Immigration and Terrorism: Beyond the 9/11 Report

Immigrants are using "our liberal immigration policies to bring us down." Now why didn't I think of that? Seriously, I have been sounding the clarion ad nauseam. Is anyone listening?


OH GOD, you who open all doors, please open all doors for me, open all venues for me, open all avenues for me.
— Mohammed Atta

It seems as if Mohammed Atta got his wish.

Executive Summary
This report covers the immigration histories of 94 terrorists who operated in the United States between the early 1990s and 2004, including six of the September 11th hijackers. Other than the hijackers, almost all of these individuals have been indicted or convicted for their crimes. The report builds on prior work done by 9/11 Commission and the Center for Immigration Studies, providing more information than has been previously been made public.

The findings show widespread terrorist violations of immigration laws. The report highlights the danger of our lax immigration system, not just in terms of who is allowed in, but also how terrorists, once in the country, used weaknesses in the system to remain here. The report makes clear that strict enforcement of immigration law – at American consulates overseas, at ports of entry, and within the United States – must be an integral part of our efforts to prevent future attacks on U.S. soil.

Among the findings:

• Of the 94 foreign-born terrorists who operated in the United States, the study found that about two-thirds (59) committed immigration fraud prior to or in conjunction with taking part in terrorist activity.
• Of the 59 terrorists who violated the law, many committed multiple immigration violations — 79 instances in all. 
• In 47 instances, immigration benefits sought or acquired prior to 9/11 enabled the terrorists to stay in the United States after 9/11 and continue their terrorist activities. In at least two instances, terrorists were still able to acquire immigration benefits after 9/11.
• Temporary visas were a common means of entering; 18 terrorists had student visas and another four had applications approved to study in the United States. At least 17 terrorists used a visitor visa — either tourist (B2) or business (B1). 
• There were 11 instances of passport fraud and 10 instances of visa fraud; in total 34 individuals were charged with making false statements to an immigration official.
• In at least 13 instances, terrorists overstayed their temporary visas.
• In 17 instances, terrorists claimed to lack proper travel documents and applied for asylum, often at a port of entry. 
• Fraud was used not only to gain entry into the United States, but also to remain, or "embed," in the country.
• Seven terrorists were indicted for acquiring or using various forms of fake identification, including driver’s licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and immigration arrival records.
• Once in the United States, 16 of 23 terrorists became legal permanent residents, often by marrying an American. There were at least nine sham marriages. 
• In total, 20 of 21 foreign terrorists became naturalized U.S. citizens. 

Lengthy, but worth the read.

The President and Congress are concerned about being perceived as politically correct. All they do is talk and nothing is being done to correct this dangerous situation. Hold them accountable for not taking appropriate action.

Contact Congress: http//www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Contact the President: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Dhimmi Watch: D.C. Watson: Urge your House Rep. not to sign "Ramadan" Resolution

D. C. Watson regrounds our vigilance at this time when so many other news items are competing for our attention. Thank you, D.C.

Dhimmi Watch: D.C. Watson: Urge your House Rep. not to sign "Ramadan" Resolution: "If you've ever watched a ventriloquist act, it's likely that you eventually came around to realizing that it wasn't really the dummy doing all the talking. It took me a while, but finally, I did.

If you've ever watched a ventriloquist act, it's likely that you eventually came around to realizing that it wasn't really the dummy doing all the talking. It took me a while, but finally, I did.

It appears that now we have a certain group of Muslims -- in particular, the Council on American Islamic Relations -- attempting to put words into the mouths of our elected officials by urging Muslims to contact their House Representatives and push them into signing a House Resolution recognizing the Islamic fast, otherwise known as Ramadan.

Yes, this is the same Council on American Islamic Relations who watched as three of their own became convicted felons for committing Islamic terror-related and fraud-related crimes.

The same Council on American Islamic Relations whose officers have made very clear that their desire is for an Islamic United States government, and an Islamic world.

The same Council on American Islamic Relations who recently had a shameful mishap involving an appearing, then disappearing Islamic headscarf:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/008110.php.

And the same Council on American Islamic Relations who, on their website, was involved in a questionable call for donations shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks. More information about this swerve can be found here:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12470.

Once you read these portions of this proposed "Resolution," you’ll better understand its manipulative nature:

1) "during this time of conflict, in order to demonstrate solidarity with and support for members of the community of Islam in the United States and throughout the world, the House of Representatives recognizes the Islamic faith as one of the great religions of the world;"

(2) "and in observance of and out of respect for the commencement of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal, the House of Representatives acknowledges the onset of Ramadan and expresses its deepest respect to Muslims in the United States and throughout the world on this significant occasion."

With CAIR's record (if it is the voice of the Muslim community in the United States), why should our elected officials whom we, not they, put into office to represent America, not Islam, participate in such a signing?

What would a House Resolution such as this lead to in the future?


Imagine: members of this organization and others like it carrying around with them copies of a document, signed by the members of the American government, stating that Islam is one of the world's great religions, which has the deepest respect of the United States House of Representatives. An innocuous pro forma declaration? Maybe. But could it be thrown up to government officials and American law enforcement whenever a critic of Islam stands up and exercises what is (for now) his or her right to free speech, or when law enforcement officers arrest another Muslim? Could it be used to further "anti-Muslim hate crime" bills? Could it be an instrument in filing lawsuits against Americans who confront organizations and individuals that aggressively promote Islam? Could it be used to further push the American government to recognize Islamic holidays and declare them national holidays? Could this be just the beginning of more "resolutions" to further an agenda of implementing Islam in the West? Who knows?

What is regrettable about this entire situation is that some Americans, out of the goodness of their hearts, are still willing to give Islam in America the benefit of the doubt. After seeing Islamic terror all over the world, which has occurred in various ways since the inception of Islam some 1400 years ago, some of us are still willing to aim for pluralism. Pluralism isn't a bad thing. Hell, Americans are one giant plurality, but it won't work with intolerant people who believe that their way is the only acceptable way. Qur'an 48.29: "Muhammad is God's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another."

Yes, there are decent Muslims in the world who are intelligent enough to understand that the Qur'an is anything but moderate.

Unfortunately, even in the U.S., there is far more than a small minority of Islamists who danced in the streets on 9/11, who have set American flags ablaze in the vacant side streets of New York (under police protection of course), and who constantly scrutinize American law enforcement as it pertains to the ongoing arrests of Muslim criminals in America.

These people would sooner see our throats sliced as talk to us. They wish for Islamic law in America, and are here with conquest, not coexistence, in mind.

As the masses become more aware of what lives among us, everyone -- conservatives and liberals -- must understand that the right to free speech that we so deeply cherish, along with all of the other freedoms that are afforded to us in this country, would be eliminated if Islamists ever had their way.

Disagree with our politicians all you want, but please remember this: We may not always get along or agree on our nation's issues, but we are all Americans. We live in the greatest nation on earth. If anyone doesn't believe that, let them travel to Riyadh or Tehran and try to launch a mass protest or demonstration like those are free to launch here. Go ahead, see what happens.

In early 2004, an American named Nicholas Berg was bound, outnumbered, very alive, and very awake when Muslim cavemen sawed off his head. Shortly after, CAIR initiated a petition entitled "Not in the name of Islam," which was to be signed by Muslims who didn’t want their religious brothers killing in the name of their religion. To date, even with two to three million Muslims in America (CAIR's count of 6 to 7 million is vastly inflated), the number of those who've signed is considerably less than what peaceful human beings would expect:

Current Petition Progress:
6 9 0 , 0 4 7

(Individuals and Members of Signatory Organizations)

Now that's a tiny minority.

Meanwhile, with regard to this "Ramadan resolution": contact your Representative and ask him or her what CAIR (and Islam in general) have contributed to the land of the free and the home of the brave that would make a resolution of this type appropriate or justified.

Winning Wars: Applying Five Lesson from Past Conflicts to the "Battle" of Iraq

Lesson One: Winning wars is more than winning battles. This is not to suggest that we are on the losing end of the fight in Iraq-far from it. As previously mentioned, strategic trends in the region and in Iraq itself are hopeful. But to win the war that Operation Iraqi Freedom has become, and probably to win future wars as well, planners and commanders have to learn to think beyond the campaign level to war winning-to the actual mechanics of achieving strategic objectives-which are almost always stated in political, not military, terms.

Historically, winning wars is more complicated than one campaign.
Insurgencies present a particular challenge to war winning for a number of reasons. They are not neat-the defeat of the enemy's conventional forces does not tie everything up in a bow. The U.S. experience has been that successful counterinsurgency wars are much more complex, with more immediate political overtones: supporting and reforming the local government where necessary, rebuilding security forces and, at the same time, fighting inconclusive tactical battles until reforming and rebuilding can take hold.

Lesson Two: The true revolution in military affairs is the social revolution of the modern information age. Technology is only a supporting actor. The second lesson to emerge thus far from the Iraq war is that civil populations can no longer be overlooked or disregarded in war strategy. Civil uprisings against corrupt governments or invading armies are an old story in war, but modern conditions empower populations to play a more central role in warfare for a number of reasons.

Lesson Three: Counterinsurgencies are long wars. The direction in Defense Department thinking over the past decade has been generally oriented toward high-tech "splendid little wars" of rapid movement, precision strike and limited duration. American superiority in weaponry and in highly trained soldiers has been convincingly demonstrated in the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. Potential opponents, many of whom maintain sizable conventional forces for reasons of local or regional security, should have no illusions about their ability to stand chest to chest against U.S. power, and can only confront American military forces in one of two ways, neither of which has easy solutions.

