(Via my father)
Subject: Democratic National Convention Agenda6:00pm - Opening flag burning ceremony.
6:05pm - Pledge of Allegiance to the United Nations.
6:10pm - Secular words by Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
6:30pm - Anti-war concert by Barbra Streisand.
6:45pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
7:00pm - Tribute theme to France.
7:10pm - Collect offerings for al-Zawahri defense fund.
7:30pm - Tribute theme to Germany.
7:45pm - Anti-war rally moderated by Michael Moore.
8:25pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
8:30pm - Terrorist appeasement workshop.
9:00pm - Homosexual marriage ceremony for male and female couples.
9:30pm - CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN urge defeat of President Bush.
10:00pm - Posting the Iraqi Colors by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.
10:10pm - Reenactment of Kerry's fake medal toss.
10:20pm - Cameo by Howard 'Yeeearrrrrrrgh!' Dean
10:30pm - Abortion demonstration by N.A.R.A.L.
10:40pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
10:50pm - Special thanks to the New York Times & Washington Post.
11:00pm - Multiple homosexual marriage ceremony for threesomes and
groups.
11:15pm - Maximizing Welfare workshop.
11:30pm - Saddam Legal Defense Fund pep rally.
11:50pm - Ted Kennedy proposes a toast.
12:00am - Nomination of Democratic candidate.
Scary thing is -- that's probably pretty close to how it'll look.
Display all comments »by Loren Bliss
THE ONE MOST inviolable taboo in mainstream American journalism – even on a so-called “conservative” publication such as The Wall Street Journal – is the absolute prohibition against any acknowledgment whatsoever of the dark side of feminism: the female-supremacist, all-men-are-rapists, down-with-American-liberty, exterminate-patriarchy cult that is both the hate-mongering leadership-circle and the vast vindictive rank-and-file of the feminist movement in the United States.
This taboo – and the fact that it is so harshly enforced no mainstream journalist dare even say it’s name -- is yet another proof that ideas have consequences. The tyranny of silence and acquiescence by which the taboo is enforced is the logical result of perhaps three circumstances: the extent to which this brand of feminism is the dominant post-Marxist ideology of the Left, the fact that is very nearly the only ideology among female journalists, and the corollary fact that the peculiarities of internal mainstream-media politics and economics have given this relentlessly authoritarian brand of feminism absolute control of the national information flow – a totality of censorship that would be the envy of both Hitler and Stalin.
Many years ago I began calling this brand of feminism “matrifascism” to distinguish it from the libertarian mode of feminism that is courageously insistent on genuine female equality before the law. The (almost extinct) libertarian brand of feminism recognizes that none of the expansions of freedom characteristic of the past two centuries would have been possible without the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. For this reason, libertarian feminists – who as far as I am concerned are the only “real” feminists -- do not sullenly yearn for the destruction of all that America represents.
“Matrifascist” is a made-up word, a noun compounded of “matriarchy” – a society ruled entirely by women – and “fascism,” usage of the latter neither hyperbolic nor rhetorical given matrifascism’s unabashed preference for the more egregious forms of tyranny. Indeed, matrifascists believe fervently in a “natural” female-supremacist hierarchy of genders that is directly derived from the ubermenschen/untermenschen concept that was the basis of German Nazism. Hence matrifascism’s long-term goal is the establishment of a female-supremacist state, “gynocracy,” which closely resembles the Third Reich even unto its extermination camps: in this case to be used for ridding the planet of all males save those essential to sperm banking.
And no, I am not writing fiction: read (if you can find it) Grace Shinell’s manifesto of gender-cide, “Women’s Primacy in the Coming Reformation,” in Heresies Summer 1978 (Google: Heresies Collective). Then read just about anything by Mary Daly, Catharine MacKinnon or Andrea Dworkin. Or merely pick up a random copy of Ms. Magazine. Shinell, Daly, MacKinnon, Dworkin, Myriam Miedzian – these and their ideological sisters are the doctrinal mothers of matrifascism, and they control the American feminist movement just as surely as Stalin ran the Soviet Communist Party and der Fueher directed its National Socialist counterpart.
Which is why, in all of the mainstream media accounts of the “sex abuse” hysteria that swept through the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s – the atrocity of the Salem witch-hunts magnified to national scale, with literally hundreds of innocent lives ruined forever – no one ever reads that the ultimate cause was feminism run amok. But research the cases, and from Middlesex County, Massachusetts to Wenatchee, Washington, that is the one common denominator they all share: matrifascists (typically social workers and welfare bureaucrats) goading the prosecutions forward, male officials too cowardly to resist, and newspapers standing by – male journalists appalled but terrified to silence even as many of their female counterparts behaved like latter-day incarnations of Madame Lefarge. Some of the most grossly outrageous miscarriages of justice in American history were the result.
But a few women most assuredly did not play the Lefarge role of cheerleader at the guillotine.
One of these was Kathryn Lyon, a Washington state lawyer who was not connected to the Wenatchee cases but was nevertheless infuriated by them and took a leave of absence from her job to research and write a book entitled Witch Hunt: a True Story of Social Hysteria and Abused Justice. This was the first public exposure of what was really happening in Wenatchee. The press, politically “correct” to a fault, behaved just exactly as I described above, first reporting nothing at all, then – always under female bylines – cheering on the prosecution.
Finally, as usually occurs when light is shone on injustice and corruption, the publication of Lyon's book slapped the system back to some semblance of sanity and facilitated the beginning of reforms. The most important of these was that the Department of Social and Health Services lost some (but by no means all) of its unprecedented power to function, totally above and beyond any rule of law, as a matrifascist secret police agency. Since then, all of the convictions have been reversed, though based on the most recent information I could obtain, DSHS – furiously defended by a klatch of matrifascists in the legislature – continues to vindictively imprison Wenatchee children who refuse to testify against parents and neighbors. Because DSHS has proclaimed these children “victims” who are “not ready to disclose,” they can be held until they turn 18.
The terms “feminist” or “feminism” never once appear in Lyon’s report, though she does examine – rather scathingly and in some detail -- how political “correctness” dictated the media response.
Tactics similar to those employed by DSHS were used in the Middlesex County cases, but there the real victims – the operators of the Fells Acres Day School – eventually found a skilled and dedicated defender in the person of The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, whose reporting revealed not only an obscene miscarriage of justice, but the undeniable fact that a cabal of unspeakable tyrants – matrifascists and leftists in general – rules the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This is by far the most damning indictment of Edward Kennedy, John Kerry or indeed any other politician who claims the Bay State as home ground, for virtually all of its public officials were more than willing – merely in the interest of pandering to the witch-hunt and thus furthering their own careers – to sacrifice the maliciously prosecuted and wrongfully convicted Fells Acres folk. Rabinowitz made this and many other ugly facts about Massachusetts clear in her stories about the Fells Acres cases, and there is no doubt her efforts were instrumental in winning freedom for the Amirault family, the unfortunate proprietors and operators of the school.
In her most recent report, Rabinowitz describes Gerald Amirault’s first quietly joyful days outside the penitentiary in 18 years. But even now, summarizing all that was done to the Amiraults in service to the vile matrifascist doctrines that America is a “rape culture” and “all men are rapists,” Rabinowitz never once dares use the term “feminism.” The link to her story – actually a rather uplifting read despite its circumstances and its disappointing omission – is here.
Display all comments »(Note: All data gathered directly from the FBI's website.)
1. Amer el-Maati
Description: Six foot tall male, 209 lbs, brown hair and eyes; requires corrective lenses. Is to be considered armed and dangerous.
