Guaranteeing 2005

You can take the man out of the South but not the South out of the man, says the maxim. Over the decades, from all over the USA, even to Guam, the South travelled with me. Right now, I live far, far away from my southern roots, but, when it comes to New Year preparations, I dig into my heritage, as an inviolable tradition: Namely, how to get ready for the New Year and guarantee good luck all year.

It is no secret, neither for family nor for region, so I want to share this marvelous ritual with readers so that they too can have a full year of good luck.

Maybe Southerners are the only Americans who have a specific ritual meal for ushering in the New Year. I am ignorant of any other similar custom from any other region of America.

Well, here goes:

The meal is to be prepared in time for the clock crossing 2400 hours into the New Year, and the key ingredients are to be the very first thing in the mouth as the seconds of the newly arrived year tick off. No champagne, no nothing in the very new, New Year before the first bites of the traditional meal. After those first bites, then consume whatever you want. (What you eat and drink prior to 2400 hours has no influence, so indulge in advance freely).

The first essential dish is a preparation of black-eyed peas. Tradition suggests "hog jowl" be cooked with the peas, but we are vegetarians, so we use a ham analog. Our luck persists with this small change, so it does not upset the metaphysics. My wife makes a black-eyed pea casserole with a nip of Tabasco and a crust of cheddar on top. My, oh my, is it good!

The second essential dish must be turnip greens. Diced turnips are a neat addition as is some fatback, if you have it, or, in our case, some more ham analog. If you are unfamiliar with turnip greens, be advised that you must cook them at least 45 minutes for them to become tender. Be further advised that when they tenderize, they are scrumptious. If you are an afficianado, you know to dash a little vinegar on a steaming mound of turnip greens.

The third essential dish is corn bread. Don't get any of this Yankee "mix" that is all sweet. Get something like Martha White cornbread mix made with buttermilk, if you don't make it from scratch. Add cracklins if you have 'em, or crumbled bacon bits, or bacon analog.

With the instant of the arrival of the New Year, have a bite of each; it is crucial to start with the black-eyed peas. After that, you can just chow down on the rest for sheer enjoyment.

It always works. You never know what happens if you don't protect your luck using this tradition, because it never happens--if you follow the tradition. You just cannot know what does not occur. If, during the year, life events kick you in the teeth, just think of where you would have been kicked without this meal.

You can make and feed a passel of people this meal for about five dollars and really spread the good luck around.

You have nothing to lose, except bad luck--for the year. Hmm ...if every single one of us indulged in this good luck feast, perhaps it would change the course of history vis a vis the threat of Islam ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR! LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

Islamic Fear of the Free Mind

Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television, Fox's 24 Angers Muslim Group, by Jim Finkle, 12/29/2004

Two things Islam fears: freedom of thought and freedom of art. Both, of course are intimately related.

From the cited article:

Fox is under fire from at least one group for scenes in the Jan. 9 debut of drama 24 that portray a Muslim teen-ager and his parents as members of a terrorist cell plotting a mass attack on Americans.


One of the villains is a ... teenager who ... helps his parents mastermind a plot to kill large numbers of Americans that begins with an attack on a train.

Over the breakfast table, the father tells his son: “What we will accomplish today will change the world. We are fortunate that that our family has been chosen to do this.“Yes, father,” his son replies.

That it is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a so-called civil rights and advocacy group, doing the belly-aching should come as no surprise. This is a propagandizing pressure group which appears to have taken its training from Jesse Jackson and Malcom X and follows the example of the entire civil rights industry in playing race and victim cards over any imagined defamation.

Why did not Fox's 24 pick on Inuits as the villains? Duh!

Islam is the world villain, and Muslims carry out its villany. All Muslims? Of course not, but it is not Sherpas and Japanese trying to destroy the world, not even Inuits. What is, is. Muslims do jihad; non-Muslims do not.

The truth makes man free, and that is what Islamia fears. Freedom means free minds in free bodies. Free people act on their own self-repsonsibility. They work to the ends they determine to be important to them. And they do not force others to their ends.

Free minds find Islam repulsive, a truly proper response. People with authentic self-esteem find Islam repulsive. Islam mastered the art, if not the science, of human mind control centuries ago--thus, its jihadi robots by the millions over the centuries. Truly selfless automatons can be ruled and serve as cannon fodder in all of the endless conflicts Islam spawns. Free men blow off Islam.

Free men want to be creative. Free men want to be productive, using their minds to whatever they choose, whether local and mundane or on the scale of Leonardo, and all stops in between.

Free artistic minds created the scripts for Fox's 24, and performing artists along with bazillions of other artisans bring it to life.

Art makes values real to people. Art translates very complex philosophical ideas and principles into easily graspable entities, and art is essential to mankind for these reasons. Art requires free minds. Observe the quality of art from collectivized states. Art properly serves the needs of the artist and the consumer. That scares the pants off Islamists.

Organizations like C.A.I.R. want to intimidate free people into not criticizing Islam, not identifying Islam for what it is. They want things to be what they are not--you know, like Islam being a peaceful religion.

Free minds and free art blow off the desires for propaganda from C.A.I.R. and others. Islam cannot exist where free minds and free art coexist. Notice what passes for Islamic art: mostly decorated tiles and some noteworthy edifices. Note what is not in Islamic art: anything depicting life, humans, and human values. Islam is not for humans; it is for totalitarian rulers.

So, to Fox and 24, stick to your guns. It's Muslim jihadists, stupid, not Inuits and Sherpas. It's way past time to scare Islam right out of existence.

Imam's throat slit for saying peace prayers

Imam's throat slit for saying peace prayers

The details of this news report are horribly sketchy.

Here are the meatiest of the story's paragraphs:

DANWAKOTE (RAJOURI), DECEMBER 27: Piqued over the peace prayers at the local Jamia Masjid in non-descript hamlet of Danwakote in Rajouri district, militants last night abducted and slit the throat of the Imam of the mosque, sparking off a huge protest demonstration in the area.

Demanding visit of human rights organisation to the area, protesters said, “The killing of Imam has exposed the militants’ claim of carrying out jehad and their so-called sympathy with Muslims of the area.”


Khalil Ahmad was in a state of shock. He said from the dress and the chaste Punjabi language that gunmen spoke, it seemed that they were from Pakistan.

The take-home lesson is: Never forget what Islam and Jihad mean, and they will do to you what they did to the imam if you drop your guard. Islam is what Islam is. It is what it has always been and always will be. This ritual killing of the imam was classic jihadi in style and totally Islamic in meaning, namely killing to prevent peace.

In this Christmas season, good will to all men should not extend to those of Islam. Believe me, they have no good will for you or me.

NEWS ALERT!

NEWS ALERT!


Good grief, folks, the Muslims have been right all this time after all! THE KORAN IS THE SOURCE OF ALL KNOWLEDGE WORTH KNOWING! And since the Koran is eternal, that encompasses all knowledge!


How do I know this, you ask? Well, embedded within the Holy Scripture of Islam, the Koran, is an encryption of all this revealed knowledge that we never even suspected existed! I know about it because earlier this year, I cracked the code! I've been working like a dog (oops!) er, monkey (oops!) er, ape (oops!) er, pig (oops!)--oh well, I've been working REAL HARD on breaking the code!


I've only scratched the surface, of course, but I am now about to share with you just a few examples of this amazing Islamic knowledge! I just know that it's going to make our mean, nasty, reason-using Westerners jealous! I know it will make your reason-infested Western minds very uncomfortable, but I have worked SO hard on breaking the encryption that I feel I MUST let you in on all the Glorious Knowledge of Allah as revealed to the Perfect Man!


Here we go:


1) Allah revealed measurements of the supermassive black hole lying at our galaxy's center.

2) Allah revealed that the sugar "trehalose" stops Huntington's disease.

3) Allah revealed that cord blood harvested at birth boosts survival when injected into people with Hurler's syndrome, and in leukemia patients who don't have matching bone marrow donors.

4) Allah revealed that destroying healthy skin cells spurs the immune system to kill neighboring melanoma cells.

5) Allah revealed that nicotine halts the progression of severe sepsis, and that this is a way to help treat this lethal blood infection.

6) Allah revealed that longer telomeres on the tips of chromosomes mean longer life.

7) Allah revealed that miniature computers can be made of DNA, and that they are so small that trillions of them can fit into a drop of water. They can detect specific cancer genes and release a drug to block the genes' actions.

8) Allah revealed a solar cell that utilizes photosynthetic-protein complexes converts sunlight into electricity. (This encryption was particularly difficult to break; Allah made it difficult because it could conceivably bring substantial harm to the Fidels by allowing the Infidels to do an end-run around the Muslim-controlled oil fields.)