Lesson Four: The locals have to win their own war. Nothing is so important in counterinsurgency as to understand that, eventually, local forces have to beat their own insurgents.

Lesson Five: Army education is more, not less, important as the 21st century advances.

Read the whole article.

Iraq - An American Edifice Built In A 'Culture of Shame'

"From Zarqawi to the man on the street, Sunni Arabs fear Shiite emancipation."

Is the United States spinning its wheels in Iraq? Will the Iraqi Defense Forces ever be read to defend Iraq against...themselves? For Muslim on Muslim war is a centuries-old internecine war that has political, religious, and cultural elements. The presence of America in the Middle East won't change the sad fact that factions have fought among themselves to gain supremacy in the Muslim world based on Arab cultural imperialism. The culture is spread by the sword and maintained through shame.

There is a cliché that distinguishes between cultures of shame and cultures of guilt, and by that crude distinction, it has always been said that the Arab world is a "shame culture." But in truth there is precious little shame in Arab life about the role of the Arabs in the great struggle for and within Iraq. What is one to make of the Damascus-based Union of Arab Writers that has refused to grant membership in its ranks to Iraqi authors? The pretext that Iraqi writers can't be "accredited" because their country is under American occupation is as good an illustration as it gets of the sordid condition of Arab culture. For more than three decades, Iraq's life was sheer and limitless terror, and the Union of Arab Writers never uttered a word. Through these terrible decades, Iraqis suffered alone, and still their poetry and literature adorn Arabic letters. They need no acknowledgment of their pain, or of their genius, from a literary union based in a city in the grip of a deadening autocracy.

A culture of shame would surely see into the shame of an Arab official class with no tradition of accountability granting itself the right to hack away at Iraq's constitution, dismissing it as the handiwork of the American regency. Unreason, an indifference to the most basic of facts, and a spirit of belligerence have settled upon the Arab world. Those who, in Arab lands beyond Iraq, have taken to describing the Iraqi constitution as an "American-Iranian constitution," give voice to a debilitating incoherence. At the heart of this incoherence lies an adamant determination to deny the Shiites of Iraq a claim to their rightful place in their country's political order.

What will Americans and their Iraqi partners achieve in Iraq?

It was the luck of the imperial draw that the American project in Iraq came to the rescue of the Shiites--and of the Kurds. We may not fully appreciate the historical change we unleashed on the Arab world, but we have given liberty to the stepchildren of the Arab world. We have overturned an edifice of material and moral power that dates back centuries. The Arabs railing against U.S. imperialism and arrogance in Iraq will never let us in on the real sources of their resentments. In the way of "modern" men and women with some familiarity with the doctrines of political correctness, they can't tell us that they are aggrieved that we have given a measure of self-worth to the seminarians of Najaf and the highlanders of Kurdistan. But that is precisely what gnaws at them.

------

An edifice of Arab nationalism built by strange bedfellows--the Sunni political and bureaucratic elites, and the Christian Arab pundits who abetted them in the idle hope that they would be spared the wrath of the street and of the mob--was overturned in Iraq. And America, at times ambivalent about its mission, brought along with its military gear a suspicion of the Shiites, a belief that the Iraqi Shiites were an extension of Iran, a community destined to build a sister-republic of the Iranian theocracy. Washington has its cadre of Arabists reared on Arab nationalist historiography. This camp had a seat at the table, but the very scale of what was at play in Iraq, and the redemptionism at the heart of George Bush's ideology, dwarfed them.

For the Arab enemies of this project of rescue, this new war in Iraq was a replay of an old drama: the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258. In the received history, the great city of learning, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, had fallen to savages, and an age of greatness had drawn to a close. In the legend of that tale, the Mongols sacked the metropolis, put its people to the sword, dumped the books of its libraries in the Tigris. That river, chroniclers insist, flowed, alternately, with the blood of the victims and the ink of the books. It is a tale of betrayal, the selective history maintains. A minister of the caliph, a Shiite by the name of Ibn Alqami, opened the gates of Baghdad to the Mongols. History never rests here, and telescopes easily: In his call for a new holy war against the Shiites, Zarqawi dredges up that history, dismisses the Shiite-led government as "the government of Ibn Alqami's descendants." Zarqawi knows the power of this symbolism, and its dark appeal to Sunni Arabs within Iraq.

Zarqawi's jihadists have sown ruin in Iraq, but they are strangers to that country, and they have needed the harbor given them in the Sunni triangle and the indulgence of the old Baathists. For the diehards, Iraq is now a "stolen country" delivered into the hands of subject communities unfit to rule. Though a decided minority, the Sunni Arabs have a majoritarian mindset and a conviction that political dominion is their birthright. Instead of encouraging a break with the old Manichaean ideologies, the Arab world beyond Iraq feeds this deep-seated sense of historical entitlement. No one is under any illusions as to what the Sunni Arabs would have done had oil been located in their provinces. They would have disowned both north and south and opted for a smaller world of their own and defended it with the sword. But this was not to be, and their war is the panic of a community that fears that it could be left with a realm of "gravel and sand."

Read the rest.

They Won! They Took Back the Memorial!

We rejoice along with all those who made this victory possible. Here is the victory announcement:

We are very pleased to announce that Governor Pataki has announced the removal of the International Freedom Center (IFC) from Ground Zero. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092801849.html for details.

Every since June 8, 2005 when Debra Bulingame's op-ed, The Great Ground Zero Heist, appeared in the Wall Street Journal, we have fought together for the preservation of the dignity of Ground Zero. With your help, we have achieved a major victory toward that goal. We will continue to monitor the plans for Ground Zero to ensure that a fitting and proper memorial is built; one that is respectful of the victims murdered that day, their families, the first responders, and the American people.A press release on the removal of the IFC from the 15 family member groups is expected in the next 24 hours and we will post it @ http://www.takebackthememorial.org/ as soon as it becomes available.

Thank you again for your support, prayers, and dedication. We simply could not have done this without you.

Sincerely,

Robert D. ShurbetFounder/Web MasterTakeBackTheMemorial.org

This is a sweet victory, won by activated citizens intending to right the wrong. It is a victory worthy of the fullest of celebrations, all on its own. We are very proud to have supported this cause.

It is also more. It shows how we, common, ordinary Americans, can take back our country. We will not let wrongs stand unrighted if we take proaction like Debra Burlingame and all those in Take Back the Memorial as well as their supporters.

THIS LESSON SHOULD NOT BE LOST ON ANYONE. Do you hear that in Washington, DC?

Food for Thought

The race hustlers and hate-mongers are at it again, making political hay and exploiting for personal gain the desperate situation of now poverty-stricken whites and blacks affected by the recent hurricanes along the American Gulf Coast.

Instead of pulling together, officials and leaders of all levels are playing the blame game. The worst offenders are hostile and virulent spokesmen who are charging that white racism in America is responsible for the tragedy in New Orleans and for everything else that is happening in America and abroad.

Read Lawrence Auster'sanalysis of the sorry behavior of certain spokesmen.

Commander in Chief Pilot

Last night, we called on TIVO to run the pilot of the new series "Commander in Chief," and we did so with the sense that we would probably bail out quickly. We did not. We watched to the end and high-fived as the credits rolled. Were we ever surprised.

We had expected Hollywood Leftism, like "West Wing," with Martin "Sheehan." The Right had been bellyaching that this program was paving the way by softening up the nation for Hilary Clinton to become the first female American president. In fact, Hilary's name was mentioned about half a dozen times, in a somewhat uncomplimentary manner, in the spirit of what not to do with menus and other "feminine" tasks as First Lady. These were said to the new president's husband who now became "first lady."

The character of the president was untethered to either the Democrat or Republican Parties. She was an independent and former chancellor of a university in Virginia. According to the story line, she had been selected because she was a woman and had been intended to enhance the electability of the president. As the president declined because of brain hemorrhage, he, in a lucid moment, told her that he wanted her to resign, as did his heir apparent, the Speaker of the House, and staff members.

She toyed with the idea of resigning, long enough to decide not to, to the dismay of the Speaker of the House who had expected to step into the presidency.

Drawing on strength of character and apparently clearly held principles, she took the oath and began forming her presidency. She kept as many of the staff and cabinet as would stay loyal to her, and she began a very long and clearly very painful and endless war with the Speaker of the House, who clearly planned to subvert and sabotage her in every way, while looking lily white to her face.

One of the early vignettes involved her dealing with a situation in Muslim Nigeria. A woman proclaimed to be an adultress was to be buried to her shoulders and stoned to death. Previous "negotiations" by the previous administration had gotten nowhere, and the woman's execution drew nigh. The new president mobilized the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military to prepare for a "NEO," a non-combatant evacuation of this woman from Nigeria, with all necessary military assets offshore. The ambassador from Nigeria was brought before the President and a room full of military brass and very high tech equipment to be told that the evacuation would happen shortly. The president told the ambassador that the USA would not stand for the killing of this woman just because she had sex. The Chairman, JCS told the ambassador not to worry because the USA has done this many times, so there should be minimum loss of life, but not minimum loss of Nigerian military assets. The ambassador blanched, gathered himself, and left, indicating that he would talk shortly with the president of Nigeria. Soon the woman and her child were turned over to US military on ground in Nigeria.

This was a fine moment and a good piece of drama. The president was clear eyed, clear headed, and clear principled. She operated decisively and expeditiously. We immediately thought of Margaret Thatcher.