2. Aafia Siddiqui
Description: News reports tell us that she may be serving as a fixer for terrorist cells seeking inroads to American soil. Although she returned to Pakistan with her husband and children following the 9/11 terror attacks, US Authorities are very interested in speaking with her and her husband. She is 32 years old. Click the link to view her picture.
3. Adnan G. El Shukrijumah
Description: El Shukrijumah is also to be considered armed and dangerous. He is of average build, standing 5'3" to 5'6" tall, with black hair and eyes. He is an asthmatic, and may sport a beard. He should be considered armed and dangerous.
4. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed
NOTE: He has previous indictments for suspected involvement in the bombing of US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
Description: He is a black man, standing 5'3" to 5'5" in height. He weighs 120 - 140 pounds, and has black hair and brown eyes. The website tells us that he likes to wear baseball caps, dress casually, and is proficient with computers. He should be considered armed and dangerous.
5. Adam Yahiye Gadahn
Description: A caucasian American national, Adam stands 5'11" tall, and weighs about 190 lbs with a medium build. He has brown hair, brown eyes, and a light complexion. He is being sought for questioning, and should be considered armed and dangerous.
6. Abderraouf Jdey
Description: He stands six feet tall, and weighs about 209 lbs. He has brown hair and eyes with olive skin. He should also be considered armed and dangerous.
7. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
NOTE: He was also indicted for alleged involvement in the bombings of US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. He should also be considered armed and dangerous.
Description: He is a black man standing 5'3" to 5'4" tall, and weighs around 150 lbs. He has black hair and eyes.
Clicking each of the provided links will present pictures, aliases, and other data.
If you know the whereabouts of any of these people, or sight them or anyone else engaging in behavior that seems truly suspicious in context of this alert, please contact the nearest FBI field office, or for those out of country, the closest FBI Legal Attache office.
9/11 may have been prevented if all the puzzle pieces of suspicious activity had been put together in time. Now is your chance to help make sure that such an atrocity never again occurs on our soil. I don't care what your political orientation may be: if you see these people, contact the FBI at once.
Display all comments »I WANT TO thank all of you who have commented on my various essays and moments of self-disclosure, and I want you all to know I'm genuinely sorry I didn't start replying to any of you until last night, when I responded to comments dating back to May 24. A big part of the reason for my apparent non-responsiveness was that I was thinking about how I might reply to folks who took the time to write to me, but I was caught up in playing with various ideas from my newspaper years, none of which seemed suitable for a blog. Then I saw how Linda herself handled it, and -- duh -- there was the answer. To use a cliche that would be a lot more appropriate if these words were on paper, I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees. But the tanglewood is behind us, and I promise that from here on -- at least to the extent time allows (and your letters warrant) I will indeed try to respond to each and every one of you, answering in the "Comments" section just as I have begun doing. I say again: thank you.
Display all comments »RANDOMNESS IS THE watchword of today’s focal points, which probably makes this entire feature a contradiction in terms, but so be it.
First -- because it’s a perfect example of the kind of random oddity that I always find interesting (and sometimes profoundly thought provoking) – German physicists have concluded the cosmos is shaped like the Eiffel Tower. But after you’ve finished sneering, jeering, or making jokes about the now-inevitability of jack-suited SpaceNazis goose-warping across the galaxies, focus intently on the shape of the Eiffel Tower and contemplate this: imagine the tower as an abstract expressionist’s upside-down rendering of a striking snake. The snake has just launched himself at his adversary; his mouth gapes open, his fangs are bared, his body is elongated into a straight line that tapers toward his tail. Now shift realities: the serpent’s fangs are the legs of the tower, the serpent’s head is the base, the serpent’s body is the long tapering length of the tower, with the grid-work representing scales. Then reflect on Einstein’s theory the universe is not linear -- that it curves back upon itself. In other words, if the universe is shaped like the Eiffel Tower but is curved, one end toward the other, it is also shaped like a serpent who consumes herself -- perhaps to perpetuate her own being. What does that suggest? The Ouroboros: the cosmic snake said to encircle the earth. Once again, ancient metaphysical symbolism may have anticipated modern physics – not because we were visited by aliens from some distant planet of missionary pedagogues, but because the human mind is as infinitely powerful as the universe is infinitely large. A link to the universe-as-Eiffel-Tower story is here.
Because it is just maybe the most telling example I have ever found of another sort of infinity – the limitless arrogance of bureaucrats – next is a story about why life in the European Union will soon be as regimented as life in the Third Reich, but without the politically suspect diversions of torchlight parades. This is not hyperbole, nor is what comes next a non-sequitur: I am an unabashed dog lover. I have joyously lived with dogs all my life -- dogs of various breeds and sizes (though most have been middling-large to very large), and all of them have been enough part of my household to have specific responsibilities that range from watchfulness and threat-analysis to the complexities of various sorts of hunting. We live under the same roof and spend quality time together indoors or out. Hence I know exactly how dogs behave when strangers of either the bipedal or quadrupedal variety attempt to steal their bones – bone theft and bone-theft prevention are in fact carefully practiced skills among canines of all breeds and subspecies – and I believe the dog-robbing bureaucrats in this episode deserve not only a severe chomping but a long succession of three-legged gestures of contempt. The link to the report that so raised my hackles and set me a-snarling is here.
Lastly, though I am not much of an Ann Coulter fan, there is no doubt she sometimes speaks truths no one else dare utter. Her column this morning is just such an essay, and it contains facts the major media have chosen to downplay or ignore. It mellowed me right out – no small feat after my contemplation of the bone-thieves of the EU, during which my dogs Brady and Jasmine both joined me in bare-fanged growling at the text on the VDT. I hope Coulter’s prose will bring a smile to your face just as it brought a smile to mine -- which of course set both my dogs' tails a-wagging too. The link to this good medicine is here.
Display all comments »I DID NOT get back to this machine until much later than I predicted. Another in the ongoing successions of domestic crises stole away my time. But here is what I had intended to post:
(With a grateful tip of the hat to Allegra, who also wrote the following intro:)
Two thousand years ago, they say, in the Black Hills of Dakota, a white buffalo calf appeared to the Lakota and suddenly transformed herself into a beautiful Indian maiden.
The Sioux called her ''White Buffalo Calf Woman'' and received from her all their sacred ceremonies and the Sacred Peace Pipe.
Lakota prophecy holds that the birth of a white buffalo calf would be a sign that White Buffalo Calf Woman has returned again to purify the world– to restore harmony and spiritual balance.
The birth of such a calf, as described by Allegra and foretold by the legend she relates, is announced here
Which prompts me to add the following verse of traditional poetry:
The white man’s god has foresaken him
Let us go and look for our Mother
...We shall live again...
These lines are from a Cheyenne Ghost Dance song, part of the Ghost Dance religion that swept the plains tribes in the 1880s and ended – after Christian missionaries objected to the rebirth of aboriginal spirituality – with the massacre at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890. But perhaps that is partly wrong. Perhaps the Ghost Dance did not end at all. Perhaps the Ghost Dance was but a prelude to the rebirth of something far greater. And perhaps that is yet another reason Islam wages such relentless war on America.
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(Tip o' the hat to Blackfive.)
IRAQ Now is calling out mainstream media in regards to General Mattis' oft-repeated quote, "I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men." Jason first presents us with a link to the verbatim transcript of General Mattis' press conference, and then shows several examples of mainstream media's distortion of the facts.
Violating Journalism's Code of Ethics means that the reporter has ceased being a detached, objective scribe of human events, and has become in its place, a mere writer of fiction.
I prefer to get my fiction in the bookstore by people who are good at it.