9) Allah revealed that by using a printing technique that emulates the way spiders spin silk, complex polymer microstructures with features small enough to be part of photonic crystals or scaffolds can be used for tissue engineering.

10) Allah revealed that paddle-shaped rotors made from individual molecules mounted on a gold surface in an electric field can form the basis of sensors or laser-protection coatings on soldiers' goggles (this one was also difficult, for fear that it would be used against the Fidels).

11) Allah revealed that there is a whole host of materials that use solar energy to split water and make clean-burning hydrogen fuel (this one was also difficult, for the reasons mentioned in 8) above).

12) Allah revealed that a cylinder made of densely packed carbon nanotubes functions as a filtering membrane that can be used to process crude oil and decontaminate drinking water (inasmuch as this was one of the techniques intended for use by the Fidels to harm the Infidels, this revelation was one of the most difficult of all to bring to light).

13) Allah revealed a means by which a tsunami's interaction with winds can explain certain observations associated with the big waves, and can thus enable them to be spotted long before they hit shore. (Allah made a provision that this means of detecting tsunamis should remain secret until the entire planet was converted to Islam; as a reward for the Fidels who would die due to tsunamis, he would make martyrs of them, and allow them to enter Paradise immediately, provided they were males.)

14) Allah revealed that subatomic B mesons show a matter-anti-matter disparity, and that's why there is so little anti-matter in the universe.

15) Allah revealed that highly energized quarks spin in the opposite direction from the neutrons and protons they inhabit.

16) Allah revealed that a bit of iron added to a refrigerant made of gadolinium, germanium,and silicon dramatically boosts the efficiency of magnetic refrigerators.

17) Allah revealed that calling a timeout before an attempted field-goal kick near the end of a football game is an effective defensive strategy.


Well, now! Don't all these Revelations just TYPIFY the kind of knowledge dropped out of the sky by Allah into Islamic universities and laboratories via the Koran? Don't you just wish like crazy that they had been revealed to Western scientists instead?


No wonder the Muslims win all the Nobel Prizes! Westerners are so burdened down with reason!


Damn, damn, damn! It just isn't FAIR! I'm going to go somewhere and have a temper-tantrum! Maybe I'll even eat worms (oops!) er, strap some explosives to my chest and go blow up a glorious Muslim university or lab or scientist somewhere!


Golly, I sure do wish Western science could reveal all that neat stuff to us the way Allah revealed it to Muhammad, The Perfect Man!

I Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself -- Internment May Be the Best Answer

For years, as did many Americans, I swallowed the propaganda of the multicultural Left, believing that the big, bad United States had unfairly, and against their will, rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. But of course we were wrong in our belief.

Today America is faced with the prospect of making a choice. The choice is to round up American citizens who happen to be Muslim and others, non-citizens to prevent a repetition of what happened in the Japanese-American community prior to and in the early moments of World War II: some Japanese American citizens and non-citizen aliens were collaborators and even agents of the Japanese government that worked tirelessly to infiltrate and undermine America at every level.

Daniel Pipes has refreshed my memory of Michelle Malkin’s book on the subject. Michelle Malkin has written an exposé of the attempt at historical revisionism that has occurred since World War II. In her book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), she has given us a review of historical record of the early 1940s:

· Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no prior history of anti-Americanism, shockingly collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.

· The Japanese government established “an extensive espionage network within the United States” believed to include hundreds of agents.

· In contrast to loose talk about “American concentration camps,” the relocation camps for Japanese were “spartan facilities that were for the most part administered humanely.” As proof, she notes that over two hundred individuals voluntarily chose to move into the camps.

· The relocation process itself won praise from Carey McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of The Nation), for taking place “without a hitch.”

· A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was, Malkin explains, “Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians, and civil rights activists – but not a single military officer or intelligence expert.”

· The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988, plus the nearly US$1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees were premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC messages, which revealed Tokyo’s plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.

Most Americans are unaware that the U.S. Government also interned Germans in the United States and in Central and South America through consultation with those governments. In turn, unlucky American citizens who were unable to return to the United States before December of 1941, were interned by the Germans and Japanese in various locations after the American declaration of war on those countries. However, the Germans and Japanese with great efficiency, had made advanced efforts to locate and dispense with foreign internees, whereas Americans had to scramble for a solution.

Throughout history, whenever possible, internment has been a tool for managing enemies. The other solution was elimination as internees can become a liability or a nuisance that some are unable or unwilling to tolerate.

Early on Europeans and then Americans notoriously interned prisoners in abysmal conditions. During the world-wide conflict between French and British dominance over North America, prisoners were interned, left to rot in the hulks of prison ships, a practice continued from previous wars and continued during the American Revolution. As well as on ships, internment in dungeons and filthy prisons, developed at the behest of the Inquisition, were the norm before the notorious 20th century death camps of both the Nazis and Japanese.

The American Civil War brought an improvement with prison camps where prisoners could at least see the sunlight, although some gained a notoriety of their own. The notorious Andersonville

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of many established prison camps during the American Civil War. It was built early in 1864 after Confederate officials decided to move the large number of Federal prisoners kept in and around Richmond, Virginia, to a place of greater security and a more abundant food supply. During the 14 months the prison existed, more than 45,000 Union Solders were confined here. Of these, almost 13,000 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding, or exposure to the elements.

That Civil War camps could be improvements over dungeon ships, citadel dungeons, and prisons up to that time tells how abysmally prisoners were treated.

Modern Western prisons are no picnic, but they are a paradise in comparison to most other parts of the world. World War II Japanese-American internment or relocation camps were a “paradise” in comparison to the degrading and deprived conditions of the Nazis and the Japanese prisoner camps in the same way that most other countries’ prisons are when compared to those of the United States. No one wants to go to a camp or to prison, but almost all prisoners would rather be in a prison in the United States or Western Europe.

But we are talking about American citizens! Yes, American citizens can be sympathetic to the enemy and aid and abet their cause. Immigrants can lie when taking the citizenship oath and many Americans hold a dual-citizenship, meaning that they have a split allegiance between the loyalty they owe the United States and that of another country. How can they decide to which to be truly loyal?

Muslims have a further complication. Nationalism is frowned upon in the Muslim community, and even those that promote a Pan-Arab agenda are considered to be un-Islamic. Instead, Islamists demand that Muslims adhere to the Koranic ideal of a one world under Islam, a membership in the Umma, the community of Muslims in which nationality plays no part. Instead, the Ummah must be governed by Sha’ria law within the Islamic empire, the Caliphate. Thus, how can we judge the loyalty of American Muslims when some of them hold dual citizenship and all profess to be members of the Ummah?

Michelle Malkin has raised our conciousness with her book’s thesis, one that has received and continues to receive much criticism. In any case, we must look at internment in light of advantages and disadvantages as our country is under siege from without and from within. Although many Muslims and their supporters are loyal and are working for the United States, many are not. It is necessary to make arrangements and take precautions in case, out of necessity, we must move large numbers of people that are working against us into secure situations or for their protection if Americans feel that they are.

The solution that the Nazis took was torture and death, the Japanese were little better, reflecting the historical reality of internment until that time. The World War II American camps can not be compared to these in any respect.

During a time of war we all pull together for survival. Will Muslims step up to the plate and fight for American against their nihilistic Islamist co-religionists that want to destroy America and enslave or kill the non-Muslim population? If they aren’t willing to give one-hundred-percent of their loyalty to America, they are working for the enemy and should be interned.

6th Column Against Jihad is Back

The site is dead. Long live the site! The former version of 6th Column Against Jihad has been fully replaced by the redesigned version which is now up and at the same address.

We still have much more to do regarding content and tweakings. E.g., one of the "tweakings," the hit counter, refuses to work right now, and we have used an alternative email address for contacting us until we can get the newness out of the new system.

Hopefully all the links work correctly. We think we tested them all, but one or two might have escaped us. Please let us know if you find any flaws in the website: We want the mechanics to be in top shape so that we can focus on content.

For the website as well as this blog, we will be getting back to the fight, so to speak, shortly now that the website changeover has completed, and the holidays will soon be repacked until late 2005.

For the website and this blog, we are using the contact email address: sixthcolumn@hotmail.com

Christmas Day Afterglow

In contrast to Maureen Dowd, the New York Times anti-Christmas nihilist whom we addressed earlier in December 2004, the following will consist of positive seasonal thoughts.

For my wife and myself, we could not get ready at home in time for Christmas again. The decorations and lights are still stored. In fact, we might not even be able to pass a public health inspection at home right now. And, here it is 26 December--Christmas Day has come and now gone for another year. Were we passed by our chance to enjoy the season? Are we unhappy? No, not at all, to both questions. Christmas did not pass us by (and we vow to be ready for it in 2005 by 1 December, which we did once in our 43 years of marriage).