The sleeze came through her principle adversary, the Speaker of the House, played well by Donald Sutherland, whom most people have forgotten was a big comrade of Hanoi Jane. He did not ooze sleeziness of the Right. If anything, it was sleeziness of the Left, but this orientation was not prominent. What was overwhelming was his own addiction to power. He played the quintessential Washington super-power politician who operated in a pure culture of American Pragmatism philosophy, run by pure "id."

Geena Davis played the new female president. Nothing she did reminded us in any way of Hilary Clinton, except that her every demeanor and statement were so totally unlike any aspect of that senator. Geena Davis played a president we should have and do not, nor have had--and if we have the misfortune to "get" Hilary, we will not have.

Will this program hold up, or will it degenerate? This first episode reminds me of the very first James Bond film, with a clear headed, clear principled, and effective James Bond taking on Dr. No and SPECTRE, and not the degenerated Bond films that followed. We will watch next week and a few beside, and hope that we are seeing someone in the most powerful position in the world who is worthy of admiration. The potential is there, and very high potential for some great drama and characterization.

How great it could be to have someone in high office portrayed in such a way that we can admire her.

Beware - The U.N. Wants Your Internet

That bastion of incompetence, corruption, and immorality, is making noises about grabbing and controlling the internet.

So, in what ways could we expect the newly transferred Internet to become "useful" to the "world body"?

• A tax on every citizen, everywhere, everyday. Just as telephone bills have become monthly tax statements with "subscriber line charges," "franchise fees," "state surcharges," "911 taxes" and "universal service fund surcharges," think what a really astute group of Harvard-trained U.N. bureaucrats could do with this bonanza. "E-mail service fee," "Web access fee," "intra and inter-country border fees," "chat fees," "message posting fees," "delayed electron fees" and we've barely scratched the surface of this mad cash cow.
•
• World commerce tax. Don't forget the business side of things. Want a website? Then you'll pay the U.N.'s fees – both over and under the table. Want a Web address? It's for sale if you know the right person. Are you selling anything? Then you need a tax stamp and have to pay a commerce service fee (sales tax) to the tribe currently in power.
•
• Free speech? Not anymore. Freedom of speech is granted only to those individuals who have registered with the appropriate U.N. bureaucracy – and paid the appropriate fee. A list of verboten discussion topics, for which your license can be suspended or revoked, is included with your registration CD. Remember, free speech under the U.N. is a privilege, not a right.
•
• On the national governance side, would you like to have your dictatorship freed from the pesky criticism of human-rights groups? For a fee, your name can be added to the U.N. Net Nanny hardwired into every new computer server system sold in the world. Watch criticism disappear before your very eyes!

Read the details.

Jihad's Fellow Travelers

In any conflict, it is essential to clearly identify the enemy and to strip away all issues that cloud and obfuscate the goals and objectives of the conflict. We Westerners, specifically we non-Muslim Americans, have allowed ourselves to be confused and led in many directions by our elite. It is time that we and they focus on the true enemy. Hint: The enemy is not terrorism.

Members of the West European and North American elite class approach the war on terrorism in a schizophrenic manner. Their world view rejects any possibility that religious faith can be a prime motivating factor in human affairs. Having reduced religion, literature and art to “narratives” and “metaphors” which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class treats the jihadist mindset as a pathology that should be treated by treating causes external to Islam itself.

The result is a plethora of proposed “cures” that are as likely to succeed in making us safe from terrorism as snake oil is likely to cure leukemia. Abroad, we are told, we need to address political and economic grievances of the impoverished masses, we need to spread democracy and free markets in the Muslim world, we need to invest more in public diplomacy. At home we need more tolerance, greater inclusiveness, less profiling, and a more determined outreach to the minorities that feel marginalized and threatened by the war on terror. The failure of such “cures” leads to ever more pathological self-examination and morbid self doubt. If the spread of jihad is not due to the ideology of jihad itself, which it cannot be, then it must be our own fault.

Already with the Rushdie affair 17 years ago an ominous pattern was set. It has been replicated on both sides of the Atlantic ever since. It has three key ingredients:

1. The Muslim diaspora in the Western world, while formally denouncing “terrorism,” will accept and condone religious justification for acts that effectively challenge the monopoly on violence of the non-Muslim host-state.

2. The Muslim diaspora will use a highly developed infrastructure of organized religion in the host-state—a network of mosques, Islamic centers and Muslim organizations—and deploy it either as a tool of direct political pressure in support of terrorist goals (e.g., British Muslims vis-à-vis Rushdie), or else as a means of deception and manipulation in order to diminish the ability of the host-society to defend itself (e.g., CAIR vis-à-vis post-9-11 America).

3. The non-Muslim establishment—public figures, politicians, journalists, academic analysts—will seek to appease the Muslim diaspora, or else it will shy away from confronting the problem of the immigrants’ attitudes and impact by pretending that it does not exist.

Read the rest.

They Were Only Following Orders...

EDDAH, 23 September 2005 — The Saudi High Commission for Relief was granted immunity yesterday from litigation in three lawsuits stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
US District Judge Richard Casey found that Interior Minister Prince Naif and Riyadh Governor Prince Salman, president of the High Commission, were not personally liable since they were acting as agents of the Saudi government.

The lawsuits had made baseless charges that the High Commission, which had played a big role in the reconstruction of Bosnia, and the princes had sponsored terror with Saudi funds under their direction.

It appears that the Saudis got away with it AGAIN. Although I voted for Bush, I now wonder about his troubling connections with the House of Saud.

It's time we develop and implement a energy source that will allow us to disconnect once and for all from this malignancy that holds us in energy thrall.

"Don't Profile Based on Religion," Say Some Muslims. Well, Guess What, That's What They Do.

It burns me up to hear the self-proclaimed "Muslim civil rights group" CAIR demand that profiling for terrorists shouldn't be on the basis of religion. As there are no other groups bombing and murdering in the name of religion other than Muslims, it is foolish to do otherwise. But CAIR's premise that religious profiling is out-of-bounds is hypocrisy for religious profiling is one of Islam's most heinous historical and continuous practices.

The Muslim world is divided into two groups: believers, Dar al-Islam and the rest, Dar al-Harb. The goal of Islam is to convince the rest to convert to Islam or, at least, to submit to Muslim overlordship and to pay the jizya, the tax non-Muslims pay. I might add that during certain periods of history, non-Muslims were not permitted to convert because the tax was necessary to support the empire!

Who is CAIR to make such demands? CAIR has been linked to terrorism and other anti-social behaviors. How can Muslims make such a demand as they are programmed to automatically profile for who and what is Muslim or not Muslim.

If Islam is inimical to non-Muslims, why should elected American officials such as the New Jersey governor listen to and follow the lead of CAIR? The end result will be our subjugation and perpetual religious profiling in favor of Muslims.

He Fled Iran of Avoid the Draft. Yeah, Right!

The crime two-year crime spree of the 'FedEx Bandit' came to an end in San Diego as the 40-year old was arrested September 26, 2005, as he attempted to cross the Mexican border at San Ysidro with a counterfeit ID car. He was using the name of a dead U.S. resident, a baby that died shortly after birth, but investigation determined that he is really Farhad Farhbaksh, an Iranian nation who first entered the U.S. on a student visa in 1978.

The bank robbery spree began in September 2003 and included robberies in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, with more than 30 of the crimes occurring in San Diego County, said San Diego police Lt. Mike Angus.

"He was dubbed the 'FedEx bandit' because in several of the robberies he walked in there with an envelope, a FedEx envelope, that he used as a prop and to carry the money out at times," Angus said.

It is an outrage that this man could get away with committing forty-three bank robberies in the San Diego area. "Police suspect that he traveled back and forth to Mexico," I might add, at will.
Hattip: JihadWatch

The Voice of the Caliphate

For months and years, dear Readers, we have warned about militant Islam's goal to re-instate the Caliphate that ended in Turkey in 1924. Headed by a Caliph, the Caliphate become an enormous empire, engulfing civilizations and cultures and was a threat to Europe on various occasions.

When Iran's Ahmadinejad states that "Our vision for world order is based on a new concept of God-worshiping, justice and addressing the sinful nature; our vision was met with enthusiasm at the United Nations," he was referring to the old vision of the Caliphate, the period of history when Muslims threatened world freedom and peace, much as they are doing today.

Apparently some Muslims feel confident that the Caliphate is soon returning for there is a newscast title the Voice of the Caliphate. An Internet video newscast "purporting to be a production of al Qaeda and featuring an anchorman, holding a Koran in one hand and a rile affixed to a tripod pointed at the camera, wore a black ski mask and an ammunition belt" is scheduled to appear once a week.

The origins of the broadcast could not be immediately verified. If the program was indeed an al Qaeda production, it would mark a change in how the group uses the Internet to spread its messages and propaganda. Direct dissemination would avoid editing or censorship by television networks, many of which usually air only excerpts of the group's statements and avoid showing gruesome images of killings.

hattip:Outside the Beltway.

The Caliphate came to an end in 1924 only to lie dormant as Muslims are a cultural body that adhere to each other no matter where they live. Their fellowship is called the Ummah. It differs from the Christian concept of a spiritual community in that Islam is a complete system that includes: religion, commerce, family law, politics, crime and punishment, personal conduct, and has a myriad of rituals that govern every human thought and action.

Al Qaeda, headed by Usama bin Laden, is only small group within a larger movement. As a reminder: their goal is to create a world Islamic system in which Muslims are supreme and the rest of us are subjugated as slaves, dhimmis, those that are able to have their own cultures and religions and who pay a tax called the jizya to support Islam. Individuals that thwart or fight against islam through word or deed are to be killed.

