. Islam's attraction is how it can create a substandard personality from normal children, to be able to rule them forever, and how it can take a pathological personality having certain kinds of susceptibilities, convert and unify them into a whole. The whole is evil, but, for the convert, it is wholeness for the first time, and his lack of independence of mind will not challenge the shaping Islam makes of him.

There is an invariability here. Exceptions can and do occur, but they are rare enough to be reported as phenomena. Predictability regarding Islam is not hard to do, in principle, even though no one can predict every concrete action of every Muslim.

So, why do we have Muslims in the USA military? In the FBI? In any organization where allegiance to the U. S. Constitution is paramount? Why do we let the prisons breed more Muslims out of hostile inmates to become future enemies of America?

The case of Sgt. "Akbar" is not an abberation. It is the "norm." It will be worth following to watch how every weakness in American jurisprudence and society will be exploited to win "Akbar" reprieve or some watered down sentence, such as could come from so-called and always abused "insanity." Watch for the caving. Watch the religious card, the racial card, and every other postmodernistic victim card get played. They have this kid dead on with the evidence, and he should not see freedom again.

There may be Muslims in our military who are patriotic Americans, but, if so, they are violating the tenets of Islam. That makes them carry the stigma of "hypocrite," which enjoys ultra-extreme condemnation within Islam. Just in case, there really are peace-loving, loyal, and good Muslim Americans out there as some claim, try this: IF there are good and patriotic Muslims, the onus is on them to demonstrate these without contradiction. When they can stand up and be counted and separate themselves from the ummah, then I will come to their defense.

In general, they should stay out of the military and all sensitive positions, public and private until OBJECTIVE VETTING validates extending trust to them.

It is your life at stake, your country, your values, your loved ones and the future of America.

Stop that Man Before He Starts Making Sense

The following blockquotes are from the transcript of an actual event.

WorldNetDaily: Hamas in a business suit OK?, Wednesday, April 13, 2005, by Les Kinsolving.

WND SUMMARY: Hamas in a business suit OK? McClellan sees role for members committed to 'improving the quality of life'

Editor's note: Each week, WorldNetDaily White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asks the tough questions almost no one else will ask. At today's White House news briefing, WND asked presidential press secretary Scott McClellan about the Palestinian Authority's record at disarming terrorist groups and the future role of Hamas.

WND: Scott, on the road map, can you identify even one Palestinian terrorist group that has been disarmed by the Palestinian Authority in accordance with the Bush administration's own road map? And I have a follow-up.

That was the question (emphasis mine), and here is the "answer."

McCLELLAN: I think it's important to look at some of the steps that have been taken. And the president talked about President Abbas the other day in the news conference. We look forward to having President Abbas visit Washington again so the president can talk to him about what we can do to support them in their efforts to move forward on the two-state vision that he outlined. But there have been some steps taken to address the security situation.

It's important that they have a unified security structure. General Ward has been in the region working closely with the Palestinians to help put those security forces in place and have a unified structure to address some of these issues. But the road map is very clear in what it says. We've been very clear in what our views are, as well. And it's important that the parties meet their obligations.

Reread the question, then the answer. Are there any dots to connect? Take your antacid and analgesic, then move on to the following, which is a real pip. First, the question:

WND: In the event that Hamas, a terrorist organization not yet disarmed by the Palestinian Authority, wins a majority in the legislative PA, will the Bush administration still send $350 million U.S. taxpayer dollars to the PA, or not?

Part of the foregoing question I have emphasized so that we do not lose sight of the "answer" to follow:

McCLELLAN: Les, it's – the one thing that you see when people have elections that are free and fair is that they tend to choose people who are committed to improving their livelihood, not people who are committed to terrorist acts. And I think if you look back at the previous Palestinian elections, the people that were elected, while they might have been members of Hamas, they were business professionals. They were people that ran on talking about improving the quality of life for the Palestinian people and addressing their economic needs and addressing other needs that are important to them – not terrorists.

If you can find the answer to $350 million part, you are a better man than I am. The gobbledegook response to this part of the question is as humorous as the non-answer to the previous question.

However, this last paragraph from McClellan is a travesty.

If people were elected in your community by means "free and fair," would you have any problem with them taking office? Why, no, you would say.

What if these people were Mafia hit men? What if they had been active loyalists to Pol Pot? Or maybe the Russian Communists? Or the Nazis? Why, no, you would say.

What if these P. A. people in "business suits" belong to an Islamic jihadist organization which stands for murder and has committed so many that it has lost count? What if these suits come from an organization bankrolled by Saudi Arabia to spread Wahabbism through violence, mayhem, murder, and anything else that is anti-life? Exactly whose lives will these suits be improving and how? At whose expense?

This statement by this Bush mouthpiece reflects the devastating approach of the Bush administration President Bush himself to Islam: WISHING FOR PEACE THROUGH PROFOUND IGNORANCE. Their logo should be an ostrich with its head buried into the sand, and not seeing the juggernaut about to run over it. At best, this is simple minded civics: Of course it is all right for them to vote themselves into anything they want; after all, the Germans didn't do so badly in 1933, did they? Well, didn't they?

An Interview with D. C. Watson

D. C. Watson, Himself

D. C. Watson has emerged as an arch-typical example of the new force to be reckoned with: The American Patriot. And, he has deliberately and publicly served notice to all those who would wage Islamic jihad on America, that he and millions more will be fully American in dealing with them. D. C.’s op-ed pieces began appearing in Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch over the last year, but D. C.’s comments in the same publication had already made him very difficult to ignore nationally and internationally. He has been utterly refreshing because he writes filter-free. He says what he believes, and it is clear that he makes no allowances for pabulum such as “political correctness” and multiculturalism. In fact, some have even voiced wishes that he become the Secretary of Defense. (We think he would best serve as the Secretary of State).


His articles show that this rough-hewn appearing, man-mountain can just plain write as well as think, and express himself without bullshitting in both. Recently, we have had the opportunity to get to know the D. C. Watson that one tosses down beer and pork rinds with while watching N.F.L. games and working to set the world straight.


6thCAJ/SC: D. C. Watson, welcome to 6th Column Against Jihad and its companion blog, Sixth Column.

Watson: Thank you.

6thCAJ/SC: You have been involved in corporate executive protection, professional wrestling, nightclub security, amateur boxing, and power-lifting. Currently you work in both the Radiology & Physiology areas of medicine. You have had two fractured cervical vertebrae, a fractured wrist, two thumb surgeries, and dislocations at the knees, hip, shoulder, wrist and lower jaw. Some would conclude that you’ve had an “eventful” life.

Watson: That’s what’s so wonderful about living in this country. Opportunities are always in front of you.

6thCAJ/SC: You are an active community supporter, using wrestling events to raise money for several charitable organizations. Whom have you been able to help?

Watson: The promotions that I worked for did a great job with this. We worked and raised money for the Toys-for–Tots program, Muscular Dystrophy, and several Church and community Food Banks.

6thCAJ/SC: You seem to have hit the counter-Jihad scene quite suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere. The articles you’ve written are very direct, and they’ve been very well received. Some have even been picked up by several European and Asian websites. What started all of this?