Our kids are grown and have kids. One daughter lives in Florida while the other lives on the other side of the continent. Yet, we experienced the joy of family this year perhaps the best yet. Thanks to telephones and satellites, we renewed that very special adult-to-adult-but-adult-to-child bond with each.

My wife cooked one daughter's favorites, and we travelled to spend the day with her and her family. She, in turn, cooked all the things she loved that her mother made as she grew up. The grandchildren, of course, were into gifts, but they enjoyed all the adult company as much if not more than the exercise of childhood preoccupation with gifts. They just did it on their own, and it was refreshing.

While mother and daughter cooked and did mother-daughter interactions, my son-in-law showed me the movie Shrek 2. It turned out to be the perfect Christmas movie, just because it was such good, clean fun with highly intelligent wit. Its fun fit the day.

During the early afternoon, our Florida daughter called her sister to find out some details about she was making Yorkshire Pudding, a favorite of theirs growing up. Suddenly, I became palpably aware of how much of their mother and me they had internalized and treasured enough to extend to their own families. All of us had a long and rich discussion about this. As a result, I discovered that a number of things I had thought were of little significance to them when they were kids are in fact strong memory anchors now to childhood happiness with family. That was a WOW! I have come far enough along in life to start looking back and putting proper perspectives to life events, and this experience added a richness I had not known before.

We exchanged gifts and enjoyed its positive symbolism. This year, in particular, none of us had felt any need to court ulcers and migraine headaches in order to get these gifts. The gift were really tokens. The real gifts of the day and the season came from the day we were experiencing coast to coast.

Christmas is the purest celebration of values and valuing that we have each year. If the glow and good spirits do not persist through the year, at least we know that the next renewal is less than a year away.

For us, where we live, Christmas Day was marked by heavy, dark gray skies and steady, cold rain. We were warm, dry, well-lit, and happy, looking out on that day, celebrating what the human mind itself and ours in particular made possible. We celebrated life itself and the wonderful country which provided the milieu for capitalism to enable us to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. As for the wealth part, don't look for dollars. We don't have many, but we would not trade our circumstances with anyone else in any other country.

We are Americans, here and abroad, preserving and protecting our way of life by whatever our current life situations are. Fine young men and women find Christmas renewal even in the cesspool of Iraq. We were celebrating that also.

It's just great being an American!

NOTICE: 6TH COLUMN AGAINST JIHAD TO BE OFF-LINE BRIEFLY

On Monday, 27 December 2004, we will discontinue the current version of 6th Column Against Jihad and inaugurate a revised version. Hopefully this process will be seamless and will occur over a few hours instead of two days. Once back on line, we will have the same URL, some layout changes, and some new material. The same authors will continue. Other than the home page, the internal page addresses will differ from the old and some adjustment of links may be necessary.

This blog will remain in service throughout.

Why This War On Christmas? (Part II)

What is Christmas? Saying it best is Leonard Peikoff:

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

Regardless of how much Christians want it to be, Jesus is the reason for the season only for Christians. Christians would like sole possession over Christmas, and they have tried very hard to take over Christmas fully. There is, however, “the rest of the story,” to paraphrase Paul Harvey. Quoting again from the same article by Leonard Peikoff about the history of Christians and Christmas:

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations -- they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century, the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? … Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Christians should feel free to participate fully in Christmas and to enjoy it fully, joining the rest of us in the celebration of joy, but they should stop trying to claim sole origin and possession of the season. There is plenty of room for all to revel in Christmas in every manner people might choose. That is what America is about. Christmas belongs to all of us, including the Christians.

Sadly, however, religion, particularly Christianity, has given the Christmas trump card to the nihilists who dominate our journalistic and entertainment media, our colleges and universities, and most of our politics. Religion creates a sense of fundamental guilt through its ethics of self-sacrificial service to others and rejection of self, thus plays right into the hands of nihilism. E.g., think about why something like “political correctness” has succeeded so well. Its purveyors sold it as “brother love,” as caring more for others than self, and it caught on. Here is another example: Think about why something like “multiculturalism” has succeeded so well. Its purveyors sold it as putting others before self and never being selfish enough to think that your culture and values could in any way be more important than those of someone else from any other culture with any other values. How could religion protest and fight against core principles as these? The answer is, they could not. Thus, a prepared populace has fallen right into line.

One needed not to have been religious for this anti-ego, self-sacrificial ethics to have succeeded. A German philosopher, Kant, secularized the same ethics in the 18th century, and his version took over Western culture in the two centuries following. This ethics permeates through the Leftist “secular humanists” and the nihilists.

To this day, most people think that selfless service to others is the paragon of ethics. “Why, it has to be; otherwise it would not be so widely accepted everywhere by all as it is now. Right?” Wrong. Popular acceptance is no criterion of correctness.

What horrifies people who subscribe to this ethics is learning that this ethics is indispensable to Nazism, communism, Islam, and all other forms of totalitarianism. Rather than think this horror through, they turn their minds to idle, and that is what the nihilists count on.

“Political correctness” and “multiculturalism” have paralyzed America, and guilt is a major enabler for this paralysis. It makes the victims of this paralysis carry out the destruction of American FOR THE NIHILISTS, while thinking they are “doing good.” The assault on Christmas is a very visible manifestation, but only a tiny portion of the war to destroy American values, American valuers, and America itself.

In the forefront of this assault against America and Americans are activist judges, “making law.” They hide behind extremely “liberal” interpretations of the law which deform the culture through such acts as changing “Christmas trees” into “Holiday trees,” then into no trees at all. They remove any trace they can of traditional and beloved Christmas carols, and throw all vestiges of Christmas into the scrapheap of history by castigating it as “Christian.” That changes these values legally into NEGATIVES, to be removed from any place or thing where any non-Christian citizen can become aware of them--because they supposedly violate the separation of religion and state. That is the enabling “package deal.” You think you are dealing with one thing only to find nasty surprises hidden in the package.

Of course, state and religion must remain legally separated. Freedom requires such separation, but the principle separates the power of the state from forming or enforcing any religion. What gums up understanding (more of the “package deal”) is the prodigious growth of the “public sector.” Thanks to socialists, government now invades most aspects of Americans’ lives. With that invasion comes public funding. Activist judges use the existence of “public funding” as their wedge to over-interpret law to fit their leftist agendas, which are fundamentally nihilistic: the dismantling of America, a piece at a time. This is what groups all sorts of disparate-appearing phenomena into an understandable whole, over the entire culture. Celebrating Christmas does not logically fall under the religion:state separation principle. However, these activist judges and their fellow travelers are trying to stretch their control to more and more aspects of American culture by means of legal precedents.

I stand with anyone who wants to preserve Christmas. As Leonard Peikoff says,

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

This is the real meaning of Christmas, and it is the foundation celebration of capitalism, just as the 4th of July is the celebration of America and freedom. I can stand with any Christians or Jews, or anyone else, rejoicing about Christmas. If they do not try to take my celebration away, I will not try to take theirs away. Quite to the contrary, I will fight to preserve and protect their Christmas as their rights to celebrate however they wish.

The war on Christmas must be understood as a war on values and valuers. The values are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property, prosperity, and capitalism, all uniquely American values which many subgroups share in whole or in part, in the free celebration of Christmas. The war on Christmas is really a war on America. Let us not stand for this war, and let us not let the nihilists take Christmas for us, whether religious or not, and, by no means, take America from us.

Merry Christmas—and Happy New Year!

Christmas in the Combat Zone

Thinking about doing something for the troops for Christmas? There are many websites that give helpful suggestions and links. An example of something that would be appreciated is a prepaid phone card.

Author Lt.Col. Gordon Cucullo has several in his story, "Christmas in the Combat Zone."

A Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Why This War On Christmas? (Part I)

Look out! It is Christmas Season again, and the war is back on. The anti-Christmas contingents have come out from under their rocks and porches, hell bent on annihilating Christmas.

We find the “usual suspects”: Those FOR CHRISTMAS versus those AGAINST CHRISTMAS. Each is fighting for dominance. For those who love Christmas, the fight is to preserve and protect all aspects of the season. Anti-Christmas forces want all manifestations of Christmas removed from schools, public and private institutions, and buildings, displays, broadcasting media, and, you name it.

Most, but not all, pro-Christmas forces are Christians, and they quite naturally envision Christmas as the property of Christianity. Their numbers are so great that what other pro-Christmas forces have to say too often goes unheard. Because of the numbers and their annual polemics, most people concede that Christmas belongs solely to the Christians. I do not concede that point, however.