To sum it up: In the Caliphate Muslims would become the overlords, imposing Islamic law, Shariah on the rest of us as they have to many other cultures and civilizations throughout their 1350 year history on this earth. Thus, we the Voice of the Caliphate speaks, we should pay attention and take appropriate action.

We Sounded the Alarm Many Months Ago

Rebecca Hagelin over at Townhall is "Sounding the Alarm," the West is under attack by Islamism. Well, readers on this and other sites have recognized the danger for quite some time. One wonders why those in the top echelons of government still insist upon calling our struggle a "War on Terror" and suck up to groups such as Hezbollah, or why they persist on believing that Muslims can coexist with non-Muslims in the West. We wonder why the United States Congressshould care more maintaining the culture of a few million, many of whom are immigrants, than they do of their citizens.

The Muslim world now has the the bit in its teeth and is threatening to run over us. According to Muslim fighters, Jihad is not a crime,, as anything done to further the goals of Islam is permissible. From the mouth of Ahmadinejad:"Our vision for world order is based on a new concept of God-worshiping, justice and addressing the sinful human nature; our vision was met with enthusiasm at the United Nations." So much for the United Nations.

He couldn't be clearer. The alarm bell is sounding wildly. Don't be confused by the rhetoric of the anti-war crowd or even by appeasers in our own government and State Department. The danger is real and unfortunately we must make our own preparations.

The New Orleans and Louisiana Question

Louisiana politicos, national and state, want 1/4 trillion dollars just GIVEN to them to "rebuild" the state, they say. Should we, the taxpayers, permit this?

That there is devastation, there can be no question. The ordinary response to damage is to rebuild, incorporating lessons learned. However, the politicos from down there are asking for roads (they never spent the money they voted for them years ago), all sorts of new businesses which were never in place before Hurricane Katrina, completely unrelated opportunistic scam-like projects, and the unquestioning freedom to use this money from the U. S. Treasury in any way they want.

Louisiana and New Orleans are cloacas of corruption, and everybody knows it. They have done very little right and corruption-free over their existence. Why would they change now? Would not "strings-free" money be just another get-rich-scheme for the already corrupt? Never forget that Louisiana and New Orleans proclaim themselves as "poor," despite vast oil and gas reserves, refineries, and national and international commerce of staggering wealth. Wny are Louisiana and New Orleans poor? The answer is obvious.

Take New Orleans. Parts of the city have been under 20 feet of water since the levee breaches and "overspills." Other parts have been under 3 feet of water. What do these numbers reflect? First, New Orleans is an average of seven feet BELOW SEA LEVEL, and it continues to sink. New Orleans is a giant swimming pool, with a deep end. That is for starters.

New Orleans is a bums' paradise, with a sea of people living on the dole without a shred of personal responsibility. It, like Louisiana, is a monument to the leftism of the Democrat Party.

Rebuild a bowl below sea level and refill it with bums? Not on my dollar, thank you.

Politicos rush to the cameras and microphones to proclaim that New Orleans MUST BE REBUILT. To hear them speak, you would think this is the 11th Commandment, coming directly from the Burning Bush. Tell me, please: why must New Orleans be rebuilt? Why recommit all the same mistakes? Is this smart? Rebuilding in any respect must be questioned and requestioned, in florid detail.

I have been to New Orleans, just as many others have been, and on a number of occasions. To me, New Orleans is a despoiled sot pot of stinks and low life humanity, with a totally overrated French Quarter, a few good restaurants which could function quite well elsewhere, and the stench of stale whiskey, stale people, stale tobacco, and filthy wash water settled like a chronic fog over Bourbon Street. What seemed beautiful were the old homes and pockets of the city far away from the "main attractions." Other than these plantations, the rest of the city might well benefit from being razed, overfilled with dredge spoils to raise the level ABOVE sea level, and then receive construction selectively .

The question of whether the U. S. government, using our taxpayer funds, should rebuild the state and city deserves the answer of "NO!" Should New Orleans be rebuilt as well as other parts of the state? The answer is: If the free market deems this to be a good investment.

Giving money to the state and city asks for the waste and corruption to continue. Government bonds and debts that citizens of the city and state carry is one aspect of the answer. The rest involves capitalism and private charities. These take the burden off the coerced taxpayer.

Furthermore, market factors will regard the state and city as an investment, for making money, hopefully lots of money. With this rising tide, all boats will rise as well. This is the moral, thus the practical thing to do.

And, if sleezy Bourbon Street and the "projects," as well as scads of other aspects of New Orleans do not get rebuilt, the market would have finished the job the waters of Lake Pontchartrain started. Instead of a bowl, New Orleans could become, over the years, a real gem.

Any "grants" to anyone down there by the government simply indentures the rest of us citizens to something suboptimal at best, and probably a lot worse. That would be immoral, thus totally impractical.

No one wants humans and animals to suffer, and those needs have been met and are being met beautifully, and met best by the private organizations as well as the faith-based charities. Let's not let the government muck it all up.

A Good Casualty

Much good will come from these natural disasters of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and any that may follow this season. All of this good will come because Americans make good happen. Americans will take the flotsam and jetsam produced by the storms and consider the debris and damage to be a combination of raw materials and opportunities. Left alone by governments big and small, capitalism will rise to the occasion as it always does. While the death, disease, and damage to humans cannot be undone, it will not endure. This is not Europe, after all, and it certainly is not Islamia where nothing would ever get done until Westerners have been brought in to do it.

One very good thing could come from these storms. That would be the beginning of the end of the so-called environmental movement.

This movement was born in the 1950s and grew to montrosity in the 1960s. Since then, it has been used to hobble, shackled, and destroy capitalism wherever it can. The progeny of the 1960s moved into universities and then into politics and other areas of power and influence. Listening to Democrats these days means listening to enviro-communism, among other socialist excrescences.

We have no new refineries, no new nuclear power plants, and no drilling for oil in the most promising locations. We have no utilization of vast shale oil deposits in our own country which can free us from any foreign oil dependencies. Enviro-communists have guaranteed our dependence on foreign oil now and for the future, if we continue to let them have their way.

We are told the worst of lies, that it is capitalism or the environment, never both. The ignorati among us believe this just as they believe the propaganda about Islam.

No one in his or her right mind is opposed to contextual preservation of the environment. No one in his right mind wants to soil his own nest. And, industry has shown an amazing ability to mix capitalism and environment optimally for both, and that is what we need now. It can be and usually is a harmonious mix. Thus, we need as completely unfettered capitalism as is possible, freed from governmental control, as directed by the so-called environmental Left, so that industry can do the best job possible for the least costs.

If we had to choose between pristine natural surroundings or dirty smoke stacks, the latter would always be preferable, if you want health and prosperity. However, this is never a choice in fact; environmentalists want us to believe it is one or the other.Like the Muslims who want to return the world to the 7th century, these so-called environmentalists want to return the earth to a fantasied pre-industrial state of nature. There all would live as Rousseau wrote, in pastoral splendor, close to nature, with animated cartoon like perfection everywhere.

What these environmentalists want has never existed. Pre-industrial days were horrible, diseased, unhygienic, and miserable times, not like some story book world. And benign desire for natural beauty is not what motivates most of these people.

The motivation of the environmentalists, excluding some of course, resembles those who worship Islam. Like Muslims, enviromentalists really want to destroy what we have, to take us to some equivalent of a 7th century Dark Age as when Islam began. Environmentalists see themselves as our bosses, of course, just as the Muslims see Muslims in charge of the earth when nirvana arrives. Thus, the term "enviro-communism" seems much more accurate than "environmentalism." Given the lies environmentalists tell, such as that global warming nonsense, they cannot be entrusted with the power they have, and we must strip it from them.

Just as life is neither accident-free nor mistake-free, we must accept flexibility while progressing. If oil spills, the bigger question becomes, what to learn from the event to prevent further occurrences, not to leave the matter at the level of blame. Drill off California and Florida, but do it as carefully as present levels of knowledge permit, and do not demand the perfection which cannot be delivered. When more is known, apply it right away.

Get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency and cut taxes as a result. We do not need nannies, particularly congenitally incompetent nannies which government spawns.

Build lots of nuclear power plants, but not over earthquake faults. Build geothermal, wind, and solar energy gatherers. Work to get everyone off the grid. And, get governments out of the way so that capitalism can develop alternative energy sources, so that we can phase out petroleum dependency in time. For the immediate future, drill in ANWR, in wetlands, and wherever a drilling effort can expect a payoff.

The question is how to develop the energy resources we need now and for the future. The answer is enviro-capitalism. This is the real environmentalism, not Leftist pap. What needs rescuing is not the environment, but the correct knowledge and appreciation of the true nature of capitalism, so that Americans cease spouting pre-programmed slogans against capitalism while thinking they are speaking facts.

House

Thank heavens, the fall television season has begun. Yes, I like television, and I found a lot to like last season. This season looks as promising. Also, it is wearying to write about something as dreary as Islam and all related to it continuously--to put it in perspective, if these Muslims did not get into our faces, we would never, ever notice them, give them the time of day, or care one way or the other about anything Islamic at any time whatsoever. Life has so much of interest, and nothing Islamic falls into that classification.

One of my favorite programs is "House." House himself is my favorite character, and he is played masterfully by Hugh Laurie. To my astonishment, I just learned that Mr. Laurie is not only English, but he is a modern blue blood, given his growing up and education.