Watson: I have unconditional love for the United States, and I refuse to sit idly by and watch a clump of sawed off, militant Islamic warts waltz into our house expecting to rearrange our furniture.

6thCAJ/SC: You’ve been a part of writing to the nation about Islamic Jihad, terrorism, and Muslim organizations in America for a while now. How do you think this war against terror is going?

Watson: Well, our Armed Forces are the very best in the world. However, from what I’ve witnessed, the war planners sent them into the wrong country. The Saudi Arabians have proven to be much more of a threat to the United States than Iraq ever was.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban was a street gang passing themselves off as a government. And they were intertwined with al Qaeda. Although they were adept at hanging Muslims from light posts, cutting throats, beating and shooting Muslim women, and burning families alive, American forces easily, and rapidly forwarded them on to their Allah.

6thCAJ/SC: So I’ll take it that you think Afghanistan is a success.

Watson: Definitely. But still no bin Laden. The government says we can’t find him.

Let’s see. We can put a land rover on Mars that’ll send back surface data and photographs from thirty-million miles out. We can pull in a license plate number from a satellite in space, yet we can’t pin down a six-foot-five inch toilet brush with kidneys so bad he can’t even go pee on his own?

6thCAJ/SC: How do you feel our government is doing protecting the homeland?

Watson: Between the Saudi Arabians and the U.S./Mexican border, the government has made the jobs of the Intelligence and Law Enforcement agencies that much more difficult. American tax dollars are funding wars in the Middle East, yet our government states that funding additional border patrol agents isn’t in the budget. Where’s the logic in this?

6thCAJ/SC: Tell us what you know about the Saudis and their involvement with America.

Watson: We’ve been infiltrated.

• Saudi owned American media (with their fingers in AOL/Time Warner, who controls CNN, and Disney, who controls ABC).
• Saudi funded Islamic Studies centers on American college campuses.
• Saudi funded mosques that contain literature preaching hate for America, Christians, and Jews.
• Saudi funded schools, whose “teachers” instruct their students that Christianity and Judaism are false religions, and demand allegiance to the Qur’an, not the U.S. Constitution.
• Saudi funded Islamic “civil rights” organizations that attack Americans for speaking out against Islam.

6thCAJ/SC: You’ve publicly called these groups out, haven’t you?

Watson: Yes, on center stage, with cameras rolling, in front of the nation so they could explain to the American people exactly who it is that supports them financially, how it came to be that several of their own have been convicted of terror and fraud crimes, and tell everyone why they’re so concerned about the American public learning about true Islam and its founder, Mohammed.

Since they wouldn’t want Americans to access these links, here they are:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17523
http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=863
http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp
http://www.faithfreedom.org/comments/MComments.htm

They spend much of their time labeling Americans as bigots for questioning Islam and the Qur’an. They’ve constantly berated counter terrorism efforts in this country, and criticized our troops. Is Islam truly the “religion of peace”? Or is it racism in its purest form? The people should have the opportunity to make that determination for themselves, and they deserve to have all of the facts.

Since Muslim organizations wouldn’t want Americans to access these links either, here they are:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005623.php Muslims & the Pope
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005627.php Blindcustomers rejected by Muslim cab drivers
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005625.php Death for leaving Islam.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005595.php Islamic leaders angered over Arab TV's coverage of Pope's death.
http://www.anti-cair-net.org/ for the latest on militant Muslims in America. http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/145144top08-15-2004::11:26reuters.html2004 http://www.themodernreligion.com/racism/racism-muslims.html Who are the bigots again?

6thCAJ/SC: These groups have made it clear that they want an Islamic America, have they not?

Watson: Many Muslims in America want peace, not Islamic law. This may be because Islamic law, or the Shariah, is a century impaired, backward ass, barbaric human rights violation, and should be abolished worldwide. Muslim extremists pretty much had their dreams of an Islamic America shot in the ass on 9/11. While intelligent Muslims realize that peace is the logical solution, the militant Muslim knuckle draggers criticize Americans for not trusting them--what a laughable, yet pathetic scenario.

If some of these Islamic organizations don’t understand why there’s no trust, this copied e-mail should serve as evidence. With thanks to Faith Freedom International:

From: “Ali Mohammed”

Subject: Your site and the Pope

Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 07:17:33 +0000

The pope is dead. One Christian scumbag down. Allahu Akbar! You will too soon join the Pope.Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

There are thousands of e-mails just like this one received every month. This one was chosen because it's one of the very few that aren't riddled with misspelled words.

Late 2003, World Net Daily ran a column written by Anis Shorrosh, the Christian Arab-American author of ''Islam Revealed.'' This column, entitled “Radical Islam's 'plan' to take over America”, details a twenty-year, twenty-step strategy to undermine American society, and is a must read because it connects this plan with some of what is happening on our soil today.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46610,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1506-2005Feb5.html
http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/news/bn2005/bn-2005-01-28.htm
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25234
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=9981
http://www.paktoday.com/6thCAJ/SCorpion3.htm
http://www.lightmillennium.org/2004_newyear/ypdogan_mkhan.html

6thCAJ/SC: It’s apparent that we need a sustained effort to keep hammering this information home.

Watson: Information is key. Keep exposing some of these Islamic organizations for the bullshit artists they are. Begin at the local school Boards, media, governments, and businesses. Inform them about their record, and keep them out.

6thCAJ/SC: At our site, as well as other anti-Jihad sites, we receive e-mails from Muslims who make threats of violence, and claim that Americans are afraid of “Islamic Jihad.” What do you think about these people?

Watson: (Laughs). I think they have battleship mouths and rowboat asses.

6thCAJ/SC: D.C., thanks very much for taking the time to talk with us.

----------------------------
D.C. Watson articles
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005029.php
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/DCWatson50323.htm
http://www.co-jet.t.org/cjet/contentsmarch/031405/2005whileitsstill.htm
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/004755.php
http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$30405
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/005206.php
http://sixthcolumn.blogspot.com/2004/12/will-questioners-be-silenced-similar.html


For many more links to Anti-Jihad sites, and important news, please visit the Recommended page on 6th Column Against Jihad, and the links below:

• http://jihadwatch.org/
• http://www.frontpagemag.com/
• http://www.co-jet.org/
• http://www.challenging-islam.org/

Special thanks to Robert Spencer, Ali Sina, Ethelred, Chris Graham, and David Horowitz

The Law or "Good Ideas"

One of the best minds in America belongs to Dr. Walter E. Williams of George Mason University. If you click on the title to this article, you will be taken to his website, and the trip is worth your while.

Dr. Williams has that wonderful quality of making sense. His feet and his head are grounded in reality, and he routinely uses reason, not just when he can't think of any other argument. He occasionally substitute hosts for Rush Limbaugh, and, if you have not enjoyed his hostings, you have been missing a treat. By the way, he is an economist and holds an endowed chair as well as about every title and honor that a department head can get. These are for a man who is black, pro-freedom, pro-free market, pro-Constitution, pro-reason, pro-individual, and pro-capitalism. Note how the "official black registers" run by poobah black organizations never mention Dr. Williams or another great American, Dr. Thomas Sowell.