Anti-Christmas forces appear to be diverse, but they unite about one central moral evil (which we will discuss later in this article). The noisiest religious members of this force are Muslims--almost all other religions have found ways to share the spirit of the season. The rest of anti-Christmas forces belong to a large group huddled under the umbrella of “political correctness” and “multiculturalism.” A few claim that they are supporters of the Constitution of the United States; and, to be correct, there is a smaller subgroup of this subgroup legitimately seeking to uphold the legitimate Constitutional separation of religion and state. However, most of the anti-Christmas crowd use legal lingo as a subterfuge to disguise their real intent.

Very many people sense that there is something very wrong in this war on Christmas. What is wrong seems to belong to a much bigger war against American values, and possibly even against America itself. Christians protest the most, and they are right. However, the issue befuddles most people because it exists as a typical, contemporary, and opaque intellectual “package deal” of issues nested out of sight within issues, like a set of Russian nesting dolls. American education has very effectively disarmed Americans intellectually to the point that they are unable to tease out the issues. The resulting confusion and fog obscure an underlying colossal evil. This evil is actually what people sense, and this evil makes the war on Christmas far bigger than a war on Christianity, or even religion itself. It is at least as big as America and the West.

Let us locate and identify this evil. To do so, we must first separate the layers of “combatants” and what they are fight for and against.

We begin with the hardcore Christian faction, which sees Christmas solely as the celebration of Jesus’ birthday, as a solely Christian opportunity not for personal joy unless it is directed toward gratitude that Jesus was born. They decry the glitz, glitter, and “materialism,” because these take away from selfless spirituality and communion with God.

A much larger and more moderate Christian subgroup makes room both for Christ and Caesar, so to speak, to enable all of them to enjoy most things about Christmas. Those in this large group range from the actively religious all the way to the passively religious.

The last group consists of those who belong to other religions such as Judaism and Hinduism and atheists. All enjoy Christmas for non-Christian reasons.

The anti-Christmas crowd’s most obvious subgroup consists of people who participate in Christmas but are totally caught up conforming to “political correctness” and “multiculturalism.” Some may be religious to some extent; some are secular. All are trendy. They are a herd, one which follows the mores-of-the-moment, and “political correctness” and “multiculturalism” are the mores prevailing in our culture.

“Political correctness” and “multiculturalism” mean to this first subset that they must contort themselves severely and constantly to avoid offending a “someone” who “might possibly be offended” by “anything” suggesting religion in Christmas decorations, songs, and rituals. They never see their own absurdity. In fact, they feel like morally superior angels carrying out this “brother-love.” They remove Christmas from schools, from textual materials, and from being mentioned in classes and groups. They take away decorated trees because such trees are almost always called “Christmas trees.” These people mimic those loyal Germans who went about carrying out the practices of Nazism in ordinary life in Nazi Germany. These Germans and these politically correct trendies are just “doing their duty.” It is frightening to see the awful similarity.

These trendies think along the line of “Suppose some Muslim sees or hears or reads anything related to Christmas, which is, after all, indubitably Christianity, and interprets this as an offense to Islam?” Talk about compartmentalizing thinking! They worry about not offending Muslims but fail themselves to be offended by jihad and by an entire religion which wants to enslave or murder them. They fail as well to recognize that Muslims make no effort to “respect” Christians, Jews, or anyone else who is not Muslim. These trendies are the “useful idiots” of the really evil crowd.

Underneath the trendies lurk the nihilists, conveniently obscured by all of the concern with political correctness and multiculturalism. These are the people who pushed political correctness onto the cultural stage and made it popular—a fact that few people recognize. Why did they create political correctness and multiculturalism? To understand fully, you must read David Horowitz’s new book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. And, if you want to understand the root issues and the fundamental causes, read Leonard Peikoff’s book Ominous Parallels. Both are reviewed on 6th Column Against Jihad. It is this nihilism that is the great evil lurking behind the skirts of the war on Christmas.

Not everyone who hates something is a nihilist, and it is important to recognize that fact. Yes, there are people who hate Christmas, and there are people who hate Christians. These are haters of specific values and valuers. Most of these just hate enough aspects of the Christmas season to merit the epithet of “Grinches,” these days.

Value-hating, left uncorrected, spreads. Eventually it devolves into nihilism. What separates nihilists from routine haters and Grinches is that they hate the concepts of values and the virtue of valuing. That, after all, is the literal meaning of nihilism. Particularly, nihilists hate the good for being good, and they tear down values wherever they may be found.

Nihilism is what unites the American Left and the jihadists these days. Both hate America and want to destroy it. By hating America, they hate anything of value within it and all things that can be construed to represent America. They attack Christmas relentlessly because Christmas is THE “value and valuing season.” Nothing else like it occurs at any time the rest of an entire year.

[This article concludes tomorrow on this site.]

Sharia in America -- A Satire

Sharia in America

By Ayesha Ahmed

Omar M. Ahmad founder of CAIR said:"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant" he said. "The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America , and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth," he said.

…Consider the following advantages:

- America can go to jihad against non Muslim countries. It will bring immense wealth in booty and millions of captured women. Canada and Mexico can be easy targets and are conveniently located for easy assault and hauling of booty.

-Since slavery will be allowed government can open slave markets to sell it's 20% share of the captured women.

-Captured women/slave-girls can provide affordable domestic help for house wives and clean enjoyable sex for their husbands.

-Enslaved men can be used as farm labor and factory workers at a much lower cost than unionized labor.

-Unemployed men from the prohibited non Islamic businesses like TV, Photography, computers, mortgage companies, music industry etc can be hired as religious police for the Ministry of Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtues . They can be used to beat up women violating burqa laws, arrest men with undersize beards and whip the non religious types found loitering at prayer times.

-Since men will be allowed four wives and unlimited number of slave girls, population boom will result in making the fastest growing religion grow even faster.

-All non muslims will live under dhimmi rules and pay heavy Jizya. Budget deficits will be a thing of the past.

Stoning of adulterers, whipping of alcohol drinkers, cutting of hands and feet of thieves and beheadings of apostates can be carried out after Juma prayers on Fridays in the local stadium. Gate charge for this gory and exciting weekly spectacle can generate a lot of revenue.

-Unemployed male gynecologists can be hired to carry out circumcisions of new male converts.

-Female circumcision can be made mandatory to promote piety and holiness and discourage lewdness among women.

-Marriage age for girls can be lowered to 6 years. That will reduce the burden of support of large poorer families and also promote a sunna, the tradition set by the holy prophet (peace be up on him).

-Whole Ramadan will be declared as public holidays so that every one can pray and recite the Quran.. Why work in the only month in which all ibadah and Quran recitals are worth 70 times the normal sawab (reward)?.

-Shia Muslims on temporary out of town business assignments will be able to do a temporary marriage (Muta) and enjoy home comfort outside of home.

-Since menstruation is a disease according to Quran all menstruating women will be given time off to rest in bed during their periods.

-All toilet seats in the public rest rooms will be reoriented so that one does not defecate facing Mecca .

-All public toilets will have buckets of stones instead of toilet tissues for claiming after defecation as a movement to implement sunna in the country.

-Separate bins along roadside will be placed to drop bones and dried animal feces for jins to snack on.

Zakat, charitable giving is a religious obligation. All will be taxed, but non-Muslims will be taxed more.

Medical costs will plummet, but the salaries of imams will go up as they will replace doctors at clinics:

-Spiraling medical costs can be brought down by the following two prong approaches:

-Imams can be placed in the clinics to recite Quranic ayas (verses) and blow on the patients and pray for them. Their fee will be a fraction of what doctor's charge.

- All pharmacies will be required to dispense black cumin, honey, Indian incense and camel urine as cure for all diseases as recommended by the holy prophet (pbuh). The cost will be a fraction of today's medicines.

Prison costs will also come down due to the following:

-All men serving time for the crime of rape will be freed if four male witnesses had not testified in the trial. Even if four male witnesses had testified, the criminal will be freed under insanity provision , since only mentally insane will rape in front of four witnesses.

-All men serving sentences for beating wives will be freed as under new American sharia law wife beating will be allowed.

-All thieves will be freed after cutting their hands and feet.

-All pedophiles will be freed as sex with children will not be against law any more.

-All slayers of unbelievers will be freed if they converted to Islam.

And we’ll all live happily ever after under Islam.

Should International Law Take Precedence Over U.S. Sovereignty?

Should International Law Take Precedence Over U.S. Sovereignty?

It appears that forces of international law are moving on the U.S. as they recently did in Britain.

Like it or not, we are entering an age when international law and international court rulings will have a growing effect on domestic law, alarming those who see a threat to national sovereignty. First Britain, and now the United States. Across the water, the United Kingdom suffered a major setback in the war against terror Thursday when the nation's highest court in the House of Lords ruled 8-1 that the darling of the Blair government -- the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 -- violated the larger European human-rights laws.