As a physician, I have to hold my nose about the behaviors of his "house staff," a medical pun, of course. I mean his junior colleagues who are either in post residency fellowship or early professional staffdom. For example, these three doctors exist apparently without benefit of supportive staff, including nurses, laboratory and radiological technicians, and all the others the rest of us depend upon. They do MRIs, cardiac catheterizations, all laboratory chemistry procedures, and even direct neurosurgeons, cardiac surgeons, and everyone else presumably. This aspect of the program is frankly hokey. These juniors seem to work 36 hour days, 10 days a week, and 10 weeks every month, without needing another soul.

In reality, those other souls, the technicians, nurses, and other medical support personnel know much more about doing all radiological, laboratory, and similar procedures than residents, fellows, and even senior staff physician specialists. Also, NO surgeon I ever met would ever stand for some internal medicine "puke" telling him or her how to do their jobs.

However, I know that these renaissance juniors of House exist to make House come to life.

My biggest complaint comes from how they formulate differential diagnoses. Whoever does the writing bypasses the cognitive chain of evidence in favor of shotgunning a differential. The three juniors throw up possible diagnoses and indicated procedures as if they had computers doing random sorts of diagnoses and procedures, by-passing clues and the tiniest scraps of evidence which lead them to posit possibilities.

By now, it may be obvious that I am a physician. Although no longer actively practicing, I started out in a damned good, and new, medical school in the 1960s and met a few really sharp diagnosticians, like House, but with very different personalities. Like House, they were all egocentric as well as eccentric. None suffered fools lightly. We referred to being in their presence in any capacity as "gathering pearls." Presumably they were casting pearls before us swine.

House's persona has been battered through life, clearly. These batterings have given him strength and fragility as well as eccentricity. So it was with all those other diagnostician greats in whose umbra I basked.

Yet, with House, there is no compromise with the most important quality of all: rationality. Getting it right, for the patient, is the most important thing of all to House. Who gets wounded or slighted in the process is at best secondary.

Of course, it is nice to give group hugs, but as the actor Hugh Laurie puts it, most of us would rather have someone who is not nice but right over some warm fuzzy who is wrong. It is life and death on the line.

In this sense, House joins the previous season or so and this season in a clatch of programs in which reason reigns. Excluding the alien invasion stuff which has yet to prove itself, look at Bones and all the CSIs and their new spinoffs. Logic and reason, the stuff of rationality, dominate--with all the fluff as secondary. House follows suit.

I will hazard a speculation. We have lived since the 1960s with cultural corruption, with reason derogated, and sitcoms as well as endless made-for-television movies and dramas mired in the goo of rampant emotionality and unreason. The art coming from contemporary television is telling us that change is underway. We are on the road to the reassertion of reason and its offspring. House and the other pro-reason programs, however flawed, are the harbingers.

Take heart.

New Material on 6th Column Against Jihad

Our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, has a number of new articles, and this is just for September 2005. See also those for August 2005.

Publisher Says "Technical Error" Led to Omission of Part of Book Critical of Islam"

R..ight! That's what they always say. Throughout the centuries those that say anything critical of Islam, especially those that dare to put anything in print pay a high price for their audacity.

In recent years several authors, journalists, and others have been so targeted. The author Salmon Rushdie was targeted for writing "The Satanic Verses." At one time there was a $5 million bounty on his head. He is still under a death sentence for his writing as for the fact of his apostasy.

A fatwa of death has also been issued for Somali-born Dutch Parliament member Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali collaborated with Dutch filmmaker Theo VanGogh who whose throat was cut in street as reprisal for creating the film "Submission" that portrays the plight of women living as Muslims anywhere in the world.

A Finnish translation of her controversial book has a page missing, 'in which the writer sharply criticizes the founder of Islam - the Prophet of Mohammad."

The book is a collection of essays and interviews. The missing passage is from an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, published on December 25th, 2003. The interview was part of the newspaper’s series on the Ten Commandments.
      Hirsi Ali said that the Finnish publisher of the book, Otava Publishers, had asked for permission to omit the passage, because it might be found to be offensive by Muslims.
      However, she did not give permission for any such omission.

Why did the cut occur? It's a mystery states the head of publishing at Octava's non-fiction department. However, the missing page generated a lot of controversy.

He says that the passage in question, and some others, were discussed intensely both at Otava and at other publishers around the world.
      "We deliberately took the line that we would publish all articles that belong to the book as they were."
      Norkola adds that he expects that erratum slips with the missing passage would be added to the copies of the book that have already been printed.

Also of note: "For safety reasons Otava omitted the name of the Finnish translator from the book. Translators' names have been left out of other versions as well. This is telling. Throughout the ages, anyone involved with books critical of Islam is put in mortal danger.

Read the rest.

Pallywood

You've heard of Hollywood, the film industry in the United States, and "Bollywood," the film industry in India, let me introduce you to Pallywood, the film industry of the Palestinians. Although Hollywood still produces some films that are heavy in propaganda, most films are for entertainment value. The same can be said of of the films produced in the Indian film industry.

Entertainment is the last thing the Palestinians are out to produce. Well, maybe only for themselves. Instead of entertaining their audience, they want to shock, horrify and fool their audiences. They want to create a political storm of indignation that will force the world to rise up against Israel. They want the word to support the Palestinians in particular and, in the long run, Islam.

The raw footage shown in the film entitled "Pallywood," depicts the staging of military events against Israelis. Among other events, we see Palestinian gunmen lining up, taking orders offscreen, taking turns as they fire into an open window, and making do-overs. We see pallbearers dropping a "corpse" and we see that corpse get up and unto the bier again, unaided. We see a "wounded" Palestinian sit up on his his elbows to take a cell-phone call.

Everyone understands what the Palestinians want: they want the right of return to the soil on which Israel now stands, the end of Israel as a political entity to be replaced by a Muslim state. Few understand that this movement has been going on now since the 1920s at which time the Islamic Caliphate was ended. At that time the seat of the Caliphate was in Turkey but could be seated anywhere in the Muslim world.

The Islamist movement that is giving the world so much trouble is attempting to revive the Caliphate. But they won't stop with the Muslim lands, for they now have weapons of mass destruction and the technology that would allow them, if not thwarted, to achieve their ultimate goal: Islamic triumphalism and the implementation of world wide Sharia in which many will become Muslims or slaves, and others will remain as payers of the jizya, or tax paid by non-Muslims that finances the Muslims world.

War is deception and everything is allowed as long it done to further the aims of Islam and for the good of Muslims. Pallywood film producers have demonstrated that they are willing to sacrifice and sometimes the blood of innocents to achieve the goals of Islam.

One wonders where they went to film school. I'm sure they got an "A."

Additional Reading: Dr. Richard Landis, Richard Landis and Pallywood,

Hattip: Wretchard, blog entry: "What Is Essential and Invisible to the Eye," , September 18, 2005.

Saving Another 1000 Words: "On the Arab Street"

(http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?on_the_arab_street)

If you are not subscribing Sacred Cow Burgers and its talented graphic artist, Jay D. Dyson, you are really missing a lot of fun. Enjoy!

By the way, here's is the commentary Mr. Dyson provides with this graphic:

"On the Arab Street..."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I hear one more jackwit squeal about how we're "supposed to be sensitive to the Arab street," I swear I'm gonna fire up my chainsaw and lay odds that a jury will accept temporary insanity.

Look, I've seen enough burning American flags and grotesquely angry mobs chanting "Death to America!" in the past thirty years to arrive at two inescapable conclusions:
The "Arab Street" doesn't give much of a rip about offending us. They cheer when our citizens are brutally slaughtered, gleefully slice off our peoples' heads, and wantonly threaten every American man, woman and child with slavery, murder and rape. With all that in mind, why the hell should we give a flying fig about offending them?

After flooding "the Arab street" with billions of dollars in U.S. aid following scores of natural and man-made disasters, most of those little bastards still have the nerve to gloat over the human suffering that Hurricane Katrina visited upon our nation. One need not look long or far to find reports of Islamists proclaiming that our most recent natural disaster is "Allah's punishment of the infidel" (nevermind those thousands of Muslims killed by earthquakes and tsunamis in the past year).

So, with all that in mind, I figured it was time to cast my jaundiced eye on "the Arab street" and let 'em know what I thought of their collective insanity.

This parody is the byproduct of another parody I'm working on and have not yet completed. I was going to insert this scene into the original parody's background, but I figured this work deserved its own separate release.

The Law "A Is A" Applies to Muslims Too

The philosopher Aristotle formulated this law of identity during the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. Despite many philosophers since, including those masquerading as philosophers these days in our postmodernist universities, no one has been able to repeal this law. Not that they haven't tried. Some have succeeded in fooling themselves that Aristotelean logic no longer applies in the modern world, but, as Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people some of the time...

This WND article could just has well been entitled "What hath Islam wrought?"

The explanations are not explanations. They are more expletives. For example, in the final paragraph of this excerpt, the reporter states about the "Gazans" that they are "people whose basic animal instincts overwhelm even their own logic."

A bunch of foolish Jews in America, lead by Morton Zuckerman, donated $14 million to buy the greenhouses which those in Gaza need to raise produce. These American Jews bought the greenhouses and gave them to the "Gazans." What did the "Palestinians" do with these food-producers? Of course, they destroyed and looted them.

WorldNetDaily: Jews sickened by Palestinian desecration, Wednesday, September 4, 2005, by Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – Watching television images of Palestinians looting the remains of their former homes and burning down the synagogues they built, Jewish Gaza refugees told WorldNetDaily yesterday they are "sick to their stomach" and "disgusted by the barbarity of the Arabs."