One of Dr. Williams' strongest positions involves epistemological relativism, although he does not use that term. Here is a down-to-earth example he gives. Referring to those who believe the Constitution should be a "living document," he often illustrates the error in this idea by drawing the scenario of a poker game with the advocates of a "living Constitution," as he does in this article. For obvious reasons, no one would go for such "living rules."

The same applies to ethics or morality. We have covered in past articles the notion of subjectivity in ethics. Culture wide, these are the supposed ethics of "moral relativism." Subjectivists utterly despise certainty. They hate certainty with regard to knowledge (what is true for you is not true for me), and they vehemently oppose moral certainty (there can be no objective ethics because what is right for you is not right for me, etc).

Well, the important principle to keep in mind is that moral or ethical principles DO NOT CHANGE. Concretes of life change all the time, but not the guiding principles. If one is found to be in error, then the error is changed to make the principle correct. Otherwise, the moral or ethical principles are contextual absolutes.

The same goes for epistemological questions, i.e., questions about knowledge. Facts do not change, and principles do not change. Knowledge grows, thus changing, and errors must be corrected, but truth is not malleable any more than reality is malleable.

Dr. Williams addresses these issues in his unique way:

Here's my question to you: Should we be governed by good ideas?

You say, "Williams, what do you mean?"

Here's an example: I regularly bike for fun, cardiovascular fitness and, hopefully, for a longer, healthier life. In my opinion, that's a good idea. That being the case, would you deem it proper for Congress to enact legislation requiring Americans to bike regularly or perform some other cardiovascular fitness exercise?

What if Congress didn't act on this good idea? Would you deem it proper and acceptable if five out of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices, in the name of "evolving standards" and promoting the general welfare, decreed that we all participate in some fitness exercise?

Let's look at it. It's easy to dismiss my questions and example by saying they're stupid and far-fetched. A more enlightened response would be to quote from Thomas Jefferson: "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." In other words, Congress holds only those powers delegated or enumerated in the Constitution.

Your followup response might be another Thomas Jefferson quotation: "[T]hat whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." That means if Congress or the courts were to mandate biking, we could ignore it.

Suppose biking advocates saw no hope in getting Congress to enact legislation mandating regular biking and saw the U.S. Supreme Court as a means to accomplish their ends. Tell me your preference. Would you prefer the justices to rule along the lines they did in the recent Roper v. Simmons case, finding the execution of teenagers unconstitutional because, as Justice Anthony Kennedy speaking for the 5-4 majority said, "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty"? Modified to fit my biking example, Justice Kennedy might say, "We acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion that regular biking is a good idea."

Or, would you prefer the justices to say, "We're guided by the U.S. Constitution, and we find no constitutional authority to rule that Americans must regularly bike, despite your nonsense argument about the 'promoting the general welfare' clause; get out of our court"?

Whether "evolving standards," the "weight of international opinion" and good ideas should determine court decisions underlies much of the ongoing conflict over President Bush's federal court appointees. A federal court appointee who'd say his decisions are guided by the letter and spirit of our Constitution would be tagged by Democrat senators and a few Republican senators, such as Arlen Specter, as an extremist. They'd prefer justices who share former Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes' vision that, "We live under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is." Translated, that means we don't live under the Constitution; we live under tyrannical judges.

Many law professors, and others who hold contempt for our Constitution, preach that the Constitution is a living document. Saying that the Constitution is a living document is the same as saying we don't have a Constitution. For rules to mean anything, they must be fixed. How many people would like to play me poker and have the rules be "living"? Depending on "evolving standards," maybe my two pair could beat your flush.

The framers recognized there might come a time to amend the Constitution, and they gave us Article V as a means for doing so. Early in the last century, some Americans thought it was a good idea to ban the manufacture and sale of alcohol. They didn't go to court asking the justices to twist the Constitution to accomplish their goal. They respected the Constitution and sought passage of the 18th Amendment.

The founders were right about a lot of things, but they were dead wrong when they bought into Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper No. 78 prediction that the judiciary was the "least dangerous" branch of government.

A "Must Read" Book and Interview with Author

This morning, Front Page Magazine published an interview with Paul Sperry who has the new book, Infiltration. The book documents how the covert jihad has infiltrated all levels of our government, reminding one of the communist infiltrations during the Roosevelt and subsequent administrations.

I intend to review this book, but I have not finished it. What I have read raises the hair on the back of my neck and wads my panties into a knot. So far, this is the very best book of its kind I have yet read, with solid documentation and terrific writing. I recommend that anyone who is sick of this endless jihadism from these Islamists devour this book as intellectual ammunition.

This interview is easily available through the links to Front Page Magazine, so we won't attempt to reprint samples or the whole interview. We will encourage you to start arming yourself right now by reading this interview, then progress to Sperrry's book.

Here is the interview intro.

FrontPage magazine.com :: Infiltration by Jamie Glazov , FrontPageMagazine.com, April 12, 2005

Frontpage's Interview guest today is Paul Sperry (sperry@sperryfiles.com), a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, Investor's Business Daily veteran, Hoover Institution media fellow and author of the blockbuster new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington (Nelson Current, 2005)."

FIFTH COLUMN ALERT: The Bush Administration and "Palestine"

I freely confess not to be a Bush Administration supporter except in highly selected spots. I was anti-Kerry much more than pro-Bush in the 2004 elections. I feared that Kerry would be much worse, but I also knew that Bush would leave everything to be desired. Those were my choices, and I chose "bad" over "worse."

So, it is not surprising to see "bad" as an administration in action.

YOU, the taxpayer, like me, the taxpayer, have coughed up money to the IRS to avoid prosecution and jailing so that others can hand "Palestine" $390 million. And to get what? If you read the excerpts from the Widlanski article to follow, you see that we get to pay them to follow in Arafat's footspteps. If that does not hack you off, you must be a liberal or a "moderate," whatever that is.

FrontPage magazine.com :: In Arafat's Footsteps by Michael Widlanski, April 8,
2005

As the Bush Administration moves to host Palestinian leaders this month and to give them much more money ($390-Million), and as the Israeli government is fighting an immense internal battle to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians have escalated their anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric and diplomacy.

The U.S. and Israel have given credit and money to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for restraining violence and incitement, but official Palestinian media still call terrorists "martyrs," never refer to Arab violence as "terror," and still send coded calls for violence while intermittently trimming some of the cruder forms of incitement.

For the typical Arabic-speaking Palestinian who understands the nuances, the messages are clear, including:

--Violence against Israel is still an option, though it is against Palestinian interests to use it flagrantly right now, because it would be counterproductive militarily and diplomatically;

--The Palestinians are not in the pocket of the United States or the West, but they will take Western money and invite Western intervention when it suits Palestinian interests;

--There is no message of "compromise" with Israel, and there will be no Arab or Islamic or Palestinian normalization of relations with Israel until all Palestinian demands are met.

Prime Minister Qreia and PLO Chairman Abbas are offering a sophisticated but clear message to the Arabic-speaking Palestinian public, and it is on display in the regular afternoon tv news broadcasts, the hourly radio bulletins, and in the weekly mosque sermons by Palestinian clerics paid by Abbas and Qreia broadcast by official Palestinian media.