Also of interest is this from The Truth Laid Bear: the DNC is issuing press passes to bloggers. The process appears to be somewhat involved -- it'd be interesting if any of Civi-Call's readers are planning to go for it. From an quick update posted by TTLB, it seems that the RNC will be looking into doing the same.
I wonder if the DNC will actually issue credentials to any conservative bloggers?
If you know the answer, please sound off!
by Loren Bliss
I DIDN’T HEAR the President’s speech, but I read its text, which said nothing new, was less compelling than the average speech by an average legislator during an average day in some average statehouse, and – at least according to some commentators – was badly marred when the President stumbled over the pronunciation of Abu Ghraib. I voted for George Bush in 2000, and I will vote for him again in November, though this second time I will vote for him only because I have no other choice. Voting for the alternative – John Kerry, the foreign-policy reincarnation of Neville Chamberlain – seems to me tantamount to voting to wave the white flag: to surrender American liberty and Western Civilization to the nonexistent mercies of Islam’s global caliphate, a reality I cannot contemplate without literally gnashing my teeth.
Nevertheless I think it is now a foregone conclusion Kerry and the Democrats will win the election – in all of the history of opinion polling, no President whose popularity is as far down the commode as Bush’s is now has ever won re-election. And I think that means those of us who are firearms owners and Second Amendment advocates (sadly, the two are not synonymous) had better begin bracing ourselves for an onslaught of gun controls far harsher than anything yet imposed or perhaps even imagined.
I think we’ll see the “assault weapons ban” renewed and expanded two ways: just as Michigan’s Sen. Carl Levin attempted a few years ago and has pledged to attempt again, by confiscatory prohibition of any civilian ownership of obsolete U.S. military firearms including antiques dating back to the birth of the Republic; and as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Million Matrifascist Moms are demanding, by outlawing civilian possession of all semiautomatic arms including .22s, and all manually operated arms with magazine capacities greater than five rounds.
Also I think we’ll see gun shows shut down permanently, and all firearms sales and even firearm gifts between private individuals banned. Based on what the Democrats have attempted in various state legislatures, the gift ban would probably include a provision prohibiting anyone under 21 (or perhaps under 18), from so much as handling firearms or perhaps even being in proximity to them, even with adult supervision – and extremely harsh penalties for violations. Nor is my concern the least bit overstated: Clinton Administration Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala reportedly wanted it made a criminal offense for firearms to be kept in any household that included children, a position endorsed publicly by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund (one of Hillary Clinton’s favorite organizations). Edelman was actually quoted as saying gun owners are by definition unfit parents.
But most of all I think we’ll see the universe of prohibited persons dramatically expanded by federal enactment of laws that are already in force in New York City and New Jersey. These provisions criminalize any allegedly abnormal mental condition. The moment you are so diagnosed, your ownership of firearms becomes a penitentiary-time felony, no exceptions, no appeals, no matter the brevity or mildness of the affliction. In both New York City and Jersey, where such restrictions have been in effect for decades, this has come to mean in practice that a single outpatient trip to a psychiatrist, psychologist or even a grief counselor (all of which by law must be reported to the authorities) disqualifies you from firearms ownership forever. Universal gun registration – mandatory in both places – then brings a police-department firearms-confiscation squad to your door forthwith. By some estimates, fully half the people in the United States will at one time or another suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, which means a nation-wide version of such a measure would shrink legal firearms ownership accordingly.
Indeed this would be its primary objective. The Democrats have long schemed to impose just such restrictions nationwide. Meanwhile, creation of the national mental-patient roster it would necessitate is one of the favored albeit little-known objectives of the Communitarians, unapologetic advocates of tyranny who have become a powerfully influential faction within the Democratic Party’s policy-making circles. (The acknowledged Communitarian purpose of the mental-patient roster is the alleged enhancement of public safety that would supposedly result from imposition of harsh restrictions on the mentally ill – controls distinctly reminiscent of the Third Reich, where they were a precursor to forcible euthanasia.) But for the Democrats in general – who are probably more malicious and vindictive than any political party in U.S. history – the payoff would be vengeance pure and simple: the almost-total destruction of the hated “gun culture,” both by halving the number of legal firearms owners and completely prohibiting firearms instruction for children and youths, all in revenge for the succession of defeats Second Amendment advocates have been regularly inflicting on the Democrats since 1994.
Moreover, if the history of other attempts to restrict firearms ownership via mental health criteria is any indication, the entire Second Amendment community will remain cowardly, cravenly silent. The National Rifle Association is in fact actively collaborating on one such effort, the so-called Our Lady of Peace Act (overwhelmingly passed by the House in 1992 and reintroduced in both House and Senate), which mental health professionals say would felonize firearms ownership by anyone with any formally diagnosed mental illness. It would also indelibly and forever stigmatize as a "mental defective" anyone who was even briefly mentally ill – never mind the fact that the mentally ill are no more prone to violence than any other American subgroup (and far less prone to violence than certain subgroups we probably need not name). That the term "mental defective" is yet another nasty echo of the Third Reich makes it all the more outrageous an NRA director, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), is one of the sponsors of the legislation.
But in reality this is an old and exceptionally ugly story. In 1994, the matrifascists who ran the Washington State Democratic Party worked via their ideological sisters in the state Department of Social and Health Services to sneak through the chaotic final moments of the legislative session a measure that criminalized firearms ownership by anyone who had participated in any mental health treatment program, in-patient or out-patient, that lasted longer than two weeks. This would have included any one-session-per-month therapy program of more than a single session. The law, which had been narrowly defeated twice but was re-introduced at the last possible minute by DSHS in violation of several promises, was enacted as part of the so-called “Youth Violence Act,” in reality the most draconian anti-gun measure the state has ever imposed, and it was sent to Gov. Mike Lowry – an outspoken anti-gunner himself – for signature. Not one Second-Amendment-advocacy group in the entire state spoke up; all tucked their tails between their legs, wet themselves and hid, cringing in terror lest the anti-gunners accuse them of lobbying to “let crazies have guns.”
Instead, the state Department of Veterans Affairs jumped into the fight. Long at odds with DSHS over the giant welfare bureaucracy's institutionalized feminist hostility to military veterans -- and now furious at what was clearly an especially vicious betrayal -- DVA officials alerted the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and several statewide mental-health professional organizations, and these groups formed an informal coalition that convinced Lowry to item-veto the measure. The veto was a bold move on Lowry's part, one that may have cost him his political career. When his anticipated run for a second gubernatorial term was suddenly blocked by questionable sexual harassment charges a year later, there were rumors it was revenge for his refusal to sign into law the matrifascist attempt to radically increase the number of Washingtonians prohibited to own firearms.
The point, of course, is that the Democrats feel it is absolutely safe to try to limit gun ownership via mental health exclusions – they have learned from long experience even Republican politicians are afraid to object, and they know beyond any scintilla of doubt the Second Amendment community won’t lift so much as a finger to stop them. In this context, Google “Our Lady of Peace Act,” and note that the reasoned objections to the proposal come almost entirely from mental health professional associations, which universally denounce it as an especially egregious attempt to criminalize (and further demonize) mental illness.
And how were we reduced to such dreadful prospects? The short answer is the incessant blundering of President George Bush, by which he squandered and flung away each and every one of the formidable advantages with which he entered the 2004 election campaign. A much longer and more detailed answer – at least as it concerns the ruinous and astonishing screw-ups in Iraq – is provided by the expert criticism of Laurie Mylroie, who despite her former association with the Clinton Administration has been one of Bush's staunchest supporters in the war against terrorist Islam. Mylroie's most recent analysis is available here.