The antiterrorism law was enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, which the Law Lords called "atrocities on an unprecedented scale." British authorities used the law to detain foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial. This was much like the Bush administration's policy before Supreme Court rulings last June said foreign terror suspects had the right to have their cases reviewed by U.S. courts. The British policy violated a domestic law, the Human Rights Act of 1998, which was enacted by Parliament to implement the European Convention on Human Rights, the Law Lords said. One of the articles of the British act says, "Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person."

The Law Lords said "everyone" in that context means "everyone within their jurisdiction." Since indefinite detention was applied only to foreign terror suspects and could not be applied to British nationals, it was discriminatory. Therefore, foreign nationals could be held without trial only so long as it takes to process them for deportation, the lords said. British officials, like their U.S. counterparts, do not want open trials of foreign terror suspects because much of the evidence against them consists of sensitive intelligence. Such intelligence is usually solid, but because of the way in which it is gathered it might not stand up under court scrutiny. The Blair government has said it will not release the detainees until Parliament has a chance to amend the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to deal with the consequences of international law, in particular with its effects on the executions of foreign nationals who have committed brutal slayings in this country.

The justices have agreed to hear argument this spring on whether an order by the International Court of Justice at The Hague -- "the principal judicial organ of the United Nations" -- is binding on U.S. courts. The United States was an avid proponent of the Vienna Convention when it was formulated in 1963, mainly because it wanted to protect U.S. nationals overseas. Article 36 of the convention allows consuls in foreign countries to protect the interests of their nationals who are detained in those countries. U.S. diplomats signed the convention in April 1963 -- diplomats from 165 other nations did the same -- and President Richard Nixon sent it to the Senate, where it was finally and unanimously approved in 1969.

Moreover, the convention has been more than an idle stack of papers. The United States itself has brought 10 cases before the International Court of Justice to enforce its protections. …

There are a series of cases involving Mexican nationals that have committed serious crimes in the U.S. Suits allege that they were not advised of the right of counselor consultation that could have helped them at the time of their arrests. The pending executions have been halted for review in U.S. courts.

Consular review has been instrumental in assisting U.S. citizens that have arrested abroad.

The justices have agreed to hear argument this spring on whether an order by the International Court of Justice at The Hague -- "the principal judicial organ of the United Nations" -- is binding on U.S. courts. The United States was an avid proponent of the Vienna Convention when it was formulated in 1963, mainly because it wanted to protect U.S. nationals overseas. Article 36 of the convention allows consuls in foreign countries to protect the interests of their nationals who are detained in those countries. U.S. diplomats signed the convention in April 1963 -- diplomats from 165 other nations did the same -- and President Richard Nixon sent it to the Senate, where it was finally and unanimously approved in 1969.

Moreover, the convention has been more than an idle stack of papers. The United States itself has brought 10 cases before the International Court of Justice to enforce its protections.

The result of the case in question will have a profound effect, as once the law is ratified by the Senate it will have the weight of law under the Constitution.

It's too early to predict the outcome of the case, though at least one member of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, has publicly said that the high court eventually must come to terms with the impact of international law. Breyer might reasonably be expected to lead those members of the Supreme Court who feel the Vienna Convention means what it says.

Is this a threat to U.S. sovereignty? We will know the outcome from the members of Congress and from the White House before the summer recess in June 2005.

Sic Liberals on Iraq

If you want to ruin a country or a portion of its population, why don't we don't we do what was done here -- send them our liberals to show them how.

The Nuclear Option for Iraq: Sic Liberals on Iraq
by Mac Johnson
Posted Dec 20, 2004

It's time to consider the nuclear option in Iraq. Not the big nasty bomb, of course, but a hellish strike nonetheless -- one capable of destroying an entire nation. It's time we dropped liberalism on our enemies!

In our war against Islamic Fundamentalism, what we are really trying to do is destroy a traditional culture rooted in religion, while simultaneously reshaping it to better suit post-modern Western society. And, Heck, we know how to do that; we just finished doing that here in America.
Now that I think about it, I can't believe the Iraq war has lasted more than 6 weeks, since we are on very familiar ground here.

Mind you, I do not mean to imply that all moralities, traditions, and religions are equivalent -- but then I don't have to, since liberals have already decided that for me. However, if what we want to do is socially engineer a less judgmental, more self-oriented and secular culture, then I think we have to admit that we went with the wrong team in Bush and the neoconservatives. This is lefty territory, pure and simple. So let History -- or "Herstory" -- be our guide here and enact the following proposals immediately:

1) Put the NEA in charge of Iraq's school system -- forthwith. I believe the children are the future, and I see no reason why foreign futures should be any brighter than ours. Retrained according to the Public School model, Iraqi youths will know how to make a Navajo dreamcatcher this "Holiday Season" but will have no idea how to properly wire up a roadside bomb. Saddam Who-sein, you say? You can't live in the past if no one teaches it. February is Zoroastrian History Month!

2) Create an Iraqi Civil Liberties Union by this next Ramadan… uh, I mean "Autumn Festival". Let the ICLU do for Iraq what the ACLU has done for America! I'm sure the first time an ICLU lawyer strolls into Baghdad District Court to have "Allah" removed from, well, everything, get Kurds bussed into Arab schools, or have Saddam Hussein released on a technicality, he will be welcomed as the tireless public advocate he truly is. But to insure this…

3) Parachute the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals into Fallujah -- and throw in four of our Supreme Court Justices as back-up. The whole world seems to fall under their jurisdiction anyway, so why not make it official. We could fly them to an airport, but if we parachute 'em in, we'll finally know what they wear under those robes.

4) Give away free satellite TV for the whole Middle East. Why should the true meaning of life -- consumption, intoxication, sex, and self-pity -- be broadcast only to the West? Forget Napalm, these people need their MTV.

5) Drop Michael Moore on Iraq. OK, this one is really for me. Although… the time taken to purify a Holy Warrior after exposure to that much pork fat is probably lengthy enough to halt the insurgency for at least a week.

6) Porn, porn, porn. Why take a chance on 72 virgins in paradise when you have 72 channels of smut right here? When inspiring people to forget tradition and common cause, it never hurts to corrupt the basic relationship between man and woman while revving up the libido. Iraq needs a "Me" generation. Larry Flynt, get out your Red, White, and Blue Diaper -- your country needs you.

7) Start "The Liberal Corps" to gather up a bunch of do-gooder volunteers to help Iraq down the path to modernity. Recruiting poster: "Islamic Fundamentalism -- It's everything you like to pretend Christianity might become." Remember: either we send liberals there or else they try to "help" us here.

8) Al-Roe vs. El-Wade. Stop suicide bombers in the womb.

9) Drop Michael Moore on Iraq…Oh wait, got that one already.

Well, you get the idea. All this may not turn Iraq into Berkley overnight, but it should at least get them close to Madison. One should always use the right tool for the job, and leftists can be fine tools indeed. And if this doesn't work, we can always go back to bombing stuff.

See, foreign policy ain't so hard.

Hmmmm. Aren't these the reasons that the Islamist give for resisting American culture in the first place?

Symbiosis Between China and America Contributes to the War on Terror

Economically the United States and China have developed symbiotic relationship:

Santa Claus, were Christianity to disappear, would live on in China as a minor prosperity god. The Chinese love to shop and have naturalized the American symbol of Yuletide acquisitiveness. America's contribution to Chinese prosperity goes beyond symbols, though. The United States gave China precisely what it lacked, namely an open market for goods, access to financial markets, and a store of value for savings, among other things. Providing a global reserve currency has been America's decisive contribution to Chinese success. The result will be a Sino-US duopoly rather than a unipolar world.

The 19th century Polish militarist theorist, Clausewitz, is the author of the theory of creative destruction.

The Sino-US power duopoly constitutes the most disruptive force in world economic life since cheap British textiles crushed India's weaving industry at the outset of the 19th century. An impossibly high threshold confronts any other part of the world seeking economic success. Not in their wildest imaginings could American planners have invented a more effective way of projecting US power and suppressing prospective challengers.

Is China a force to be feared as some American neo-conservatives alleged? According to Spengler of the AsiaTimesonline, they are not.

Nonsense. It is China's success that is inconceivable without US world dominance. If US financial markets were to break up, China would go into a tailspin.

Spengler alleges that the Chinese political system “cannot be mistaken for Anglo-Saxon democracy,” their economic success does depend upon US financial markets, which cannot exist without Anglo-Saxon laws. And on top of that, the Chinese, the world’s most “cautious core savers” that salt away half their earnings, keep their savings safe in America!