Looting and chaos continued in Katif yesterday, one day after Israel's final departure from the area. Thousands of Palestinians poured in from nearby Khan Yunis, Gaza City and Rafah to celebrate Israel's withdrawal and chip away at the ruins of former Jewish homes and businesses. Celebrations frequently spun out of control, with Palestinians setting fire to debris. Hamas flew its flag from the remains of the Gush Katif municipality, which until last month housed Venunu's offices. Palestinians also burned down three of Gaza's 20 synagogues. Hamas' Gaza leader, Mahmoud al-Zohar, Monday held a Muslim prayer service in one large synagogue and then called on Hamas supporters to destroy the holy site. The Palestinian Authority has said it will raze the remaining synagogues.

There were reports yesterday of Palestinians storming greenhouses left behind by Israel in a deal brokered by private American organizations. In Gadid, a large former Jewish farming community, a group of looters overwhelmed hundreds of PA guards
who acknowledged they were unable to hold back the crowds.

Anita Tucker, one of the pioneer farmers of Gush Katif and the owner of several greenhouses left behind in Gaza, told WND: "I am not in the least bit surprised by what the Palestinians are doing. Still, I put my whole life's work into my greenhouses, and it pains me, it sickens me in my stomach, to even think of what is now happening to them."

Tucker added, "I had employed Palestinian greenhouse workers and was quite close to them. If this withdrawal didn't happen and we could have developed relations with the Palestinians, there could probably have been peace. Back before the Oslo Accords, I used to go shopping in Gaza City and there was lots of communication. But then the 'peace process' destroyed it all."

Former Katif resident and IsraelReporter.com blogger Shlomo Wollins told WND: "I am angered, but the savagery in Gush Katif by the Palestinians was all expected. I feel like we are dealing with sub-humans, savages, people whose basic animal instincts overwhelm even their own logic. It's in the Palestinians best interests to behave themselves right now when the whole world is watching them. But they can't control their need to destroy all things Jewish, like the synagogues."

Now, read my lips: This is the meaning of Islam-in-action. Literally, "Islam" translates to "submission, " but in practice, for 1400 years, it has meant just what is happening in Gaza since the Israelis left. Gaza is no aberration; it is Islam in action. These are Muslims motivated solely by Islam. This is what Islam does to normal people.

There is no moderate Islam. There is only Islam. Islam is as Islam has always been. Trust a Muslim? No, trust Aristotle's law. A is A will never be wrong. Not even Muslims can escape its inexorableness.

The Flight 93 Memorial

We admit to being slower than we would like on the uptake regarding the Flight 93 Memorial. We have been surgical consumers, which slowed our momentum, but we are beginning the catch-up. We are joining the fight against the proposed red crescent design which seems frankly treasonous and morally corrupt, to say nothing of ugly--to say nothing, yet.

Michele Malkin has a beautiful column today in Jewish World Review concerning Flight 93 itself and the disgusting "tribute" proposed. It is worth the full reading. We will take just one small section to emphasize.

...[T]he official Flight 93 memorial unveiled last week is now embroiled in overdue public controversy. Funded with a mix of public money and private cash (including a $500,000 grant from Teresa Heinz's far left Heinz Endowments), the winning design, titled the "Crescent of Embrace," features a grove of maple trees ringing the crash site in the shape of an unmistakable red crescent. The crescent, New York University Middle East Studies professor Bernard Haykel told the Johnstown, Pa., Tribune-Democrat, "is the symbol of ritual and religious life for Muslims."


Some design contest jury members reportedly raised concerns about the jarring symbol of the hijackers' faith implanted on the hallowed ground where the passengers of Flight 93 were murdered. But their recommendations to change the name of the memorial (to "Arc of Embrace," or some such whitewashing) were ignored. Memorial architect Paul Murdoch, whose firm emphasizes "environmental responsibility and sustainability," did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment, but he did emphasize to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that his creation was about "healing" and "contemplation." He is also proud of his idea to hang a bunch of wind chimes in a tall tower at the site as a "gesture of healing and bonding."


(View the memorial design at http://www.flight93memorialproject.org/. Voice your concerns by e-mailing FLNI_Superintendent@nps.gov.)

Calling Bob Newhart

Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has stepped forward to volunteer his services and that of the U.N. for Hurricane Katrina relief by taking over and managing all the donations. Considering Kofi, his history, the United Nations, and the nature of Kofi’s offer conjured up a fantasy. That fantasy called back from decades of yore the stand-up comedy of Bob Newhart and his hilarious telephone call routines. Suppose Kofi called the chief of staff for the Director of Homeland Security…

Secretary to the chief of staff says to her boss, “Sir, Kofi Annan is on line 4. Are you here? … Yes sir, here’s Mr. Annan.”

“Hel-lo.’

“Good afternoon, Mr. Annan. What may I do for you?”

Covering the speaker on the telephone, the chief of staff says to his colleague, “Pick up line 4, George. It’s crazy Kofi…”

“Yes sir, the situation in the Gulf Coast region is pretty bad. No, sir, we did not name it ‘Katrina’ as payback to the German ambassador. You, what, sir? Would you repeat that?”

“Now, let me see if I am understanding you correctly. You yourself want to take a leading role in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Oh, good, I did understand. Well, you know that international support, particularly moral support, is always greatly appreciated…”

“It’s not moral support that you are offering? What is it, then?”

“Uh, huh. Uh, huh. Uh, huuuuuuh. Got it. Well, that is very generous of you, Mr. Annan. May I recommend that you send your check to the American Red Cross and designate it to go for Hurricane Katrina relief.”

“I got it all wrong? Well, what did I miss?”

“Uh, huh. Uh, huh. Whoa! Let’s see if I heard you correctly, Kofi. You do not want to make a donation. You want to take charge of all the donations?”

“I did hear you correctly."

"Well, Kofi, I don’t think you understand how our system works. It’s quite the opposite of the UN’s methods. Here, people make the donations, and the intended recipients spend the money, and not the other way around.”

“Uh, huh. You’re offering to mobilize all of the resources of the United Nations to handle the relief money? Well… Do go on, please.”

“I see. Uh, huh. You yourself would oversee the money but not directly handle it. Right?”

“OK. Well, who would handle it, Kofi?”

“Very experienced people, you say. Who?”

“Kojo, your son, and Benan Savan. Both are available on an instant's notice, you say? Uh, huuuuuhhh!”

“Oh, yes, Kofi, I have heard of them. You might say they have become household names.”

“Well, sir, that is very generous of you, but I must present your offer to the Secretary. Would you hold for a little bit? Thank you.”

Tempus fugit.

“Thank you for holding, Mr. Annan. My boss says that he personally cannot talk right now. He is busy handling Dracula’s request to manage the blood banks in the wake of Katrina. We’ll get back to you. Some time.”

Saudi Billionaire Boosts News Corp. Voting Stake

Do you remember the maxim: "He who has the gold makes the rules"? What about this one: "He who owns the news corporation controls the news" ?

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Saudi Arabian billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said Tuesday he now holds a 5.5% voting stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and is ready to raise his stake, especially if it is necessary to shield Murdoch from any potential hostile takeover attempts by the likes of John Malone's Liberty Media.

Investment vehicles controlled by the prince's Kingdom Holding Co. have converted what was last reported to be a 3% non-voting stake in the entertainment conglomerate into the new voting holding.

In an interview on CNBC Tuesday, Alwaleed said he has communicated his strategy to Murdoch and was "mobilized and ready" to further boost his voting stake "if we feel that the strategy of Mr. Murdoch and his son and his family is being threatened by any outsider." He added: "Clearly, this is something we will not accept, because we are very happy as shareholders with what Mr. Murdoch is doing."

A News Corp. spokesman Tuesday declined to comment on the news, but company sources said the Saudi prince has long been regarded by Murdoch as an ally in his showdown with Malone.

Should we be concerned or even worried? You betcha! The manipulation of information is a key strategy in any war. Over the centuries Islam's ancient strategies of taqiyya and kitman have been very effective. Today's oil windfall profits have given Islamists unprecedented opportunities to stealthily and non-violently commit Jihad against the West. However the goals of Islamic triumphalism and our downfall. Allowing the manipulating of the news is the ultimate stupidity, creating opportunities for dhimmitude, the humiliation or enslavement of non-Muslims.

Question: Why is a Saudi Arabian allowed to hold any stake in an American news outlet?

9/11 Memorial Truck

http://federalistpatriot.us/news/truck.asp

11 SEPTEMBER 2005: HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN?

By

Darryl Worley and Wynn Varble

I hear people saying we don’t need this war.
I say there’s some things worth fighting for.
What about our freedom and this piece of ground?
We didn’t get to keep ‘em by backing down.
They say we don’t realize the mess we’re getting in.
Before you start preaching,
Let me ask you this my friend.

Have you forgotten how it felt that day,
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away?
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside,
Going through a living hell.
And, you say you shouldn’t worry ‘bout Bin Laden.
Have you forgotten?

They took all the footage off my T.V.
Said it’s too disturbing for you and me.
It’ll just breed anger, that’s what the experts say.
If it was up to me, I’d show it every day.
Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight.
After 9/11, man, I’d have to say that’s right.

Have you forgotten how it felt that day,
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away?
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside,
Going through a living hell.
And, you say you shouldn’t worry ‘bout Bin Laden.
Have you forgotten?

I’ve been there with the soldiers,
Who’ve gone away to war,
And you can bet that they remember
Just what they’re fighting for.

Have you forgotten all the people killed?
Some went down like heroes in that Pennsylvania field.
Have you forgotten about our Pentagon?
All the loved ones that we lost,
And all those left to carry on.
Don’t you tell me not to worry ‘bout Bin Laden.
Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten?