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I'm not the biggest fan of the Material Girl's music. But I thought that this article was both horrifying and telling. A Palestinian terror group has threatened her and her children if she performs in Israel.
From the article:
“She thought she was being targeted because of her Jewish Kabbalah religion. But this group were threatening her because she represents many things they hate about the West.”
I recomend reading it, as marginal as the subject may seem. I, however, feel that it is quite revealing of the hatred Islamic extremists harbor not only for people of the Jewish faith, but for all the West.
Display all comments »Via Ripples, we have this gem.
Also, Bill Whittle is back with STRENGTH Part One and Part Two.
Go. Read. Enjoy.
Be proud.
Display all comments »So many important and/or interesting links this morning, I will confine my comments on each one to a paragraph or two.
First – because I believe aesthetics is generally more basic than politics (though often only because politics is one of the many expressions of aesthetics) – here is a link to a sampling of Leonard Nemoy’s Shekhina photographs: his visions of the female manifestations of the Divine, (so phrased because as far as I have been able to find out, Nemoy does not use the term “Goddess” in his description of his work). A couple of folks including Linda justifiably grumbled that my commentary of May 17 linked to a story about Nemoys’s photographs that had no illustrations. This was true, but it was the news item I was interested in, more specifically the semiotic significance of the photographer’s intent, and the lack of illustration was not for want of trying: I merely neglected to mention I had Googled “Leonard Nemoy Shekhina” and come up with bupkes, while “Sheknina” itself -- Hebrew for the female manifestations of Yahveh -- merely linked to a number of sites on Judaism. A subsequent, more thoughtful search, finally under “Leonard Nemoy Photographs,” predictably led to a bunch of Trekkie artifact-sites but also linked to the gallery’s own webpage, here.
I would be dishonest if I did not add that I am vaguely disappointed with Nemoy’s work. His photographs are technically perfect – exquisitely so – but only two of the images shown here (the left-most and right-most frames in the second row from the top) evoke even slightly the physical reactions Robert Graves describes as indicative of both true poetry and the presence of the Goddess: “...the hairs stand on end, the eyes water, the throat is constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the spine...” Having some knowledge of such matters myself, I regard Graves’ description as unsparingly accurate. Which makes me once again curse the crippling limitations of my own poverty as expressed in the fact I have no scanner nor any other means to transmit visual images and thus have no way to share the few surviving prints from “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer,” work that accompanied me to New York City as part of the book proposal and thus escaped destruction in the 1983 fire. So unless you knew me in Manhattan c. 1969-70, when I first began articulating these images, or unless you lived in Bellingham in 1971, in the Seattle area during the mid-1970s or in Tacoma in 1981, and thus saw examples of my “sandwiches” or photographic collages in various galleries (when the work bore the titles “Premonitions of the Celtic Twilight” or “Divinations in an Equinoctal Fire”), you will have to take my word for it that first-time viewing of this material does indeed often produce the reactions Graves described -- and powerfully so (or so I have many times been told). Though I suspect not even the most profoundly moved viewer experiences anything quite as enrapturing as the phantom electricity that coursed through my body when I stood in the amber gloom of my darkroom and first watched these images emerging on paper coated with alchemical silver – the emulsion emitting a slow, barely audible sibilance of exhalation as the vision became real.
Next on the agenda is a combination of politics and art – a Hindu site that quotes beautifully from the Upanishads, and with an irony that is sometimes as cutting as a tulwar, documents Islam’s 1300-year war on civilization – something with which the Hindu population of the Indian subcontinent has had long, bloody and intimate experience. This is probably another instance of preaching to the choir, but I found the site usefully informative, interestingly composed and compelling enough I bookmarked it. The site is named Satyameva Jayate which I suppose is Dravidian, and which the author says translates as “Truth Alone Triumphs.” The link is here.
On the subject of Islam and its innate and infinitely vicious oppression of women, here are more details on the growing resistance to Canada’s attempt to “celebrate diversity” by imposing a limited form of sharia on Canadian citizens who are of Islamic extraction. Canadian women – including women who have survived the beatings and mutilations characteristic of Moslem upbringing – are rallying to battle this outrage imposed by Canadian political “correctness,” and it appears even the Canadian feminists (who not long ago were condemning Western Civilization as a phallocentric culture of rape, slavery and exploitation) are finally beginning to wake up to the reality of the Islamic threat. The link is to The Toronto Star, which is normally so self-righteously “multicultural,” you get the feeling it would have advised the 1939 Czechs to refrain from expressions of nationality lest they hurt the feelings of the “visiting” Germans. But not now, at least not here.
Lastly, I cannot count the number of times I have called some company to complain, request technical information or perhaps even place an order, and the telebot who flung untold humans out of work and now answers the phone demands I choose a language: “for English, press one.” I find this demand both infuriating and insulting, exactly as if we were the downtrodden subjects of a land conquered by people who speak Some Other Language. It doesn’t help that for many years I have been aware of the undeclared (and genuinely unholy) alliance between Cheap Labor Republicans and Big Bureaucracy Democrats: an alliance that is selfishly destroying the United States with virtually unrestricted immigration -- all in the name of depressing wages, expanding social services and thereby guaranteeing the continued omnipotence of both plutocrats and bureaucrats. Michelle Malkin is furious about it too, and the resulting denunciation – an example of Malkin at her caustic best – is available here.
Display all comments »In regard to the subject of the sarin-containing IED, Smash has a great discussion going on the matter.
Chalabi: He was a very bad boy. So, this is the thanks we get for helping him?
Methought he did protest too much....
For those still bleaching their mind's eye over yesterday's pictorial offering, here's a new one. Aye, lads. Yours will look like that someday, too. ;)
It seems that Courtney's mom has stepped forward. This little one was abducted two years ago, by her father, who was picked up on drug charges right after dropping her off. The family and CPS are holding a hearing to determine the veracity of the mom's claims.
To CPS: If this really is her mom, and it's clear that she loves her daughter, just wants her back, and wants to provide for her, get out of the way, OK? This is a chance for you to prove that you aren't all about splitting families up.
Give some support to Operation Smile. You'll be glad you did.
Finally, it's worth noting that this page is best viewed at 1024x768 pixels, or better.
Unless anything else happens that inspires me to post again today, have the weekend of your choice.
Display all comments »Not much time for long screeds from my hand today, I fear.
In addition to the usual reports overplaying this, and marginalizing that, here are a few links that might be of interest:
The sarin may be old, and it is possible that the person improvising the IED did not know what they had their hands on, but as one official pointed out, the real question is: "Where did it come from?"
Also, there's more here than meets the eye, but my take on the implications is that Chalabi has been a very bad boy.
It seems to me that people would be screaming, "Jackbooted thugs!" if the Republicans were to do this. I just wanted to note that for when they follow suit in the interest of security, and the media spins it to make people froth at the mouth.
You want "America to be America Again", Senator Kerry? Fine. Just shut up and get the hell out of the way.
Not only is he brave, but strong, and lucky too. He's hurt, but from his reported comments, he's plucky and he's going to be fine. Good on ya, Malcolm.
For a moment of sheer , "Ewww!", take a peek here. Dear lord. His...pectoral region...is more generous than mine!
Ewww.
For God's sake, what kind of parent can just go off and leave their little one? She's three. THREE. I can't begin to convey how this hits me. I'm a mother. You don't let yourself get separated from your babies. Period. Tell me someone is holding this little girl and telling her that it's going to be all right? She's so scared. If you're someone she loves and trusts, please come forward.