In fact, rather than rein-in charismatic and highly anti-Western mosque speakers, reputedly moderate Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmad Qreia, the chairman and prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), respectively, have actually echoed their views. Indeed, the term "cooperation with Israel" [Arabic: ta'awun ma'a Isra'il] is usually a synonym for betrayal, a capital offense for which Abbas and his deputies have re-affirmed death sentences for at least 15 Palestinians.

Obviously if anyone in the Bush administration has read anything about Islam and Islamists, it has to be some of the pabulum by Esposito, Armnstrong, Said, and the gang. It cannot be the truth they have "read," unless that is what they call unfocused turning of pages. They want to believe so hard that the Palestinians are reforming, that they turn themselves into public fools and use our money looted from us to finance it. And, they are squashing Israel, which, for reasons unknown to me, puts up with it.

I have just finished a book published in 1924 called Islam and the Psychology of the Musulman by Andre' Servier. It was translated from the French. There aren't many Serviers any longer in France judging from the strong corroboration he gives to the refractoriness of Islamists to positive change. He shows that Muslims, once locked into Islam, very rarely change anything at all. They are as close to deterministic beings as humans can become.

"Palestine" is a fiction. Palestinians are either terrorists for Islam or are supporters of them. They deserve no money and no support. Isolate them and force them to get by on their own efforts, giving them nothing and selling them nothing. When their numbers have reduced and when the remainder make unfailing steps toward freedom and cooperation over a very long time, perhaps generations, then consider including them in the community of Man. Otherwise, wall them off like an abscess.

This Bush administration giving of our hard-earned money and all of these unearned considerations keeps the abscess of "Palestine" intact and well to continue to be the abscess that it is.

Our big problem with this part of Islamia is not Palestine, or the Syrian and Iranian and Saudi supporters. It is with the fifth columnists throughout the Bush administration. They may assuage themselves with the notion that they are doing good, but they are doing the good guys in.

Welcome the New Member of the Fifth Column: National Review

Last week, as March was leaving, just before April arrived, we posted this article on 6th Column Against Jihad. It is a companion piece to the article preceding it on the same page, Playing Us Like a Wurlitzer, and it deals with what Shakespeare called the "unkindest cut of all."

Supposedly, National Review was a staunch leader of the "right side," against Islamic jihad, liberals, and corruption. It turns out that National Review elected to become part of the problem instead of the solution regarding pressure from the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to remove a book from its book sales site.

National Review, under a whiff of pressure, and led in its retreat by its editor, Rich Lowry, buckled (that is almost a pun).

THIS WAS A MAJOR VICTORY FOR CAIR, one of its biggest yet. And, this victory will have far reaching deleterious consequences. We invite you to read our article which goes into these matters.

Can You Be Moral? (IV)

Now to the book.

If you have read the preceding three parts, you know that we have been working toward answering the title question of Can You Be Moral? You also know that this question, which might ordinarily seem a trifle silly, is almost impossible to answer in today’s intellectual climate, with a profound exception.

We have noted that the dominant ethics today are either subjective on the Left or intrinsic on the Right.

The subjective people say that objective morality is impossible because truth and certainty are impossible, that one person’s truth is not the next person’s truth. Thus, they say the same about morality. Their standards are either personal (hedonistic) or, more popularly, groupism (collective subjectivity). The more people say the same thing, the more likely it is to be true, they proclaim. Liberals just love this type of sophistry. Theirs is true moral relativism.

On the other side, however, stand the intrinsic folks. They say that morality comes from the same source as truth, and that is from God through religious doctrines. What one thinks about any of it is irrelevant because one is supposed to accept it and practice it without question. Without this religious body of regulations, there could be no morality, only chaos, the intrinsicists assert. Conservatives believe all of this down to their toes.

We, on the other hand, say there is an objective morality which comes from reality and is understood by means of reason. We hold that man’s life is the standard of value, and each person’s life is the purpose of his morality. Morality is a code of values selected by choice to guide one's life. A rational ethics or morality comes from rational choices.

Craig Biddle has reduced the complexities of an objective morality to crystal clear common language in his book Loving Life (Glen Allen Press; Richmond, Virginia; 2002; ISBN: 0-9713737-0-1). He has chosen to write about THE ONLY objective morality that exists on planet Earth at this time. This is the Objectivist Ethics which were formulated by philosopher Ayn Rand and presented in fictionalized form in works like the novel Atlas Shrugged and in her book on ethics, The Virtue of Selfishness.

Mr. Biddle’s book requires no prior knowledge of Ayn Rand, Objectivism, or any Objectivist works by Ayn Rand or others. In fact, one need not have any prior foundation in ethics or philosophy. Any interested reader can take it all in from Loving Life because Mr. Biddle writes very clearly, with the non-technical reader in mind at all times.

What we have presented in the preceding three part article has been a tease to entice the reader to read Mr. Biddle’s book. It will be the best $12.95 one has spent in a very long time. And, it will be the beginning of the end of having to live with muck and murk for an ethics, absorbed from a hodge-podge of cultural sources. It will start putting one back in charge of his life, freeing him from the sticky wickets of moral contradictions and unidentified feelings he has for ethics right now. The results will not come effort-free, but the payoff will more than compensate for the efforts.

If you come to understand Mr. Biddle’s book, you will understand the basics of a rational, objective ethics that is pro-life on earth, pro-human, and pro- a lot of things which have become convoluted and distorted by what passes for ethics in the culture, including happiness.

Mr. Biddle’s presentation will lead you to the works of Ayn Rand. There you can reach depths and breadths of astonishing clarity and personal value. You can tease out so many ethical dilemmas or questions you may have now, because you will have the tools to use that distinctly human mind of yours, as its nature requires.

Oh, yes, that question: Can you be moral? We have not answered it directly although we have answered it fully indirectly. Can you be moral? As Mr. Biddle’s book and the philosophy of Objectivism show, YES, you certainly can be moral. And it won’t be some inadequate intrinsicist or subjectivist “morality.” It will be the real deal—an objective morality, one that you can really live and prosper with. It will involve your choices, never your duties. It will become your friend and stop being your enemy.

If you are unfamiliar with what I am advocating, then you are in for a gorgeous surprise, one that will be worth your every effort.

Confessions of a Politically Incorrect Professor

In Deconstructing the Fifth Column Left, we examined the phenomenon of postmodernism, which best describes what the author of this paper has endured. Our review-essay was based on the superb book, Explaining Postmodernism, by Prof. Stephen Hicks. THIS IS THE FIFTH COLUMN IN AMERICA. This is what David Horowitz wrote about in his book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, which we also put into a review-essay.

This article by "Anonymous," the professor, is simply too good to synopsize. It deals with the plague of postmodernism in our colleges and universities beautifully, from a first-person perspective, as an outsider--from Europe, no less. This is IT. Postmodernism, and its cancerous rot, cannot be made clearer, nor the need to eradicate it NOW!

Confessions of a Politically Incorrect Professor, by Anonymous, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 6, 2005


I am European and came to America in 2002, where I teach at an elite Liberal Arts College. My native country is among the most socialized in the world, with strong leftist parties, from democratic socialists to outright communist. All across Europe the left – the far left, somewhere between Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean – has a very strong political position, as well as a clearly visible presence on university campuses.