Yet Another Entity to Blame for the Flooding of New Orleans

One would think that environmentalists are ecological heroes. According to Michael Tremoglie at FrontPage,, radical environmentalists are the actual culprits.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Barrier Project planned to build fortifications at two strategic locations, which would keep massive storms on the Gulf of Mexico from causing Lake Pontchartrain to flood the city. An article in the May 28, 2005, New Orleans Times-Picayune stated, “Under the original plan, floodgate-type structures would have been built at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes to block storm surges from moving from the Gulf into Lake Pontchartrain.”

“The floodgates would have blocked the flow of water from the Gulf of Mexico, through Lake Borgne, through the Rigolets [and Chef Mentuer] into Lake Pontchartrain,” declared Professor Gregory Stone, the James P. Morgan Distinguished Professor and Director of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University. “This would likely have reduced storm surge coming from the Gulf and into the Lake Pontchartrain,” Professor Stone told Michael P. Tremoglie during an interview on September 6. The professor concluded, “[T]hese floodgates would have alleviated the flooding of New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina.”

The New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers and Professor Stone were not the only people cognizant of the consequences that could and did result because of the environmental activists. While speaking with Sean Hannity on his radio show on Labor Day, former Louisiana Congressman and Speaker of the House Bob Livingston also referred to environmentalists whose litigation prevented hurricane prevention projects.

In other words, unlike other programs – including the ones leftists like Sid Blumenthal excoriated the president for not funding – these constructions might have prevented the loss of life experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Why was this project aborted? As the Times-Picayune wrote, “Those plans were abandoned after environmental advocates successfully sued to stop the projects as too damaging to the wetlands and the lake's eco-system.” (Emphasis added.) Specifically, in 1977, a state environmentalist group known as Save Our Wetlands (SOWL) sued to have it stopped. SOWL stated the proposed Rigolets and Chef Menteur floodgates of the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Prevention Project would have a negative effect on the area surrounding Lake Pontchartrain. Further, SOWL’s recollection of this case demonstrates they considered this move the first step in a perfidious design to drain Lake Pontchartrain entirely and open the area to dreaded capitalist investment.

Read the rest.

At Last, A Muslim With A Good Idea

King of Britain's Parasite Class, its Muslims, Omar Bakri Mohammad, has finally said something worthwhile, and he is saying it from where he is actually living his advice: Out-of-Britain. In his case, he is in Lebanon because he is no longer allowed in Britain.

Bakri who fashioned himself as the Muslim tail that wagged the British lion finally pissed off the British.

Cleric banned from U.K. slams Britain's 'evil ideology' of government

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Thursday, September 08, 2005


LONDON: Bakri, who praised the September 11 hijackers in the United States in 2001 as "magnificent," prompted outrage after the July 7 bombings when he said he would never tip off police if he knew a Muslim was about to carry out an attack. Interviewed from Beirut by Britain's Sky News television, the cleric confirmed that his family remained in Britain, where they would stay "until I settle my life here."

He said he left Britain because of the government's response to July 7, and to the failed repeat bombings a fortnight later, which has seen a crackdown on Islamic extremism. "I left with the intention that I did not want to come back, because of the evil ideology and evil policy adopted by the British government," Bakri said.

Before this response to the bombings, Muslims in Britain were "living in harmony," Bakri said. [Editor's note: If you buy this, I will sell you a bridge... The only way this could have been is because the British were asleep at the switch.] "I was living in the U.K. because I really loved the country, which was really my second home, and I had no problem with the culture. [Editor's note: He lived for 20 years on the British dole, without earning a single farthing.] "However, after the bombings of July 7, I think the British government adopted a policy to cover up their own failure to find who was behind the bombing, to start to accuse the so-called extremists. Unfortunately some people bought that from them."

Britain's Muslim population should consider following his lead, Bakri said.

"Myself, personally, I do not see any reason to stay in the U.K. after the new laws of terrorism," he said. "I think the Muslim community can no longer live in peace in the U.K. It is better for them to think to leave." - AFP

(Emphases mine)

He must has been using CAIR's bullcrap generator to create his statements, but there is no missing his advice to British Muslims. Having them leave Britain for the various sandboxes of the Middle East would benefit Britain more than an enema would benefit someone obstipated. Britain could really get on with its healing and resurrection with much clutter reduced. Really, the only thing missing is putting his family on a one-way flight to Lebanon to join the man they deserve to be with.

In fact, having Muslims return to Muslimia (or Islamia) from all over the world would do wonders for everyone, including the Muslims. They could all celebrate returning to 7th century life and the slicing, dicing and tyrannizing of each other with impunity. The civilized world could get on with progress without being distracted by taqiyya and kitman fanatics always biting at the heels of civilization and its bounty.

How can we get Bakri's message into America?

CAIR to Sponsor Taqiyya-Fest at U. S. Capitol for 9/11

Americans: Stand-by to receive egregious dissimulations from CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) for the 9-11 anniversary.

CAIR (Council for American-Islamic Relations) is the same group who just did a job on WMAL, ABC, Disney, and Michael Graham, National Review Online, and countless corporations, as well as the White House, to mention only a few of their fifth column behaviors. This is the same group that will not bring itself to get into detailed condemnation of jihad, the most violent aspects of Islam, and the 9-11 planners and participants. Recent publications document CAIR's toxic roots and ties.

This "vigil" smells like the most gratuitous of Muslim dissimulation. It is an effort to brown-nose Americans into believing that these are decent and nice neighbors who hold the same American values.

If you are inclined to believe that CAIR and its ilk mean well, read Robert Spencer's new book, Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) [see our review of his book on 15 August 2005 on this blog].

From CAIR---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 8/31/05


- MEDIA ADVISORY -

MUSLIMS TO HOLD 9/11 VIGIL AT U.S. CAPITOL
Event to mark anniversary of attack, promote interfaith unity


WHAT: On Friday, September 9, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will host an interfaith candlelight vigil at the Capitol Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., to mark the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Along with the vigil, the event will include remarks by interfaith leaders and presentation of CAIR's "Voice of Unity Award." Islamic sunset prayers (Maghrib) will be held immediately after the event.

WHEN: Friday, September 9, 6:45-7:45 p.m.

WHERE: Capitol Reflecting Pool, Washington, D.C. (The reflecting pool is located on the West side of the U.S. Capitol building near the base of the stairs and is just East of 3rd Street, between Constitution and Independence Avenues. Note: This location should not be confused with the Reflecting Pool located between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.)

Co-sponsors of the vigil include: InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (Washington, D.C.), September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, All Dulles Area Muslim Society, Muslim Public Affairs Council, American Muslim Voice, and the Interfaith Alliance

CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, has 31 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. To read CAIR's Mission, Vision Statement and Core Principles, go to: http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=About


- END -

What's next? Will the Nazis start sponsoring prayer vigils for the Holocaust?

Tribes

Bill Wittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! gives us only three. To which do YOU belong?

Read Wretchard's take at the Belmont Club on this concept.

Americans the Beautiful

What magnificent people Americans are.

Americans are rising to the occasion on behalf of those devastated by Hurricane Katrina, to "git-r-done."

Mr. and Mrs. America are reaching out to people they don’t know and would otherwise never know. Race, sex, socio-economic status, and degree of destitution don't matter.

Nothing is as the bilious and venomous, so concentrated on the Left, say it is, as they lie and spew blame, while opportunistically using those knocked down and out by the hurricane as fodder to further their own petty lives. These vermin of America making hot air, none of which is worth listening to, not rescues.

None of this comes from Mr. and Mrs. America. They are busy running refugee rescue, reaching out and lifting up. Some are taking strangers, even thousands of miles away, and paying for their tickets. Others are pouring out the figurative contents of their wallets as their way of helping. All of this is voluntary, and it grows exponentially.

No one and nothing are like Americans. What beautiful people.

Excuses, excuses...

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Snatching Success from the Jaws of Failure (II)

(http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?factaid)

So much of the tragedy of New Orleans could have been prevented.

Metaphysically, Hurricane Katrina itself was unavoidable and unmanageable. Historically, Katrina followed a pattern in existence for centuries, namely that hurricanes tend to go ashore on the Gulf coast. The New Orleans area has faced that threat since before there was a New Orleans city, and there was no way to avoid considerable damage for all those who were in the path of Katrina.

What was not unavoidable was readiness: the man-made, not the metaphysical. Obviously, there was little to no readiness in New Orleans or Louisiana. For example, the New Orleans police have three boats, but only one was operational.

Hurricane Katrina did not suddenly and unexpectedly materialize as if by magic, to be beamed down onto New Orleans via some Star Trek technology. Few did not know it was coming, and few did not know it was one of the most powerful of hurricanes. The mayor of New Orleans apparently thought his work was done when he told people to vacate New Orleans. I do not know what the governor of Louisiana did other than utter platitudes and stare blankly into television cameras.

The costs of human suffering and death as well as the excessive losses of property could have been minimized. Some would have died. Some would have suffered. Some homes and buildings would have been reduced to matchsticks. None should have been flooded out, and no one should have been thrown to the wolves of chance as were those around the Superdome by the incompetence of those who "run" the City of New Orleans. Mayor "Nincompoop" of New Orleans leads the chorus of highly vocal blame casters, blaming everyone but themselves and their own incompetence. The mayor, like a number of others running to cover their butts, tries to implicate others to stave off anyone identifying his own role.

It is not in Washington, D.C., nor any state where the blame properly falls--not to the President, to Homeland Security, to F.E.M.A., to the National Guard, or to anyone or anything outside Louisiana. True, they were not standing at the instant ready as they should have been, but they did mobilize and do so handsomely.