Display all comments »Well, in answer to some feedback I've received, and out of a feminine desire to clean house and change the curtains, as it were, this page has a different look.
(puffs strand of hair out of eyes/dusts off hands)
Whaddaya think?
For those of you who are wondering if it is only your imagination that mass media is suppressing the story of how Muslims tortured Nick Berg to death in the name of Islam and its chief demon Allah by hacking Berg’s head off with a butcher knife, here are links to reports by Dennis Prager and Brent Bozell, each documenting the infuriating extent to which your suppressed-story suspicion is demonstrably true.
While most of us have long recognized “the media” as becoming an ever-greater source of leftist agitation even as it becomes an ever-less-important source of real information, few of us – myself included (and remember I was part of mass media through four decades) – ever imagined the media would so blatantly cross the line from bias to maliciously providing aid and comfort to the enemy. But by suppressing and/or downplaying the Nick Berg story, simultaneously suppressing and/or downplaying the story of the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal (which is literally the most expensive, far-reaching criminal conspiracy in human history), and at the same time radically overplaying the non-story of the prisoner abuse -- mainstream media has indeed crossed that line. It is no longer informational media with a leftist, pro-Islamic bias. It has now clearly allied itself with the enemy – especially with his propaganda apparatus -- and it deserves to be condemned accordingly.
But how did this happen?
Most of us are at least dimly aware of the various feminist essays on educational practice – manifestos like Myriam Miedzian’s Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link between Masculinity and Violence – that urge strict, often draconian measures to achieve what amounts to the psychological castration of all male children. These measures include compulsory “anti-violence conditioning” for boys (reinforced by forcible medication whenever feminist-indoctrinated officials deem necessary), discouragement of “male” instincts by bans on competitive sports and even competitive scholarship, and ultimately such beyond-the-schoolyard “reforms” as revocation of the Second Amendment and prohibition of firearms ownership by anyone save police, soldiers and a handful of others carefully screened by a presumably now-thoroughly feminized (and therefore trustworthy) bureaucracy. Indeed, says Miedzian, the mere existence of the Second Amendment is like providing “pyromaniacs with matches” in that it allows instinctively violent males to have access to guns.
Much of this sounds too far out for anything but satirical consideration until we pause to reflect that Miedzian’s brazenly matrifascist theories (and others just like them) have been embraced as infallible dogma by the nation’s schools of education and are precisely the source of the vicious zero-tolerance policies our public schools have adopted for the malicious persecution of such grave political crimes as drawing pictures of armed soldiers, playing cops and robbers at recess, and in one dreadful case – in which the life of a male honor student was destroyed forever by summary expulsion and subsequent prosecution as a felon – driving an automobile to school in which a cased, unloaded hunting rifle had forgetfully been left locked in the trunk.
The common denominator in every one of these instances and thousands more like them is the unacknowledged belief of teachers and school officials that the real purpose of public education is not instruction in basic skills or even precepts of culture but rather fighting a total war against “male violence” – a total war that to the public remains mostly unknown, and very deliberately so. If this war were reduced to a single slogan, it would be the statement so often repeated by the matrifascist spokeswomen of the all-males-are-rapists faction of feminism: “Boys must be raised to be like little girls.”
Thus in the culture-war – which is really a gender-war (waged by a circle of man-hating harpies so enraged they would destroy American liberty and even Western Civilization to topple what they decry as the “patriarchy” of the hated penis) – the teachers have become the zampolitiki of America’s children. And these new commissars have virtually as much power over our children as their former Soviet counterparts wielded over the oppressed peoples of the Gulag Empire.
But don’t just take my word; an eye-opening primer on the whole disturbing subject is The War Against Boys, by Christina Hoff Sommers.
Apparently America’s mass media – which is staffed from journalism schools as dogmatically matrifascist as the colleges of education (and is therefore as matrifascist-dominated as any zero-tolerance classroom) – has now decided that it’s job is to take over at the very culture-point where the teachers and school officials relinquish control. In other words, as the teachers are zampolitiki to the nation’s children, so now are mass media to be zampolitiki to the culture at large.
Certainly this was the openly acknowledged intent of the feminists who demanded “compensatory promotion” – immediate appointment to key editorships or coveted reporting assignments, with full waver of the years of experience and informal apprenticeship hitherto required. Such demands were first voiced at New York City and NYC metropolitan-area newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s – I was there – and by the end of the ‘70s, the same antagonistic brand of radical feminism had metastasized throughout American journalism. I even knew some of the original militants personally: one of the places I drank during 1969 and 1970, and again when I was in Manhattan in the middle 1980s, was the fabled Lion’s Head, a writer’s bar and classic Greenwich Village saloon, and many of these women drank there too. Their hatred of all things male was obvious by 1970; by the ‘80s they made no secret of the fact their intention was to get absolute control of the national information flow – and eventually to use that control to abolish American liberty, destroy Western Civilization, “overthrow patriarchy” and impose a female-supremacist version of the Third Reich.
For measurements of matrifascism's success, look at our public schools and our mainstream media together. Whether zero tolerance or maximum distortion, its an expression of the same ideology.
Thus the parallel – by now probably approaching obviousness – between the tyrannically anti-male frenzies of the zero-tolerance classrooms and the self-righteously anti-war, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Western-Civilization tirades of the mainstream media. Indeed what we see in the media is merely the Miedzian manifesto writ fretfully large: the notion that war, America, Judaeo-Christianity and Western Civilization are all “intrinsically violent” “male” institutions that must be tethered and castrated lest all life be swept from the planet. Better red than dead. Better Islam than extinction. Better the burka than the burying ground. And George Bush from this perspective is the very worst of the lot: the archetypical white warrior male, of whom generations of drilling soldiers formerly sang (in the halycon years before political “correctness” ended all such joyously proud singing), “their heads are up/ their dicks are out/ their balls are swingin’ in cadence-count” – which is precisely why the matrifascists and eunuch-sycophants of the mass media hate Bush so much, and why it would not matter if he had won election by a landslide, had fought no wars at all, and had never blundered even once. By his mere flight-suited, cowboy-hatted, pickup-truck existence, President Bush is the symbol of that one gutsy kid whose maleness they cannot ever suppress -- anathema to those who would force all the males of the entire nation “to be like little girls.”
But what if America is defeated, and as a result of America’s defeat, Islam’s global caliphate is triumphant? What if all females are subjugated, sexually mutilated, forced into burkas? According to strict matrifascist doctrine, that will be just what it takes to bring about a final world-wide revolution by women – an uprising that would “rescue” humanity from the absolute darkness of Islam merely by substituting the equal darkness of “gynocracy.” Thus my assertion – often jeered at by those who have never read the hateful gospels of matrifascism or witnessed the infinite malevolence at its core – that "matrifascism" is precisely what American feminism has become, and that as such, it is the most dangerously subversive movement in human history.
The media – most of it – is now simply behaving in accordance with the matrifascist script.
Hence two more links. One is a discussion of the dangers of multiculturalism, a thoughtful essay that grew out of a local Maryland political controversy (about which I know nothing) but is linked here because its general observations about the subversion of American liberty and the deliberate belittling of Western Civilization unfortunately apply throughout our nation. The other, from Somalia, is yet another portrait of what life under Islam is truly like, available here, yet another reflection of what is at stake in this war.
Display all comments »If you read one thing today, let it be this from The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Best quote:
"Just because somebody "hates" you doesn't automatically mean that you're wrong."
This is like preaching to the choir to the folks who hang out around here, but once again, Misha has provided us with a gorgeous Cluebat for the next time a nearby dolt starts whinging about our "international image".