Despite my European background I found myself deeply surprised by the political bias on college campuses here in America. Left-wing bias is almost undetectable among European college faculty compared to America’s academic institutions. The bias that I have encountered has so many facets that I am still encountering new ones.

One of the first signs of political bias was an unqualified admiration for Europe in general and its welfare systems in particular. Having both personal and scholarly experience of those, I told new colleagues of all the problems that I saw there: unemployment twice as high as in the U.S., heavy welfare dependency, high crime, health care rationing, perpetually rising taxes, etc.. This image of Europe did not accord with what my new-found colleagues – overwhelmingly liberal – had decided that they saw over in the Old World.

In fact, their uncritically positive image of Europe astonished me so much that I began trying to convince them that they were wrong. (In the name of free speech and an educated academic conversation – things that you would expect to find on a college campus.) This turned out to be a bad idea: my colleagues slowly but steadily changed their attitude toward me. I refused to acknowledge that the politics in Europe was as superior as European wine, cars or cuisine. (In fact, I prefer California wine, I drive a Chevrolet and I love pumpkin pie!)

The most feverishly liberal among my colleagues now began looking at me as a traitor. One told me to stop expressing my political views when other faculty was around. Why? Because, he said, “I do not want to have to defend why we have a conservative here” at our department.

As much as this shocked me, I began talking to a close group of friends about it. I had realized that the overwhelming majority of my colleagues were radically liberal, effectively socialist. I had also realized that the overwhelming majority among them, in turn, would not tolerate dissenting political views on campus.

I soon began encountering cases of such intolerance in action. One colleague had been effectively forced, rather openly, to register as a Democrat to guarantee his tenure. Another conservative faculty member – junior professor, still far from going up for tenure – was harassed for his political beliefs on an almost daily basis. The harassment was executed by tenured, senior members of his department and took such extreme measures that he simply packed up and left his position at the school.

As if ideological cleansing among faculty was not enough, I discovered that many of my colleagues were exercising political activism in the classroom. Students who learned that I was a conservative came to my office and began telling me of their experiences. These were stories of everything from “innocent” jokes in the classroom to open political bias in graded assignments. Radical leftist students were emboldened by the anti-Republican atmosphere that the radical leftist faculty created and carried their professors’ deeds a step further. Among the innumerable stories they told me was a recurring theme of disrespect, such as when “Bush 2004” signs were ripped off student dorm doors while signs supportive of Kerry or any other Democratic candidate were left untouched.

One of my students told me how he had been given writing assignments in a foreign language class that were always based on texts critical of President Bush. Another told me how a Math professor had spent the entire class right after the November ’04 election ranting against the President. Yet another was told by the professor, before the whole class, that she was “uninformed” because of her conservative preferences.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Overall, conservative students said they felt like second-class citizens, made legitimate targets of ridicule or harassment by faculty who, in official settings, speak at great length about openness, tolerance, diversity and free speech.

FrontPage Magazine, among others, has shown that this is a national phenomenon, an academic epidemic. My own experiences corroborate these observations on many levels: liberal faculty keep conservative faculty out of the ranks; they elevate their political preferences to scholarly judgment and blend it in to their teaching.

This liberal onslaught in college must seem overwhelming to students who have not yet formed their political opinions. It was hardly surprising to see the map of last year’s election, where areas with high density of college graduates voted for Kerry to a much larger extent than other areas. After four years of liberal indoctrination in college it is easy to take the word of so many Ph.D.’s for truth and vote accordingly.

The long term perspective of this is rather disturbing. In issue after issue, the liberal college professor is very critical of America and the values that it stands for. I have heard American college professors tell me – or students – that we cannot say whether our way of government is better than what they had in, e.g., Iraq under Saddam Hussein. This goes hand-in-hand with the Euro-phoria that many campus liberals are caught up in: American government, American way of life, is liable to all sorts of criticism, while much of the rest of the world gets a free pass.

This is the general atmosphere on many of America’s college campuses. I am surprised to have found it, especially in these proportions, and I am quite disturbed by the future prospect of it. To me, America is not just a symbol of freedom and prosperity – it is the home of freedom and prosperity and a role model to the rest of the world. I share this view with millions of others, but not, it seems, with the majority of America’s college professors.

So long as political indoctrination continues on America’s college campuses the gradual transformation of America will continue. Bit by bit, step by step, the liberal college professors educate new generations into believing that liberal values are better, more refined, more logical, than conservative values. The end result is a slow but steady reform of America, away from what it once was and into something it was never meant to be: a second Europe. Gradually, more and more young Americans graduate from college and vote for more leftist candidates. Issue by issue, state by state, the will of the radical college professors is allowed to increase the presence of government and roll back individual freedom.

There is no question that the colleges will get more radical over time as today’s tenured liberal professors recruit even more junior faculty with similarly leftist values. Their biased teaching, radical and often outright anti-American, poses a grave threat over time to the long term health and prosperity of America itself. It is therefore critical that future generations of college students are allowed to grow into strong, independent citizens, proud of their heritage, confident about the future, without liberal – or conservative! – political bias on campus.

It is time for America’s conservatives to form a genuine, coherent and coordinated strategy to bring fairness, balance and an Academic Bill of Rights on to the college campuses. Academia will not change from the inside – only outside pressure, and dollars, can get the job done. One way toward real change is that we begin to demand fairness, balance and rights for our students as we consider to whom we should write the tuition checks.

It is a good idea to attach similar demands to donations when you get a call from the fundraisers at your local college. After all, America is still a relatively free economy where money can speak a clear language that everybody understands.

Including liberal college professors.

Want to Read Something Uplifting?

John Stossel, Jewish World Review April 6, 2005 / 26 Adar II, 5765, How to crush your competition — with government endorsement, By John Stossel


Every once in a while, people in Washington have a good idea. A really good idea. An idea that creates jobs and provides a service people like.

Then, the government gets involved.

Some years ago, a married couple, Taalib-Din Uqdah and Pamela Farrell, went into business braiding hair, African-style. They called their shop Cornrows & Co. If politicians' speeches are right, Uqdah and Farrell were heroes: Inner cities need businesses, and the couple had built a booming business in Washington, D.C. They had 20,000 customers, employed 10 people and took in half a million dollars a year. Some women came from as far away as Connecticut, six hours away, to have their hair braided by Cornrows & Co.

Did the politicians honor these entrepreneurs for contributing to the community? Find ways to encourage others to do similar things? Well, the government did respond. But it wasn't with encouragement.

Local bureaucrats ordered Uqdah to cease and desist, or be "subject to criminal prosecution." Why? Because he didn't have a license. "It's a safety issue," said the regulators. Those who run a hair salon must have a cosmetology license. The chemicals they use dyeing or perming hair might hurt someone.

Hair dye is hardly a serious safety threat, but even if it were, Cornrows & Co. didn't dye or perm hair. They only braided it. That didn't matter, said the Cosmetology Board — they still had to get a license. In order to get one, Uqdah would have to pay about $5,000 to take more than 1,000 hours of courses at a beauty school.