From the moment of the disaster, until the "cavalry" arrived, personal, city, and state resources should have fully mobilized. As soon as the winds had dropped to levels safe enough for humans to mobilize out of doors, pre-existing plans should have gone into high gear, with all the materiel and personnel prepositioned. Apparently neither the mayor nor the governor gave the matter any thought, or so it seems. Thus, it is within the state of Louisiana that the blame properly falls.

Memo to Mr. Mayor and Ms. Governor: You have to ASK for National Guard help in order to get it, for example, so you anticipate needs and act in a timely manner, proactively. Why did you try to make your problem to be everyone's outside of your city and state?

Long-standing corruption, consorting with long-standing incompetence, birthed the Superbowl tragedy. Any other efforts to assign bogus blame, such as Bush's failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty, global warming, having too many national guard in Iraq, racism, and the like should qualify those who emit such statements as needing psychiatric incarceration and medication, as well as those who attest that this is the "end of days" and is the work of Allah punishing satanic America.

Here's why (excerpted) New Orleans and Louisiana failed, at the level of elected and appointed public officials: (All emphases mine)

Will New Orleans Recover? by Nicole Gelinas, 31 August 2005

No American city has ever gone through what New Orleans must go through: the complete (if temporary) flight of its most affluent and capable citizens, followed by social breakdown among those left behind, after which must come the total reconstruction of economic and physical infrastructure by a devastated populace.

And the locals and outsiders who try to help New Orleans in the weeks and months to come will do so with no local institutional infrastructure to back them up. New Orleans has no real competent government or civil infrastructure—and no aggressive media or organized citizens’ groups to prod public officials in the right direction during what will be, in the best-case scenario, a painstaking path to normalcy.

The city’s government has long suffered from incompetence and corruption. Just weeks before Katrina, federal officials indicted associates of the former mayor, Marc Morial, for alleged kickbacks and contract fraud. Morial did nothing to attract diversified private investment to his impoverished city during the greatest economic boom of the modern era.

The current mayor, Ray Nagin, ... in his three years in office...has made no perceptible progress in diversifying New Orleans’ economy. On television this week, the mayor has shown no clear inclination to take charge and direct post-Katrina rescue and recovery efforts for his population, as Mayor Giuliani did in New York on and after 9/11.

New Orleans teems with crime, and the NOPD can’t keep order on a good day. Former commissioner Richard Pennington brought New Orleans’ crime rate down from its peak during the mid-1990s. But since Pennington’s departure, crime rates have soared, to ten times the national average. The NOPD might have hundreds of decent officers, but it has a well-deserved institutional image as corrupt, brutal, and incompetent.

How will New Orleans’ economy recover from Katrina? Apart from some pass-through oil infrastructure, the city’s economy is utterly dependent on tourism. After the city’s mainstay oil industry decamped to Texas nearly a generation ago, New Orleans didn’t do the difficult work of cutting crime, educating illiterate citizens, and attracting new industries to the city. New Orleans became merely a convention and tourism economy, selling itself to visitors to survive, and over time it has only increased its economic dependence on outsiders. The fateful error of that strategy will become clearer in the next few months.

New Orleans has experienced a steady brain drain and fiscal drain for decades, as affluent corporations and individuals have fled, leaving behind a large population of people dependent on the government. Socially, New Orleans is one of America’s last helpless cities—just at the moment when it must do all it can to help itself survive.

According to Jimmy Rogers on the Fox News Cost of Freedom business program, Saturday, 3 September 2005, the New Orleans Levee Board [note the name] bought casinos, hotels, and financially befriended lots of cronies, to the tune of multi-millions of dollars, if not more--BUT THEY DEVOTED NOT A DOLLAR TO THE LEVEE PROBLEM. The levees were built to withstand a hurricane of category 3 strength, not category 3 or 4, including one moving as slowly as did Katrina. For decades, levees were ignored, while those who should have acted bet that a Katrina would not fall on their watches.

New Orleans stands as the perfect example of what not to do, BUT it is teaching jihadists just what to do. The "blame buck" stops with the state of Louisiana and goes no further, with the following exception.

Tens of thousands of New Orleans' black American underclass gathered inside and outside the Superdome as soon as they could after Hurricane Katrina had passed. Some brought a few belongings. Seemingly none brought water, food, medication, or even a portable radio (not power-hogging boom boxes). They helplessly waited to be taken care of. They waited until the competent could get in there to help them, i.e., those from outside New Orleans and Louisiana. Even rudimentary readiness on the part of New Orleans and Louisiana would have gotten these people water and food right away instead of displacing their own responsibility to the feds.l

Note that not even one sound truck or helicopter with loudspeakers or blimp with a full length neon signage gave these people gathering at the Superdome so much as one set of directions or information.

Right on cue came charges of racism as the unscrupulous rushed to cover their wrong actions or inactions. According to some silk suit sporting, fat cat in the NAACP, it was pure racism for these people--almost all black--to be left to last to be taken care of. By the way, where was (and IS) the NAACP (the black version of CAIR), or would-be fuhrers Jackson and Sharpton during ANY of this crisis? They have been nowhere to be seen. It makes you wonder just how much these people really care for those of their race. No, it doesn't create wonder at all. We know. The NAACP and its fellow traveller organizations are attention-getting, power-lusters who do not give one damn about their race except to use them as a means to acquire power over others, whether those others be white, black, red, green, and whatever.

The reason there were so many blacks gathered at the Superdome is because the population of New Orleans has become 67% black, not because blacks were singled out for mistreatment. Blacks live in high density in the peri-Superdome area because that is where housing-on-the-dole is, "the projects." They followed the largess, and that is where it took them.

What characterizes this population? They are New Orleans' indigenous underclass, made addicts to all sorts of handouts that robbed their incentive to be much more than range-of-the-moment parasites, in the main. During the looting, one of them told a wire service reporter that the looting was justified because of all the "years of oppression" blacks have endured. That statement could have come from a press release from the NAACP or CAIR. In fact, it came from Karl Marx, and it became engrained into to the "poverty blacks" by their "poverty pimps" on the Left.

The standard line among officialdom in New Orleans and Louisiana about New Orleans and Louisiana is how grindingly poor the city and state are; thus these people just could not help being the way they are. But, let's see: Louisiana, including New Orleans, has vast agriculture, oil wells, oil refining, enormous importation and exportation through one of the biggest ports of the world, unfathomably large Mississippi River floating commerce to America and the world, rail, air, tourism, and even Tabasco. In short, there is no damned excuse for the use of the term "poor" anywhere in Louisiana. What there is, is an insufficiency of accountability and an absence of long term imprisonment for those in power, an absence of free market capitalism in the state, and a huge underclass ill prepared for living successfully in the modern world.

There is no place in the country where people may successfully duck responsibility for themselves in the case of disaster, no matter how "poor" they are alleged to be. The choice is simply that of either exercising personal responsibility at a very basic level or passively accepting one's fate. A common sense attitude of personal responsibility would have worked to teach these poor blacks to ready themselves for contingencies during hurricane season, e.g., having water, food, medicine, and even a cheap IMPORTED portable radio on hand, enough to get by for a few days, until the cavalry arrives. Had they not already accepted a bogus fare of convenient slogans to justify personal passivity, they would have known: DO NOT RELY ON GOVERNMENT AS YOUR FIRST RESORT; PREPARE YOURSELF FIRST. This is the kind of stuff the NAACP and its ilk should be teaching and inculcating.

Had these people readied themselves at the most basic level, in the simplest applications of personal responsibility, and had the mayor of New Orleans together with the governor, readied materiel and personnel to move as soon as the winds dropped to safe levels, what we have been seeing would have been far less severe, even with the flooding. Had the first looters been shot dead by prepared police and left on prominent display with signs identifying why they were killed, little would have been looted. Did we learn nothing from the invasion of Baghdad?

But, these poor blacks have been played like a Wurlitzer, like chess pawns in power games. Since the 1960s, the Left (black and white) have destroyed the integrity of the black family and the integrity of the black person by making them helpless dependents on government-provided largess. Tragically, what has replaced their basic human level of functioning have been a poverty mentality of passive-dependent, entitlement mentalities which have become demanding parasites, and giving more excuses than Carter has liver pills to justify their lack of personal responsibility. The Left taught them, and they learned. However, they bought the line willingly, so they are not guilt-free "victims." They have become self-made "victims," people waiting to be waited on. They are the crown jewel of leftist ideology. Is it any wonder that a percentage of the same sub-population turned to looting, rape, murder, and mayhem over the past few days? And is it any wonder that so many became actual victims, dying and suffering needlessly?

And, why were the jailed prisoners released to return to harrass these poor people once more? At a minimum, these prisoners should have been put into chain gangs to service the needs of the populace they had repetitively victimized instead of giving them a get-out-of-jail free card.

Can we generalize from the New Orleans disaster? Yes, we can.

Hurricane Katrina smoked out just about all of the essential weaknesses regarding readiness in America for future 9-11s. Now the jihadist planners know that many Mogidishus are possible within America, and they know now how to produce them.

Could New Orleans level disasters be produced in American cities? Even without the flooding, the answer is YES! We seem to be as unready mentally as we are physically both as governments and individuals. We are waiting to be waited on, and that is a fatal mistake.

However, we are Americans. We can and will correct these problems, but we cannot rely on government, to do it all. We must prepare ourselves at personal and local levels, and there is much more to be said about that.

To reiterate the lawn sign of the church in my small town: Failure is success, if you learn from it.