Why am I tempted to gaze at Teddy Kennedy when I say that?
Display all comments »Before anyone gets their undies in a twist in regard to the "razing" of Rafah, just remember these little tidbits:
1. Hamas has based operations out of there.
2. Tunnels for smuggling weapons used by terrorists.
3. The mutilated bodies of the Israeli soldiers killed last week were taken into Rafah.
4. Rafah has served as a hotbed of violence for years.
5. Rafah was one of the communities in which Palestinians celebrated the 9/11 tragedy.
Not only found, but rigged to explode.
Display all comments »by Loren Bliss
Four days ago I wrote a half-dozen relatively brief paragraphs to accompany a focal-point link to yet another bright bit of evidence underscoring the reality of the resurrection of the Goddess. The work was written in an interlude of intense creativity, its segues were more poetic than logical, and in general I was pleased with its form and content. But then Fate intervened, and the source of my pleasure was destroyed by some mysterious quirk of electronics just as I was about to save it to this site. What follows is reconstruction and enlargement of what I said in that aborted effort:
Quite frankly I believe the resurrection of the Goddess is the most important news of the past two thousand years at least. It is a story the pressures of which I have lived with knowingly since 1969, and unwittingly for 18 years before that. The details behind those statements – and my own associated personal odyssey of ferreting out hidden truths of folklore and modern semiotics and attempting to assemble them all in a coherent form that would earn proper readership and recognition – was the subject of a nearly finished but now-forever-lost book tentatively entitled “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer.” Its manuscript, the accompanying photographs and all the associated research notes were destroyed in the fire that burned the late Helen Farias’ residence to the ground in 1983. Ironically, the fire occurred just as samples of the text and photographs – particularly the latter – were beginning to seriously interest some heavy-duty publishing industry types in New York City.
A second book, an effort on which Helen and I were informally collaborating, was also lost. This was never titled, but we thought of it as simply “the archaeology project.” It had begun as a spin-off of our extensive but separate research into Goddess-related questions c. 1971-1976. Helen had read an early draft of “Dancer” and ever afterward said that it and the works cited in its bibliography – especially those by Robert Graves – gave her “the vocabulary to describe what (she) always knew was true.” Eventually she would enlarge that vocabulary to become one of the world’s leading scholars on the history of the Goddess and a significant writer on female spirituality in general. But the archaeological matter quickly separated itself from those inquiries and evolved into a quest of its own: a cataloguing of evidence, megalithic and linguistic, that Europeans of the late Bronze Age had gone beyond their extensive Eastern North American settlements, reached what is now Washington State and remained here long enough to erect astronomically aligned standing stones and hew deep, similarly functional trenches from the solid rock of certain remote mountain tops. Using a system based on Helen’s first-ever compilation of aboriginal place-names and my own conjectural “megalithic grid” (derived from the astronomical alignments of one known site and probable alignments between that site and others), we had identified another 30 possible sites. Of these, we had explored a dozen, eliminated six, and in 1977 extensively photographed and mapped six others. The work lagged when Helen went to graduate school in London and I took a part-time college teaching job and started a freelance photography and media- consulting business to supplement my newspaper salary, but it was always our intention to take up the quest for archaeological evidence again as soon as time allowed -- until of course the fire made that forever impossible by destroying all our data: Helen’s painstakingly assembled vocabularies; my maps, map overlays, photographs, site reports, and raw field notes. (Helen's death in 1994 had no connection to the fire.)
I had merely skated over these matters in that lost post of four days ago – writing about the fire and all of its attendant losses is dreadfully painful even now, 21 years after the fact – but perhaps it was my very avoidance that so angered Fate and thus prompted the glitch that obliterated everything I had said. In any case, this writing here tonight is very different: it is structured less poetically and more in keeping with linear logic, and the content is thus much more fully developed.
The lost May 12 post began with a blistering condemnation of that ultimate obscenity called Islam for its mutilation murder of Nicholas Berg, who was not beheaded by a single clean merciful stroke but was tormented by slow throat-hacking butchery until his screams finally gagged to silence and his head came off by its hair and the knife-wielder triumphantly brandished Nick Berg’s head and the chorus of killers grunted their repugnant Allahu Akbar doggerel over the twitching corpse -- Goddess take Nick to her bosom and the vengeance of Cerridwen be on all of Islam, so mote it be.
I deliberately avoided saying that last Goddess part in the lost May 12 post, and perhaps that incipient apostasy – the fact I so rarely proclaim my Paganism in public – is another reason Fate chose to smite me with an inexplicable glitch. Or maybe it was the Christian god smiting me for what I said next:
Listening earlier that day (or maybe the day before) to President George Bush promise that Nick Berg’s killers would be “brought to justice,” I thought about how this same President had so glibly but now obviously so falsely promised that justice would also be done in Fallujah for the murders of four American civilians there, and then I remembered how many other times in this life we have been spoon-fed this exact same smugly patronizing, patently false pablum: by President Carter after the outrages in Tehran, by President Reagan after the outrages in Lebanon, by President Clinton after the outrages in Somalia, and now here was George Bush for whom I had voted in 2000 joining all the others who had lied about “justice” being brought to our enemies, and I realized what he was saying was nothing more than another invitation to “step right up.” Suddenly I knew I had lost all of whatever faith I ever had in George Bush’s leadership because it was now obvious this is a President who is nearly as shackled as any Democrat by the ethos of political “correctness” and the shibboleths of victim-identity cultism and the drooling- idiot mandate to “celebrate diversity.” We do not need “diversity.” What we need is Nolichucky Jack or maybe Heinz Guderian, but what we have instead is a Good Shepherd who turns the other cheek, grants Fallujah an amnesty and calls Islam a “religion of peace.”
Unfortunately come November we will have to choose between President Bush, whose record of bungling both at home and abroad is literally breathtaking and probably without precedent in the history of the Republic, and Candidate Kerry, who has already told us he regards Islam’s 1300-year war against civilization as a mere crime problem, intends to treat it accordingly, and thus makes no secret of his intent to surrender (even more) United States sovereignty to that international criminal cartel known as the United Nations. Apparently we have arrived at a point in history akin to that period in the Dark Ages when kings were immortalized with names like Hugo the Sluggard, Charles the Simpleton and Phillip the Flatulent. That too was a time of Islamic horrors -- horrors widespread and grim -- and it took Charles Martel to halt the Moslems at Tours and the Polish hero John Sobieski to finally rout them at Vienna 951 years later: blessed achievements bought dearly by the blood of Westernesse, reversals for which long-begrudging Islam has ever sought revenge. Which is precisely the dread background of the awful choice we will make in November: a chronic bungler versus a man whose contempt for America is so great, he has wantonly given aid and comfort to our foes and no doubt will do so again, even as he will probably further undermine our liberty, compromise our borders and – based on his colleagues’ well-documented disrespect for the Constitution – almost certainly attempt to silence his critics with unapologetic tyranny, probably with violently disastrous results. Verily, I fear for the Republic.
Paranoia? No indeed. The following, which my colleague Linda fished out of the Kerry for President website and passed onto me, is especially instructive:
President Kerry did the absolutely right thing (Editor’s note: by banishing a blogger named Kos from the Kerry website). Because Kos is a part of the mainstream left and a DNC insider, the average American could get the idea that his comments are a reflection of the Party’s feelings about American and Americans. The sheeple might think that we hate America and all that it stands for. We do of course, but they must not find that out until we have seized the levers of power. Then there’s gonna be some changes baby. (Posted by Bob in MN on April 3, 2004, 10:44 p.m.)