It's unclear what beauty school would have taught him. Beauty schools didn't even teach the service Cornrows & Co. provided. They taught things like pin curls and gelatinized hairstyles that hadn't been popular for 40 years. One rule required students to spend 125 hours studying shampooing . I didn't realize it was that complicated — have I been doing it wrong all these years?

Uqdah says the braiding he provides can't be taught in schools and shouldn't be licensed. "I've watched little second-grade girls sit down and braid each other's hair." He says there's evidence of hair braiding in Africa going back 5,000 years. "You cannot license a culture." He says the licensing test is weighted heavily toward the needs of straight or chemically straightened hair, not the kinky hair many blacks have. When he argues that different hair requires different skills, he says, licensed cosmetologists "go into denial. They like to think that they know how to do it all. And they don't."

Uqdah thought he understood why the cosmetology board wanted to shut down his salon: "Money — other salons don't like the competition."

I think he was right. Even if licensing boards intend to protect the public, in time they are captured by the people who care most. Who cares most? Not consumers — you don't get your hair done that often, and even if you did, you don't care enough about it to want to join a regulatory bureaucracy. Innovators don't join the boards; they're busy innovating. Scientists, economists, doctors, and others with genuine expertise in safety and commerce don't join the boards, either. They're busy doing more important things. So boards are usually captured by the licensees, the established businesses. William Jackson, a former member of the Washington, D.C., Cosmetology Board, admitted, "The board, 90 percent of the time, are salon owners."

Uqdah refused to close his shop. He fought the government instead, ultimately going to federal court with the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, and D.C. changed its law. Now, hair braiders don't have to get training that has nothing to do with what they do. Uqdah says, "I had to spend 10 years fighting the city. And now I've gone out and created a mechanism that other people can do what I've done — with or without a license."

He and those others are fortunate that the Institute for Justice took his case. Usually, the established businesses get away with using licensing boards and "safety" regulations to crush competitors. That's unfair. And if the question is who's protecting the public, it seems to me Taalib-Din Uqdah has done much more than the bureaucrats who wanted him to spend 125 hours studying shampooing.

FIFTH COLUMN WARNING: US Reaching Out to Muslim Brotherhood: Report

IF this article is true (look at the source), this is governmental behavior at the level of Munich 1938. Read the whole article, if you can stand to. We are looking here only at excerpts.

Islam Online- News Section, US Reaching Out to Muslim Brotherhood: Report

CAIRO, April 3, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The US State Department has drawn up a memo calling for direct and permanent political dialogue with the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a leading Arabic newspaper reported on Sunday, April 3.

The US administration sees the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the most powerful opposition movements in Egypt, unnamed Western diplomatic sources in the Egyptian capital told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

The memo recommends inviting the group’s representatives to the United States for better communication and common grounds on Egypt’s reform policies and the pressing issues in the region, they added.

The State Department believes that Washington can contain the group and its ilk through dialogue.

The memo, according to the Western diplomatic sources, maintains that it is about time that the administration looked differently at religious groups and avoided any further clash with them, because this would only fan hatred and incite more attacks against US interests.

They added that the State Department has asked the US Embassy in Cairo to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders as a preliminary step for an organized dialogue.

The memo maintains that it would be a “historical mistake” to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood or treat the group as an enemy to the US, said the sources.

It recognizes that the group enjoys a soaring popularity in Egypt which necessitates regular meetings with its leaders.

It is plausible that this article is correct since it involves the State Department engaging in treasonous behavior. Taking its name literally, "State Department," we are always wondering which "state" it is working for since it clearly works against America.

The Muslim Brotherhood is THE grandfather organization for all of the Islamic jihadist groups operating today. Did some Rightist write this memo? Or was it a Leftist? There is no way to tell. Whoever wrote it either knows nothing about the Muslim Brotherhood and their plans to annihilate America and all other non-Islamic peoples, or, if Leftist, they are in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood. Either way, we have perfidious Fifth Column activity going on, at the level of the Unholy Alliance , which David Horowitz wrote about.

It is hard not to sputter just thining about some of the things in this memo. For one, making nice with the Muslim Brotherhood because they are an opposition group to the current Egyptian tyrant. Yes, they are oppositional, but they are much worse than Mubarak. They would make people long for the halcyon days of Mubarak. Are these State Department people this ignorant, or are they this evil? This is like inviting the nice Nazis to take over because those awful democratic socialists are so inept.

[If you do not know about the Muslim Brotherhood, find out, now. Start with the archives at Jihad Watch, Front Page Magazine, and Discover The Network.]

The memo goes on to say that it is about time the administration looked differently at other religious groups and avoided further clash with them. Indeed, we need to see all Islamic groups for just what they are and eradicate them from America and abroad until they cease threatening us. Clash, indeed! Clash them into oblivion should be our policy. These are warring enemies threating our survival, not some bunch of goody-goody church goers of some other denomination.

The memo says it would be an historic mistake to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood. Would you say such a thing if the names "Nazis" or "Communists" were substituted for "Muslim Brotherhood"? Wait until objective history gets written. This bunch of American milksops will find itself in the section of the history book written on black pages with blood for ink. Don't treat the Muslim Brotherhood as enemies of the U.S., they say? Why not? The Muslim Brotherhood covertly and overtly, but always explicitly, works to the downfall of the U.S.

If we really want to do something good for America, we should do a top to bottom, national and international, radical cleanout of the State Department and substitute present employees with those who can reason. If any worthwhile potential employees can be found among the entire lot just fired, selectively rehire them. Then fill in gaps with new, uncontaminated candidates.

What I am saying is that the State Department is America's biggest Fifth Column, and it needs a philosophical renovation, starting yesterday.

Watch carefully to determine whether this memo is real or just some Muslim propaganda. How sad that it COULD BE real.

Can You Be Moral? (III)

How on earth does one go about choosing a morality? What makes this a really good question is the fact that the question asks about “choosing.” Morality and choice go together. Recall that we called “morality” a code of values chosen by a person to guide his life properly. Recall also that we said that anything outside the possibility of choice was outside of morality.

Whatever you are compelled to do or have no option over, you can make no moral decisions about. “Sophie’s Choice” did not involve morality; Sophie was forced into only bad alternatives in which choice was entirely irrelevant. Storms which threaten you and those you love as well as wipe out all you have worked for are bad, in fact, very bad, but they are not “evil.” They are products of nature over which you have no choice. These are but two of zillions of situations which may or may not involve choice.

Then how do you choose morality? By what means do you decide that something is for you or against you if it is not obvious?

As with measurement, morality requires some sort of measuring stick which relies on some sort of standard. Roughly speaking, what is “for” you is the good, and what is “bad” for you is the bad, even the evil. But that means of measurement is so primitive that it is almost useless beyond knowing to keep your hand out of fire, etc.

Something better must be used for a standard, and the key to finding what is better lies in dissecting that term “value.”

What is a “value”? A value is something you want to retain or to obtain, and virtues are those actions needed to retain or obtain those somethings we can now call values.

But, you should ask, how do you know you want to retain or obtain something? You can’t just grab something randomly, can you? The very clear answer is, NO, you cannot. You will retain or obtain something only if it is important to you, and to be important that something has to meet some standard. The object is to have morality meet an objective standard (or standards).