China's half-trillion dollars of foreign-exchange reserves, according to the same critics, display China's strength and the United States' weakness. On the contrary: the reserves are there because the government of China knows that the Chinese trust US banks rather than Chinese ones, and wisely keep a hoard of rainy-day savings in US funds. China cannot invest its savings at home until such time as Chinese laws, regulations, and politics give rise to a banking system as strong as America's, that is, until China's legal system looks a lot more Anglo-Saxon.

Why do the Chinese do this and what are the consequences for America?

War and revolution have destroyed the savings of generation after generation and the Chinese are willing to take the risk in order to know that their children will never face poverty.

Americans, on the other hand,

…are willing to take the risk of letting foreigners break the rice-bowl of its own citizens. Chinese imports have wiped out entire industries in the United States, notably electronics, toys and textiles. The US has imposed upon its own citizens the risk of finding alternative employment. It allows foreign students to compete for places in its top universities on equal terms with natives, and protects foreign businessmen under the same laws.

America and China have much in common: agreement about North Korea and a common interest in suppressing radical Islam. Interestingly enough, China backed the re-election of George W. Bush.

With Bush's re-election, China is assured of continuity in US policies, especially those concerning Taiwan ... China, therefore, has reason to welcome this second Bush term ... Islamist terrorists are active in the southern Philippines and Indonesia ... Only when al-Qaeda and its Arab affiliates are seen to fail will their disciples in Asia lose heart.

No one could have envisioned such cooperation when Nixon and Kissenger went to China in 1971.

America’s cooperation with China has unintended consequences.

The birth of the economic superpower, China, has shut the door to prospective challengers: the more populous Muslim countries – Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iran. Only Turkey has had the export growth within an order of magnitude of China’s. (see graph)

A similar situation occurred in the 17th century during the Industrial Revolution that depressed the weavers of Bengal in favor of British cotton-cloth manufacturing. “Indian farmers resorted to growing opium for sale to China, to the detriment of both countries but the enrichment of the British East India Company.”

Now it’s China’s turn to disrupt the world. Spanish workers burned warehouses full of Chinese shoes, a something parallel to the burning of the East India Company opium in 1838.

Europe needs to worry about its shrinking labor force. Chinese manufacturing will shut out countries with young and growing populations that need light manufacturing to absorb migrants from the countryside. India should be worried. The Middle East and North Africa have “missed the boat.”

Does the E.U. NEED to Hate America?

Does the E.U. need to hate America? According to T.R. Reid, in The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy,” it appears that the answer is “yes”.

Although insightful, his is that “the planet has a second superpower now”, is unconvincing.

… Reid fails to convince. Nevertheless, his book offers a valuable portrait of a continental political class obsessed with “counterweighting” the United States of America. Indeed, the book prompts the question of whether the EU actually needs a degree of anti-Americanism to generate a shared identity for a fractious pastiche of nations tied together by nothing more than soccer and the technocratic tendrils of the Brussels bureaucracy.

His argument is based on economics: the “miraculous’ euro, the global power of European regulators, and increasing investment in the U.S.

But,and isn’t there always “a but”? Although “the euro has succeeded, double-digit unemployment, a declining birthrate, soaring taxes, and a union-dominated welfare state suggest a grimmer economic future,” because of “a growth rate roughly half the world average” that “fail to meet its goal of outperforming the U.S. economy by 2010.”

And what is the effect of European regulators?

…Europe’s regulators legislate the length of leeks and the curves of cucumbers, mandate minimum tax rates, and prop up a pathetically inefficient agricultural sector… Rather than making a superpower, the EU’s ham-fisted regulators keep the world’s largest unified market from reaching its full potential… Regulatory power goes “hand in hand with Europe’s centralized, semi-planned economy in which parts for airplaines are made all over Europe, flown in a special transport to another place where they are assembled.

Europe’s “soft power” comes from owning many familiar “American” product lines: Mowtown records, owned by the French, Amoco by the British, and Vaseline by the Dutch. Somehow this “soft power” is supposed to undermine U.S. power, but the truth is Europe invests in America “because America offers a far friendlier business climate than the chokingly regulated EU.”

Why do they bother? Reid makes one point well:

EU officials are as obsessed with “counterweighting” the Americans as they are proud of their genuine economic achievements. He quotes EU Commission president Romano Prodi’s exultation that “the historical significance of the euro is to construct a bipolar economy in the world.” In other words, at the hour of Europe’s greatest success, its top official celebrated not only the new currency, but also a new way to stick it to the Americans. The euro, Reid argues, “is just one facet of the broader effort to create a “bipolar” world in every respect — to see the European Union as a global superpower of American dimensions.”

Not only do they “stick it to Americans” by counterweighing, they block, as in blocking the U.S. purchase of German-made diesel submarines for Taiwan, lifting a post-Tiananmen arms embargo on China. They have also launched a joint project with the Chinese military to develop an alternative to the U.S.-run GPS system, and pursued a schizoid policy on terror by sending forces to Afghanistan and clamping down on its own restive Muslim population while bankrolling the Palestinian Authority and undermining American efforts in Iraq.

It appears that the Europeans are certainly not working with America in the War on Terror!

The EU remains “far from united.” There is no religion or feeling of nationality. The only uniting force is that which denigrates America:

“The sheer pleasure that Europeans take in denigrating America has become another bond unifying the continent,” he writes. Might anti-Americanism be useful for European integration?

Anti-Americanism is the natural choice, the unifying principle “to hold the enterprise together.” In anti-Americanism there is something for everyone to hate: McDonald’s, the “barbaric” death penalty, or le cowboy Bush. The elites of Europe “have conjured up a hydropower for the adolescent Union to define itself against.”

Although exaggerated, Reid’s warning of the EU’s “urge to counterweight” the United States is an important one. Europeans have “set out to unify in opposition to the only country that has the world leadership it demands, and with the possible addition of the seasoned and battle-hardened army that will come with Turkey’s admittance into the EU, they might be more than Reid’s anti-power to America’s super-power.

A Must-See Terrorism Video!

A new friend, an American woman apostate from Islam, sent us a link to a site that has a powerful video about terrorism. Let her speak:

Hello, this is XXXXX again. Once you get into this website scroll down and click on the, "Seeds of Hatred," video. You will not believe it. We must pray for people who are thinking this way. We must pray for both the Palestinians and the Israelis, because we are all God's children. We all came from Adam. Take care,



http://atci.showsit.info/

One tidbit that stuck with me concerned a Palestinian psychologist who studied Palestinian children. He found that 50% between ages 6 and 10 dream of becoming suicide bombers. At the rate Palestinian children are being indoctrinated and trained, the world will face a formidable mass of skilled terrorists in ten years.

See the video. Pass it on

Wind/Hydrogen Energy Age Is on the Way

Osama bin Laden has urged his followers to blow up the oil fields of the Middle East. This will hurt, of course, but technology to be used with other energy sources is developed and being perfected.

The wind-energy capacity for the United States has been underestimated as Wyoming, North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas have “enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Using wind energy, “we have the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen, which provides a way of storing and efficiently transporting wind energy.”

…Hydrogen is the fuel of choice for the fuel cell engines that automakers worldwide are working on and, if push comes to shove on the climate front, cars with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines can be converted to hydrogen.

Once in storage, hydrogen can be used to fuel power plants, much as natural gas is used. This hydrogen can be either a backup for wind power
or an alternative to natural gas, especially if rising prices make gas prohibitively costly for electricity generation.

The principal cost for wind-generated electricity is the capital outlay for initial construction. Since wind is a free fuel, the only ongoing cost is for maintenance. Given the recent volatility of natural gas prices, the stability of wind power prices is particularly appealing. With the possibility of even higher costs of natural gas in the future, natural gas-fired plants may be used increasingly as a backup for wind-generated
electricity.

The United States is lagging in developing wind energy not because it cannot compete technologically with Europe in manufacturing wind turbines but because of a lack of leadership in Washington. The wind production tax credit of 1.5¢ per kilowatt-hour, which was adopted in 1992 to establish parity with subsidies to fossil fuel, has been permitted to lapse three times in the last five years, most recently at the end of 2003 when Congress failed to pass a new energy bill. The uncertainty about when it will be renewed has disrupted planning throughout the wind power industry.

If leadership in Washington is what’s necessary to get this project off the ground, prod your Congressmen, or better still, their staff, to get the ball rolling.

The Circus Is Coming to Town

Hattip: Little Green Footballs

The Saddam Hussein Circus is coming to town as the former dictator is preparing a legal challenge in U.S. courts

Citing a fifty leaked brief prepared by his defense team, Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer has advised Saddam to take his case to U.S. courts “to ensure he receives a fair trial” and “basic legal rights given to those tried in the United States, such as full access to his defense team and an independent judge and jury…”

The leaked brief is entitled “The Iraqi Special Tribunal as Victors’ Justice – the Inherent Illegality and Bias of the Whole Process.”