Anyone who doubts the veracity of our reporting can see for themselves: the link to the site is here, after which you simultaneously type [ctrl] [f], wait for the search form to appear, then type “gonna be some changes” into the appropriate blank (without the quotation marks) and hit [enter].
The insufferably self-righteous ideological smugness of today’s Democrats – reminiscent of Nazi Party members or Soviet Communists of yore – is yet another reason I will of course vote for the bungler. Conservative though I may be, ultimately I am also a libertarian, and at the very least, I think George Bush will do less harm than John Kerry to the Republic I love and to the Constitution I swore an oath 45 years ago to defend with my life “against all enemies foreign or domestic.” Moreover some of Bush’s advisors might finally figure out how to take a page from the Russians or the old German Wehrmacht or the Philippine Insurrection or perhaps even the American Indian Wars (which really offer the best historical parallels to the present struggle) and wage a proper, unapologetically brutal war against the infinite brutality of Islam. Though on this point, I deeply disagree with my colleague Linda: to me, the sin of Abu Ghraib is not that the prisoners were abused – they are not U.S. citizens and hence are not protected by our Constitution, and neither are they prisoners of war, so they are not protected by the Geneva Accords and the Rules of Land Warfare. Indeed, as enemy terrorists, they are technically not protected at all – and the great ruinous sins of Abu Ghraib are thus (first) that U.S. security had become so astonishingly lax that word and pictures of the abuse leaked out; that (second) the U.S. media has distorted what is hardly more than frat-house hazing into the morally imbecillic equivalent of slow beheadings and deaths by plastic-shredder; and that (third) the same media is now using its own malevolent distortions as part of an unprecedented jihad against both the President and the nation. Which is not to deny the role the President’s constant bungling has played in fueling the media’s scorn – anyone who appoints a notorious out-sourcer to head a program ostensibly intended to curtail out-sourcing surely deserves whatever jeers he provokes. Alas, we need far better. At this point in history – especially given that 9/11 was more than anything else Islam’s declaration its 1300-year-war against civilization is once again renewed – we need nothing less than an Arthur to lead the battle against the encroaching Islamic darkness. But the bungler is surely better than the would-be tyrant.
I find it no coincidence that Islam, which is founded on the sadistic subjugation of women and the savage torture and killing of all dissidents and non-believers, has launched its newest effort to enslave all humanity in a global caliphate by attacking the U.S. just as what I think of as the Second Wave of the resurrection of the Goddess is beginning to crest. (In this reckoning, which was central to the lost book “Glimpses of a Pale Dancer,” the First Wave was the spiritual quest at the core of the old 1960s Counterculture: the self-proclaimed “Revolution in Consciousness” that -- whether by conspiracy, folly or both – was too soon perverted into a mere travesty of its original self, a maelstrom of drug-abuse, zomboid faddism and the general human tendency toward the lowest common denominator of chaos.) In any case, the Second Wave is the institutionalization of many of the beliefs and visions that, in First Wave times, would have gotten the visionaries themselves institutionalized had they even dared speak of them. Visions of the Goddess have now spread far beyond the existential paganism of the art scene and the purposeful Paganism of resurrected modern practice, so that even in mainstream Jewish and Christian worship there is now recognition of the female aspects of the divine. The most recent example of this – or at least the most recent example to come to my attention – is the collection of photographs made by Leonard Nemoy (yes, that Leonard Nemoy, Spock of Star Trek fame) now showing in a Northhampton, Massachusetts gallery. Which brings us finally to the link I mentioned in the opening paragraph, available here. As Buffy Sainte- Marie sang so very long ago, “Goddess is alive/Magic is afoot” – which I think is precisely the underlying, epicentral (and almost entirely unacknowledged) reason the master-misogynists of Islam have now renewed their war against Westernesse. Islam has chosen the United States as its primary target not only because we are the nation where women are more proudly free than anyplace else on the planet, but because we are also the nation wherein recognition of the Goddess is most widespread and growing the fastest. In this context, the semiotic implications of the Statue of Liberty are profound.
Display all comments »The media has attached themselves to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal with an unholy glee. In its way, that's as should be. As the liberators of Iraq, we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to the highest, purest ideals of comportment.
Lynndie England and her ilk are a disgrace to their uniforms, the Service, and this nation. I'm all for hanging them out to dry. I don't care that she's pregnant -- in my book, it's just further proof of the dereliction of her duties. Brigadier General Karpinski is just as culpable. Court martial her for her lack of discipline and leadership in Abu Ghraib.
I've blogged before about the damage these soldiers have done to the cause of liberty in the Middle East.
Which brings me to poor Nick Berg.
I've been silent until now on the issue, feeling that other bloggers have covered it well. I haven't watched the video. My imagination fills it all in: the ominous air of his captors, the knife, the pain and screaming and blood, spreading in a pool. In my mind's eye, I can clearly see his head, displayed, and imagine the orgiastic ecstasy of his murderers.
I don't need to watch the video, because I know what we're up against, and I weep for Nick and his parents the way I wept on 9/11. The cold, calculating rage I felt then is refueled. Oh no, my rage is not hot. It is cold and still within me. I know it will never burn itself out. Thanks to this anger, I will neither forget nor forgive.
This, with so much incontrovertible evidence that there are, among my own countrymen, people who hate this country and its duly elected President more than they love freedom and the lives of their brethren, galvanizes me.
The fact is that the media, as evidenced in my last post, would rather focus on events that can damage the Presidency. They want to dishearten the American people. They don't care about the barbarian hordes howling on our doorstep. They refuse to absorb and propagate the real message behind 9/11, suicide bombings, stonings, honor killings, and the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg.
They would rather indulge their unreasoning hatred of one effective man -- George W. Bush -- than work to bolster the spirit of the American people and tell the truth about how much we have achieved since September, 2001. They wage a psychological war of propaganda, blinded by hatred and political agendas.
They hold up Abu Ghraib, and marginalize the murder of Nick Berg.
Likewise, we have celebrities, like has-been Chryssie Hynd, actively rooting for the enemy's victory!
This is unforgivable. It shows a disconnect from reality so profound that it cannot be tolerated.
Confrontation is called for. As servicemen and women fight and bleed on enemy soil, so should we fight the forces of betrayal and prejudice in our own midst. Our internal enemies are beyond reason. It is time to redouble efforts to refute their lies, bolster those who have been studying the flow of current events with fairness, and open the eyes of those who can be saved.
Blogging is a powerful tool to achieve this end, yet more could be done. Write to the editors of the local newspapers, call the local news stations, demand the publication of balanced op-eds from both sides of the coin. Write to and call all the major news outlets, demanding truth-based reporting pulled only from raw data. Demand that journalists refrain from the use of scare quotes and emotional language. Boycott entertainment featuring performers whose agenda is anti-American.
If nothing else, continue pounding family and friends with links to articles and sites presenting the unvarnished reality: for 1300 years, radical Islam has sought to force us all into submission. It espouses murder, rape, and slavery. It believes that it is the One True Faith, and unlike other faiths, has never abandoned the edict to make converts at swordpoint. Nick Berg's is not a sad, isolated story that will sit as a footnote in history. Nick Berg, Goddess embrace him, is representative of what the followers of the moon god's Cult of Death would do to us all.
Remember that. Spread it around. Let no one forget Nick Berg.
Display all comments »I've been remiss is adding someone to the blogroll. Bastardsword is incredibly well written, stunningly well thought, and gorgeously presented.
He is linked now, and forevermore...
(Note to George: I really, really like the button you made that links back over here. Thank you! I wish I knew how to do that...)
Display all comments »(From the The Instapundit.)