On a personal level, that standard is your life which you live concrete moment by concrete moment. What furthers your life, you regard as good, and what does not, you regard as bad.

Yet, you may well ask and should ask, how do you know what is good for you and what is bad for you? This is not something we all just feel or have some instinct for, is it? Of course not, our feelings are no guide, and we have no inborn knowledge. What is good or bad for us has to be learned and measured against some more fundamental standard, and that standard in the most basic form is life itself.

Life is conditional. That which is non-living just exists until something acts on it to make it do something. It can go on in perpetuity, but life has really stringent requirements if it is to exist. Those requirements come from its nature. Whatever kind of life it is determines its requirement, and if that life form fails to meet those conditions, it dies. No such possibility exists for the non-living. In the broadest sense, then, that which furthers life is the good, and that which endangers it is the bad.

We are specific life forms as humans. Meeting the conditions of life for frogs does us little good, and we cannot live like bacteria, worms, squirrels, and so on. Because we are humans, we are something very specific, and we have very specific requirements for life. Optimally, humans live by means of conceptual consciousness by which they direct their actions on behalf of their lives. This is what it means to be human, not just living in some cave man subhuman mode, but living to the full realization of our nature. Man’s life, then, becomes the human standard.

Whatever furthers man’s life optimally is the good, and what endangers it is the bad. Man’s life becomes our standard for the good and the bad.

We, the specific humans, need to live in accordance with our nature as humans. That is our overarching standard of value. We seek to retain and obtain that which makes the best life possible for us.

The purpose of our lives comes from our own specific lives. We must fashion what we do with ourselves in accordance with our lives as conceptual beings, and that is an awesome responsibility. We have to discover what we need, and we must choose to pursue those values which further our lives optimally as human beings. To do this, we have to become intimate friends with reality. We have a never-ending process of discovery and choice, and we have every potential for error because we do not know in advance what to seek or what to do with what we discover. Immorality lies not in making mistakes but in accepting mistakes without making efforts to correct them.

Note that this is an objective approach to morality. We are in constant contact with reality, of which we are part. We think our way through life, and this thinking determines what we should do, and it lets us figure out how to do it. We make the choices that we think we should to further our lives, ideally, and we choose by non-thinking means, such as emotions, if we don’t do this right. We may make mistakes, i.e., errors of knowledge, but these are usually not cataclysmic as the mistakes made by following emotions or codes of values imposed on us by religious bodies or by group-think.

Note also that we have an objective standard: the nature of life itself in general, and the requirements of man’s life in specific. These standards are knowable, discoverable, and applicable, but we have to choose to seek them out and to apply what we learn.

The subjective approach says that there is no such thing possible as an objective ethics, and so does the intrinsic approach. The first applies personal hedonism or some form of groupism to which one is to conform. The second applies some body of regulations to which one is to conform. Your “I” is not part of either, nor is your choice, nor is reality.

Morality is our friend, if accepted objectively. It is our means of us guiding ourselves through the good and bad of life really well. If morality is what the subjective and intrinsic advocates say it is, then it is not our friend—neither position has our lives as our purposes and by no means has man’s life as the standard. Note, please, the alternative to life, whether man’s life, or any form of life: If you do not advocate life, as objectively defined, you advocate its converse—and that is death. And that is the basis both of the subjective and intrinsic choices.

O.K., what about the book you keep mentioning? We are about ready for it.

PUTTING AMERICA ON THE DEFENSIVE UNTIL IT COLLAPSES: VCU professor will instruct via video

We seriously doubt that there would be much regarding this professor to support, except for one super-powerful principle. We do not support Muslims and pro-Islamists because we have studied Islam and the history of Muslim behavior for nearly 1500 years, and the doctrine as well as the practitioners are like a disease scourge which should be eradicated. That is our approach in the West to diseases, and protecting Islam would be like protecting smallpox, Ebola, syphillis, and so on.

VcU professor will instruct via video, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Wednesday, March 30, 2005

A Virginia Commonwealth University professor of Islamic studies will be teaching her classes through video conferencing for the remainder of the semester because of concerns for her safety.

Amina Wadud sparked international controversy recently when she led an Islamic prayer service that was attended by both men and women.

Yet, there is a principle to be upheld here. In America, unlike in Islamia, this professor can profess. We may not, and probably will not, like what she professes. But the Constitution, which Islam wants to replace with shari'a, protects her right to profess.

Islamic tradition calls for men and women to pray separately. Many Islamic clerics condemned her participation in the service, which was conducted in New York.

If we are to preserve our way of life, we must stand solidly behind our own principles. These will fairly often protect those we do not want to hear and what they have to say. We, who try to uphold reality-reason-rights-and capitalism, do not fear the speakers or the speech. We fear those who try to violate that right.

A VCU spokeswoman indicated that the decision to move Wadud out of the classroom came after a security review.

Now this professor professes via closed-circuit television on a campus, where freedom of speech and academic freedom are supposedly enshrined. As an aside, these are some chickens coming home to roost for academia because they have lost the concept of freedom of speech and diversity of ideas in favor of shutting down political viewpoints of which the mass of the postmodernist professors disapprove.

Are Americans shutting down and threatening this professor? No. Muslims are.

What is happening on a larger scale is the ceaseless wearing us down until we let them take over. They think they can do it because they have been meeting with success throughout morally uncertain American and morally decadent Europe. It is time for Muslims to repent Islam or go back to the sand box.

"Daughter of the Enlightenment": Hirsi Ali

The New York Times > Magazine > Daughter of the Enlightenment: " April 3, 2005, by CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

This Times Magazine article prints to ten pages, so we will not attempt to reprint it or even synopsize it here. It is well-written and well worth taking the time to read. The subject is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ms Ali first came to the attention of many of us in America because of the brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh by a first generation Muslim in Holland. Van Gogh and Ali made the eleven minute film Submission Part 1, and Ms Ali became an outspoken member of Dutch parliament.

Unlike Irshad Manji who seems unable or unwilling to admit the obvious, Ms Ali sees Islam for what it is. She is not only an apostate, but she is a self-declared atheist. And, according to this article, she "gets" the big picture, that the conflict between Islam and everything else cannot be resolved except by a fundamental clash of values, something so many in European try to avoid acknowledging, even if they recognize it.

Ms Ali hails from Somalia. She grew up Muslim and even endured the sexual mutilation of Islam at the hands of her grandmother. She has endured many hardships, including a steady stream of death threats which require her to live under the very active protection of Dutch governmental law enforcement.

It is always hard to really corroborate statements like "daughter of the Enlightenment" from something in the New York Times. However, from what this article states, she is much closer to those values than those in Holland and Europe. Time will tell.

Physically, she is tiny, but she is a gutsy lady who presents much to admire. She is independent of mind, which shows that such can be done DESPITE Islam. She is obviously very bright and very strong in character.

Already, she seems to walk on the plane with Ibn Warraq.