The brief argues that U.S. law should prevail in the case because the trial is effectively being taken at the behest of the U.S. government and that Saddam will have trouble receiving a fair trial because leading members of the Iraqi and U.S. administration have publicly called for him to be found guilty and killed to “validate” the war.

Note: Clive Stafford Smith is a beneficiary of the George Soros Foundation.

George Soros, a prominent backer of John Kerry in the 2004 election, has worked tirelessly, spending millions of dollars on the Democratic Party and to oust George W. Bush from office. Thus, the involvement of Clive Stafford Smith reveals the not-so-secret hand of Soros in a continued effort to discredit George W. Bush, a sitting president in the middle of a war.

Soros is a well-known power broker that has been implicated in the destabilization of small countries through the manipulation of their currencies. One wonders what would have happened to the United States if Soros had become the power behind the throne: what would have been done to the United States or in the name of the United States under his influence. We hope he will never have the chance.

“Interview us or we will kill you”

The mounting evidence of the Islamists’ manner of shaping how the world views them and Islam is echoed in the chilling words, “Interview us or we will kill you”. Soon after issuing this warning, a commander thought again and issued another warning, “Broadcast that and we will kill you,” they told the 30-year-old television journalist Mohammed Abdul Razzaq.

The operative word here is kill: say this or we will kill you, don’t say that or we will kill you. Freedom of speech has always been suppressed under Islam. The death of Theo Van Gogh is another example of how modern Islam continues in the centuries-old vein of mind control through intimidation.

Morality police, thought police are rampant throughout the Muslim world, keeping the population under their thumb to toe the Islamic line. Now the thought police in the form of jihadis are roaming free throughout the world, threatening and killing Muslims, Apostates, and non-Muslims that dare to offer a criticism or an opinion that is contrary to Islam, or, in this case, to truthfully depict what is going on, the willful attempt to prevent the upcoming elections in Iraq.

The pattern is abundantly clear: wherever Muslims become dominant, freedom of action, speech, and even thought is eliminated through intimidation and violence.

Hattip: JihadWatch

Understanding Terror Networks

Here’s a very thought-provoking report from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, deconstructing the received wisdom that Islamic terrorists are impoverished and desperate. Hattip: Little Green Footballs

We all know that Al Qaeda is a violent, Islamist, revivalist social movement, held together by a common vision of a Salafi state. Al Qaeda proper is just a small organization within this larger social movement. We often mistake the social movement for Al Qaeda and vice versa because for about five years, Al Qaeda had more or less control of the social movement.

The segment that poses a threat to the United States came out of Egypt. Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan. In 1991, Algeria and Egypt complained to Pakistan that it was harboring terrorists, so Pakistan expelled them. Thus the most militant of these terrorists made their way to Khartoum, where they were invited by Hassan al-Turabi of the National Islamic Front in Khartoum.

The Khartoum period is critical, because what these violent Salafists basically want to do is to create a Salafi state in a core Arab country. Salafi (from Salaf, “ancient ones” or “predecessors” in Arabic) is an emulation, an imitation of the mythical Muslim community that existed at the time of Mohammed and his companion, which Salafists believe was the only fair and just society that ever existed. A very small subset of Salafis, the disciples of Qutb, believe they cannot create this state peacefully through the ballot-box but have to use violence. The utopia they strive for is similar to most utopias in European thought of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, such as the communist classless society.

In Khartoum, the Salafists theorized that the reason they had been unable to overthrow their own government (the “near enemy”) was because it was propped up by the “far enemy”— the United States. So they decided to redirect their efforts and, instead of going after their own government, to attack the “far-enemy.” In 1996, for many reasons, Hassan al- Bashir, the President of Sudan, had to expel Al Qaeda after the imposition of international sanctions, because the Sudanese Government was implicated in the attempt to assassinate Egyptian President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1995. In August 1996, within two months of returning to Afghanistan, bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on the United States.

The fatwa clearly articulated the new goals of this movement, which were to get the U.S. out of the Middle East so they would be free to overthrow the Saudi monarchy or the Egyptian regime and establish a Salafi state. This remains their goal and is why 9-11 happened. This is why the embassy bombing happened. It’s really not so much to destroy the United States, something they know they cannot do right now. This is all why I put the start of the threat against us at 1996.

The 400 terrorists on whom I’ve collected data were the ones who actually targeted the “far enemy,” the U.S., as opposed to their own governments. I wanted to limit myself for analytical purity to that group, to see if I could identify anything different from other terrorist movements, which were far more nationalistic.

Most people think that terrorism comes from poverty, broken families, ignorance, immaturity, lack of family or occupational responsibilities, weak minds susceptible to brainwashing - the sociopath, the criminals, the religious fanatic, or, in this country, some believe they’re just plain evil.

Taking these perceived root causes in turn, three quarters of my sample came from the upper or middle class. The vast majority—90 percent—came from caring, intact families. Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world. These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.

Al Qaeda’s members are not the Palestinian fourteen-year- olds we see on the news, but join the jihad at the average age of 26. Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.

Far from having no family or job responsibilities, 73 percent were married and the vast majority had children. Those who were not married were usually too young to be married. Only 13 percent were madrassa-trained and most of them come from what I call the Southeast Asian sample, the Jemaah Islamiyya (JI). They had gone to schools headed by Sungkar and Bashir. Sungkar was the head of JI; he died in 1999. His successor, Bashir, is the cleric who is being tried for the Jakarta Marriott bombing of August 2003; he is also suspected of planning the October 2002 Bali bombing.

As a psychiatrist, originally I was looking for any characteristic common to these
men. But only four of the 400 men had any hint of a disorder. This is below the worldwide base rate for thought disorders. So they are as healthy as the general population. I didn’t find many personality disorders, which makes sense in that people who are antisocial usually don’t cooperate well enough with others to join groups. This is a well-organized type of terrorism: these men are not like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, loners off planning in the woods. Loners are weeded out early on. Of the nineteen 9-11 terrorists, none had a criminal record. You could almost say that those least likely to cause harm individually are most likely to do so collectively.

Read the rest of this chilling and thought-provoking analysis.

Why do fringe liberals, Muslim terrorists, European socialists, and communists all hate Christianity?

Why do fringe liberals, Muslim terrorists, European socialists, and communists all hate Christianity?

Dr. Donald May. a retina surgeon and university lecturer, gives us reasons that reflect his strong Christian faith.

The Christmas Deconstruction Alliance just does not get it. They are dumbfounded as they have not been able to secularize Christmas. They throw tantrums because of the tenacity with which the vast majority of us hold onto our Christian beliefs and traditions. They do not understand why the United States does not roll over, accept the abolition of Christmas, close down our churches, and remove the crosses from our cemeteries.

The liberal elite think their superior wisdom, and their control of education and the media, should convince us to become a bunch of pagans. They fantasize we will give up our guns, values, morals, and Constitution. They romanticize we will embrace socialized medicine, tolerate failing schools, and become mindless socialist whimps eager to be euthanized before becoming a burden on society.

… They desire to control others, and they despise the fact Christianity promotes freedom based on personal responsibility. One can’t have Christianity directing people’s lives. The autocrats will direct our lives.

The argument of hurting someone’s feelings or making them feel uncomfortable by celebrating Christmas is one of the most powerful liberal weapons used against Christmas. They put the feelings of the few above the many, and that is not democracy. Their actions are hypocritical, as liberals demand our tolerance all of their abominable behavior.

The politically correct insist we should value everyone’s culture. As Christianity is the majority culture in our country, should it not also be valued? Are we observing an overdose of progressive hypocrisy? Just how long are we going to endure the liberal intolerance of our values?

Nowhere does a “wall of separation of church and state” appear in our Constitution. Most people simply do not know this as they have heard assertions of its existence for so long. We can only hope and pray that in the near future our Supreme Court will enforce our Constitution and cease to reinterpret it as a judicial legislative tool.

In typical liberal fashion, the Christmas Deconstruction Alliance attacks the most vulnerable of our society, our small towns and villages, and our schools. Community and school officials are often terrified or simply unaware of the laws. They cannot afford the time and money to fight the legal challenges. There are also those among them who support the leftist attack on Christianity.

Just what are some of the things opposed by those who would eliminate our Judeo-Christian heritage? For one, we can’t have honesty. If the left’s ideas were honestly stated, the left would become an endangered species.

We can’t have self-reliance, as people are too stupid to take care of themselves and take responsibility for their own actions, especially conservatives.

We can’t have hard work and financial success. Israel and the United States have strong economies that must be damaged or at least economically disabled by the Kyoto Treaty.

We can’t have joy since the liberals and terrorists always are angry about something.

We certainly can’t have giving and charity; that is the job of government. Only government bureaucrats are smart enough to dispense our money. What business does the Salvation Army have of collecting money and giving it to the poor? That won’t get any votes.