New Material on 6th Column Against Jihad Website

From the Home Page:


NEW FOR APRIL 2005:
From George Mason, a companion piece to Playing Us Like a Wurlitzer:
Welcome This New Member of the Fifth Column: National Review
From Cubed, Education and Jihad, Part VI, Foot in the Door
Reprinted from Jihad Watch, Fourteen Points on How to Discuss Islam Properly,
by Hugh Fitzgerald
MARCH 2005:
From Andrei Rublev, Islamic Organizations Use Public Television to Market Sharia
Law to American Youth
From George Mason, Playing Us Like a Wurlitzer
Two guest articles from D. C. Watson, 2005: While It's Still America
and Busted! The Not-So “Grand Illusion”
From Cubed, Education and Jihad, Part V, Philosophy and Economics
Freedom Fighters graphic (courtesy Front Page Magazine)
A recommended new website, and a name change for an old friend website
Always new material on our related blog, SIXTH COLUMN .
(The blog is on a site different from this website).

Can You Be Moral? (II)

Most people are on the wrong side of the moral coin, so to speak. One face of the coin says "morality is subjective and determined personally or by groups ," and this is the side of the Left. The other side of the same coin says "morality comes solely from God and is conveyed by religion and is independent of what anyone wants or believes or any group wants or believes."

The trouble, of course, is that both sides of the coin are wrong. These two sides come from the same coin, and the coin is wrong, so to speak.

These concepts exclude reality from having any role in morality because both of these positions exclude objectivity. Objectivity says that morality is a set of principles chosen by a person to guide his life properly, and these principles come from the facts of reality. They have to be discovered, not handed to people by some set of religious doctrines or from groups. That discovery requires that humans use their nature as humans for this discovery process. Simply put, human nature requires man use his unique conceptual consciousness to think his way through these discovery and application processes.

The human must match what he internalizes with the demands (facts) of reality, which include his own unique human nature. He must shuttle between the contents of his mind and the facts of reality to work out errors and develop certainty. This is objectivity, and it is open to every human in every locale. This approach aligns humans with reality. The other approaches war with reality by imposing a preset bunch of stuff called "morality" allegedly from unearthly sources, thus unreal sources. The other approach substitutes emotion for independent thinking to reduce morality either to some hedonistic actions or to some herd phenomenon dictated "somehow" by group-think.

Humans have no choice about developing a morality, a term which really is interchangeable with "ethics." Some will argue that ethics is the scientific, philosophical study of morality, and that is true as far as it goes. However, there is no reason to parse these terms into "quibbledoms." What is important is that human nature demands that humans develop a set of principles to guide their lives. No one can escape the demand.

If people do not undertake developing this set, they will uncritically absorb this and that from the culture and develop what most people have today, namely a contradictory and often self-defeating set of principles. At any time, people can undertake the introspective work to straighten this mess out. At any time. It is a function of volition, of electing to do so.

And that process of election, which we can call choice, is key to ethics or morality. Morality, stated philosopher Ayn Rand, is a code of values each of us chooses to determine the purposes and goals of our lives. Without choice, there is no morality. Whatever you MUST DO, i.e., whatever coercion exists, automatically excludes morality. Morality requires choice in the values and actions to attain those values (virtues).

To do the job right and develop a reality-based (rational) code of values, you must use objectivity to make your values and virtues conform to the facts and demands of reality.

There's more, much more. Values, choices, virtues require standards by which to choose and measure.

By the intrinsic approach, you just internalize what religion tells you to do. "YOU" drop out of the equation, as does your choice, because you are told that the alternative to the religious principles is NOTHING. The alternative is CHAOS, Sodom and Gomorrha, Hell on Earth, and mindlessness in the extreme.

By the subjective approach, you either do exclusively whatever you feel like doing as right for you, or you conform to the whims of this or that group. In all cases, emotions run the show. This is the Sodom and Gomorrha the other side warns against. The trouble is, emotions are only end products of thought done earlier by someone. Emotions are psycho-physiological indicators coming from evaluations at lightening speed. And those evaluations come from whatever appropriate or inappropriate thinking anyone has done. At no time are emotions suitable for determining the course of a life. They might be useful to jump out of the way of burning lava rushing at you, but they are completely unsuited to guide your life.

So, what is an objective approach? And just what is this book that you keep mentioning?

In time. In time.

GOLLEEE, SARGE: Calls Mount for Australian State to Rescind Religious Hatred Law

Well, well, well. It seems that what is good for the goose is not good for the gander, and what goes around, comes around. Gomer Pyle would have said to this blinding flash of the obvious, "Golleee, Sarge." The socialist country of Australia enacted what they considered to be moral legislation. And it was moral, by the standard of altruism. The free speech of all was sacrificed to the harmony of the favored group, in this case, Muslims. Two preachers got prosecuted and lost.

What should have been blazingly evident in advance has begun to dawn on some Australians. Sadly, the same process is going on in Britain for the same reasons. Countries are bending over backwards to kiss their own behinds to accommodate a group of people who advocate the destruction of the very countries doing all the accommodating. It boggles the mind.

Secondly, this is the mixing of state and religion. Take note, Rightists. This is always a disastrous mix, as the Aussies are starting to discover. Typically, this 2002 law hurt all Australians by establishing the principle that the right to free speech of citizens is up to the whim of the government, not theirs by right. Secondly, it pitted religions against each other, not in a friendly competition. The only winners were, of course, the Muslims.

Here is a condensation of what is coming from Australia on this matter:

Calls Mount for Australian State to Rescind Religious Hatred Law -- 03/31/2005,By Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com International Editor, March 31, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - A campaign to dump a religious hatred law in Australia is winning growing support from churches -- including some whose opinion on the law has shifted since two Christians were found guilty of vilifying Muslims.

Mainstream church leaders are adding their voices to other Christians asking the State of Victoria's Labor government to rescind the legislation, saying it poses a danger to freedom of speech.

Victoria's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act made headlines around the world after Muslims took two pastors before a tribunal, complaining about a post-9/11 seminar designed to explain Islam to a Christian audience.

The case made waves in Britain, where the government has been trying to enact a similar proposal (see related story).

"It was a great mistake for the government to lump religious vilification in with racial vilification," Harman said. "Apart from a very few small groupings such as Jews and Sikhs, race and religion in the modern world are not the same thing. Race for any person is a given, not so religion."

During the Catch the Fire hearings, two other denominations, the Catholic and Uniting Churches, supported the Muslim complainants, although the tribunal rejected submissions made by the two. An Anglican priest also appeared as an expert witness on behalf of the Muslims.

Among numerous complaints about the law - both at its drafting and since - critics said a listener could be offended whether or not the person giving the offense intended to do so. Yet claiming that one did not intend to insult or vilify was not a defense under the legislation.

"By its very nature, a religious truth claim will always seem offensive to one who does not accept it," Bill Muehlenberg of the AFA wrote in a recent article on the subject.

"No matter how hard I may try not to offend, an atheist will take offence at my claims that he is wrong and that God exists," he said. "A Muslim will take offence when I claim that Christ died on the cross and rose again."

We are running into the same disaster over here in America. Muslim pressure groups are doing all they can to reshape America to favor them at the expense of Americans, and the damned law makers are bending over to kiss their own behinds and that of the pressure groups.

Fair warning given.