We can’t have patriotism either. We might offend our enemies. We also shouldn’t defend ourselves as we might insult some thugs and dictators.

We certainly can’t have cohesive families. Families take care of each other and greatly reduce the need for the government to step in and pretend to take care of people.

We definitely can’t acknowledge we are a God-fearing nation who’s Constitution is based on The Ten Commandments. Why that’s in direct opposition to moral and legal relativism (depravity).

If The Ten Commandments, moral values, prayer, and Christmas are removed from our public schools, we are in grave danger. Public schools would increasingly pretend to educate students while indoctrinating them with more leftist propaganda.

The Ten Commandments have been removed from courthouses and other places where unsuspecting citizens might be exposed to them. Recently, a California school tried to ban The Declaration of Independence from a classroom as The Declaration contained references to God. We certainly can’t have impressionable students exposed to the fact that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” All socialists know that our rights come from governments.

If we allow Christmas to be taken from our public life and our educational system, if we allow our Constitution to be turned against us, if we fail to be a light of liberty unto the World, we will also deny freedom to a desperate World that will slip further into darkness. Just like the War on Terror, the battle for Christmas will be long and difficult.

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight!

Read the original.

Do Elected Officials Make Legislative Decisions in Congress? Think Again!

Why do term limits irk politicians so much? I must admit that I don’t stay up a night thinking about how long politicians stay in office. Logic tells us that the public would be better served the longer a person practices his craft. Should politicians make a career in one position? Wade Hopping, a former Florida Supreme Court justice and sometimes lobbyist, as recounted by Paul Jacob, doesn’t think so.

…[It’s] "The legislative staff," he says.

I hear this a lot from "experts" in the capitols of the states with term limits for their representatives. The problem, it is said, is that with less experience, legislators rely more heavily on staffs.

That sounds bad, doesn't it?

In Arizona, two recent studies each explored the terra incognita of the state's term limited legislature. They came to some dramatically different conclusions, most of which were downplayed in the media. The study by a group called ThinkAZ was so not "The Sky Is Falling" that most coverage consisted of quotes from hysterical politicians arguing against term limits, and not about the study itself; it just wasn't "good enough" copy. The other study had a more consistently negative spin to it, so it got more play:
[W]hile power may have been lost by legislative leaders, it seems to have been ceded to others. Unelected others.
The Morrison study found that the lack of institutional understanding of the legislative process has increased the influence of those people who know where the skeletons are buried: Capitol lobbyists, for example. And permanent staff, especially the partisan staff aligned with legislative leaders. Anecdotally, we have observed partisan staff — people who historically remained on the sidelines — assuming major roles in promoting legislation.

Now, the idea that lobbyists have gained power with term limits is laughable. Oh, you can probably find lobbyists who will advance the claim, when they argue against term limits, but such talk is a ruse. All in all, the shorter the terms served, the more time lobbyists have to spend re-investing in new representatives.

Politicians are hard to buy, actually. It's often said that you can only rent them. But with term limits, lobbyists are limited to the length of the rental agreements. That's why lobbyists are so consistently against term limits.

The idea that their staffs might gain power over legislators, however, sounds more plausible. And yet . . . something seems wrong.

If one is going to rest one's case on "anecdotal" evidence, then I suspect the anti-term limits folk are choosing the wrong anecdotes.

The most striking anecdote showing legislators being "played" by their staffs made national headlines a few weeks ago. You remember the story. Another humungous omnibus bill was pushed through Congress, pushed so quickly after committee that no representative had time to read it. Considering its size, over 3,000 pages, it's a wonder anyone could.

But, after passage, and after the forklifts had delivered the bill to flummoxed reps, then the reading process began. And inside was found the most peculiar provision. It allowed staffers on the House and Senate appropriations committees to examine the tax returns of individual U.S. citizens.

Suddenly, the Hill was abuzz. How did it get there? At first, fingers pointed to Rep. Ernest J. Istook, Jr. of Oklahoma. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist took to calling it "the Istook Amendment." But Istook would have nothing to do with it: "I didn't write it; I didn't approve it; I wasn't even consulted." Quickly, the creepy little provision was removed.

The culprit turned out to be one Richard Efford, a 19-year veteran staffer on the House Appropriations Committee. He had been frustrated in doing his job, inspecting IRS facilities unannounced. The IRS objected to his presence, claiming he might accidentally see a return on somebody's computer screen. So, as a bit of housekeeping, he and his comrades put the provision in. He was surprised that anyone would mind. He couldn't see why such a little thing had to be vetted by his bosses.

It was just a little thing.

Well, the Omnibus Bill itself is made up of a million "little things." These things come from everywhere, including staffers. And who knows how many more little provisions went into the bill without any real consideration by an elected representative? We know that no representative outside of committee read much of the monster before voting it in, and no one representative read it all.

… The legislative staffs at the federal level as well as in the states have far more power than it is polite to talk about. Usually, politicians fear bringing the subject up. They don't want us to realize how much they rely upon their professional staffs to keep cranking out their never-ending batches of half-baked legislation.

They only bring it up when they have to: when a goofy provision just seems too goofy even for Congress. Or when their careers are threatened with term limits.

When congressmen confront term limits, their knee-jerk reaction has often been to protest that the staff will run the place. But the open secret shows how hollow a threat that is: with career politicians, the staff is already running the show.

This is scary. I didn’t elect these people to represent me. Why are they making these decisions? In truth, ALL institutions are actually run by staff as bosses come and go, but should the business of the American people be decided on by the un-elected, the bureaucrats, congressional interns, and staff members that remain in their positions for years?

The unimaginable idea that un-elected staff members can slip pet provisions into legislation is an outrage that needs to be immediately corrected.

The Cat Is Out of the Bag: Now We Know the Reason Why the E.U. Wants Turkey

The Cat Is Out of the Bag: Now We Know the Reason Why the E.U. Wants Turkey
Brussels leaders name a date for final talks on admitting the European Union's first Muslim member.

Advocates of the European Union as a fully fledged superpower have predicted that the addition of Turkey's military would make it a true global player.

The Europeans are anxious to foil what they see as the hegemony of the United States that arose after World War II

Ankara's forces are greater than those of France and Britain combined, with 514,000 men under arms and 380,000 in reserve, plus a robust air force with American fighters.

A NATO official described the forces as "very experienced and well-trained", after years of battles against Kurdish guerillas.

What European npn-Muslim leaders don’t realize is that they will be swept aside in favor of mullahs and sheikhs.

When confronted with the possibility of losing the French throne that was only offered to Catholics, Henry of Navarre a Huguenot, remarked as he converted to Catholicism: “Paris is worth a mass.” One wonders how many of Europe’s elite will conveniently convert (revert) to Islam to hold onto their status and wealth. Cruelly and cynically they are selling out the populations whom they are supposed to protect for the purpose of blocking the United States, a country that, in two World Wars, saved them from tyranny and subjegation. There is no gratitude from salvaged; only spite and resentment.

As for the adding Turkey to the E.U. to thwart the Americans, the E.U. should heed the old maxim: “Cutting off your nose to spite your face,” as bringing in Turkey out of spite is a suicidal act for Europeans.

The Turkish army in command of French nuclear weapons is a sobering thought. It appears that Europeans are so spiteful that they don't care what they unleash on the world as long as it thwarts American power.

Hat tip: JihadWatch

Sensible Comments:

‘"Turkey's military, should it wished, could conceivably march on Europe", he said "Yes but we have France and they are nuclear." My reply was that France will be a Muslim majority country within a generation.

Of course this could only work when the ingredients are right. Turkey in the EU, France and the Netherlands dhimmified/Islamified and America "anti-Zionist" and less than 50 percent of its founding population. Then we could see the vision of Islam in all of its dreadful reality unleashed upon the world.

Now it all makes sense. Assuming the EU idiots are using this logic, do they expect Turkey to be an ally, not a threat? Didn't Qadaffi of Libya specify what their true intentions are in a moment of refreshing honesty, when he said the entire Islamic world views this as a Trojan horse to [interject Islam into ]?

Isn't this what the Roman's did before their civilization went belly-up? Didn't they farm out their dirty work to others (in this case protection in the form of the fox guarding the hen house) who took an "oath of loyalty" to Rome to protect it in exchange for such perks as accelerated citizenship, and participating in Roman economic prosperity?’

“If I was a young islamist I would join the Turkish army now, so that in the 40-50 years it might take me to rise to become a top Turkish General, I could make a grab for Brussels. Such a coup may seem unthinkable now but in 40-50 years time it may not be so hard to achieve in a vastly more islamified and fractured Europe. There are certainly Islamists thinking about this possibility as they boast about such takeovers regularly.