Click the link above to see Glenn's recount of an account by Toby Harnden of Daily Telegraph. (Source link is there as well.)
But then she came to the point. Not only had she ‘known’ the Iraq war would fail but she considered it essential that it did so because this would ensure that the ‘evil’ George W. Bush would no longer be running her country. Her editors back on the East Coast were giggling, she said, over what a disaster Iraq had turned out to be. ‘Lots of us talk about how awful it would be if this worked out.’ Startled by her candour, I asked whether thousands more dead Iraqis would be a good thing.
Many of us have been saying it all along, and now here is the proof that the media is waging a psychological propaganda-based war to undermine America's war effort against terror and terrorists. They'd rather undermine a President than support victory and ensure our future safety. Thereby, they are aiding and abetting our enemy.
That's treason.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary of Law defines treason thusly:
1. The offense of attempting to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance, or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power; disloyalty; treachery.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines treason as:
Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
We know what the penalty should be.
UPDATE: Follow this link to Hugh Hewitt. Read every word. Pass it on.
Once again, thanks Blackfive.
Display all comments »I am still trying to find or reconstruct the would-have-been commentary my computer inexplicably ate three nights ago, so far without success. This was first infuriating, then profoundly dismaying, now merely depressing, and for three very separate reasons: it was unusually good writing in that it segued through a half-dozen seeming unrelated subjects and tied them into a single package of relevance (something I often attempt but don’t always achieve); the style of the prose itself represented a major breakthrough in my (often difficult) journey beyond the impersonal, imperial voice of professional journalism – a journey I hope is toward the letter-from-a-knowledgeable-friend tone that seems characteristic of all the more effective blogs; and, lastly, it was the first time I have ever mentioned in print or publicly acknowledged the fact that, 32 years ago, I was one of the two human victims of an infinitely ruinous house-fire.
The other person and I escaped physical injury simply because neither of us was present when the house burned, though the flames killed the owner’s three very beloved domestic cats. The house was a huge old cedar-log pioneer cabin on rural property in Washington state that had remained in the owner’s family since construction of the house, barn and outbuildings in the 1870s, and I had stored my files, books and a number of other possessions in one of the house's vacant rooms when I returned to New York City in 1983. The owner, the late Helen Farias, who was one of my dearest and closest friends, was at work at Western Washington University 20 miles away when the fire broke out, and she learned of what had happened only when she returned at the end of the day. The emotional blow was devastating and the material loss was immeasurable: Helen’s home was burned literally to the ground, her animals and gardens were dead, and all her work and all of mine were ashes. The latter included two books in progress – one a collaboration with Helen – plus all the related photographs, drawings and research material, and nearly everything else of any creative or professional consequence I had done prior to that awful moment. The fire was of course one of those disasters that reshapes a human life from top to bottom – it certainly had that impact on me – but the cannons of journalism (at least journalism as I learned to practice it) demanded I remain silent about the entire matter. The lost blog was thus a kind of Coming-Out, the long-range implications of which I cannot possibly assess, and I am especially vexed Fate chose to obstruct it as it was obstructed – though in this life, Fate has only very seldom been my friend.
That said – and presumably now that you understand the reasons for my sulking absence (though I apologize nevertheless) – we have arrived at today’s focal point, a link to a far brighter and more attractive subject, both literally and figuratively. Our Declaration of Independence tells us that the cornerstones of American freedom are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and though Islam finds the entire ethos infinitely infuriating, it is Islam’s secretly envious pornographically minded hatred of our potential for earthly happiness – especially the decidedly sensual pursuit of earthly happiness by women – that powers and inflames Islamic blood-lust to global magnitude. Hence – not only because it will surely infuriate Moslems and is thus an appropriate uplifted finger of defiance in the face of the false god Allah and his sodomitic, whore-son bastard of a Prophet, but also because it prompted me to smile myself out of this morning’s lingering dark mood -- here is a delightful example of that light-hearted proud exquisite brazenness so typical of the women of Westernesse, especially women who live on the island of Manhattan (which Mayor John Lindsay used to call “Fun City,” and which during my youth in the late 1960s was most assuredly just that): some Fun City Fun courtesy of The New York Post and one of its staffers (who is herself clearly working hard to overcome the old, stuffy canons of journalism).
Display all comments »Nothing new today thanks to the fact the computer gods -- who have always despised me for the Typewriter-Age blasphemer I truly am -- snatched away six hours of work the very second it was completed. Subsequent searches of this computer consumed another nearly four hours and turned up nothing, so I can only assume the work is gone forever, and that my effort was therefore a total waste of time and energy. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe not.
Display all comments »The first of today’s focal points is the grisly story of a Palestinian woman who as a young girl survived the Islamic ritual of “honor” killing. She had been seduced – essentially raped and impregnated – by a neighbor, and her family’s response was to douse her with gasoline and set her afire, then try to poison her when the burns alone failed to kill her. I link to it with a shudder of genuine repugnance, but I think it is essential reading because it reflects more graphically than anything I have ever seen the obscenity of Islam, the dreadful fate that awaits all women everywhere should the forces of the global caliphate prevail, the unspeakable horror that confronts Israel every moment of its existence -- and thus precisely why it is our soldiers are in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for the survival of American liberty and Western Civilization. Thanks to The Ottawa Citizen for defying the cult of political “correctness” to publish this report, available here.
As bright Yang against the foregoing dark Yin, the second of today’s focal points is an intriguing discussion of periodic cicadae and prime numbers, specifically 13 and 17, speculating on how these cicadas -- who are loudly emergent this year -- might have arrived at prime-number life-and-mating cycles. The resultant probabilities should give us hope. If cicadas can evolve lives measured in prime numbers and thus escape their natural predators, perhaps homo sapiens sapiens can evolve a future blessedly free of “honor” killings, suicide bombings and indeed all other forms of Islamic atrocities and terrorism. Meanwhile, let us contemplate the wondrous workings of nature, which we can do by going here.
Display all comments »Like Loren, I'm off looking for offbeat, uplifting news today. Current affairs can bog you down after a while, and it's necessary to get out, breathe the air, look around, and experience what we're fighting for.
So...
Do you live near a Long John Silver's? If so, then go get your free giant shrimp!
This is fun, but no joke. In honor of the evidence supporting the past existence of saltwater on Mars, participating Long John Silvers restaurants are offering customers a single Giant Shrimp. The promotion runs today only, from 2 to 5 p.m..
Here's the Press Release from the restaurant's own website.
I wish there were a LJS near me. sigh
Display all comments »There is really nothing new from the Middle East. Islam continues its assault on American liberty, Western Civilization and all persons or things Jewish, and most of all rages at the fact the proud women of Westernesse have never (even at the times they were most exploited) been forced to wear the cloak of self-loathing that is the burka or suffer the genital mutilations prescribed by gleefully sadistic mullahs.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., and throughout the land it governs, there is really nothing new either. An economic crisis looms at the gas pumps, but the politicians continue their assaults on each other, on taxpayers, on the Constitution, on the very intelligence of the human species and – most of all – on the ability of America to defend herself, no matter whether the assaults are deliberate expressions of subversive intent or coincidental exclamations of simple incompetence.
In other words, though Sunday was Mother’s Day (the modern echo of a very ancient holiday originally convened to honor the Great Goddess, the Mother of All Being), nothing has changed during the weekend. Hence – precisely to counteract the karmic Standstill of changelessness (readers of the I Ching will understand) – today’s focal points are expressions of change: change of focus, change of face, change of pace, yes and perhaps also a microcosmic and entirely positive version of the typhoon that is said to result when some Taoist butterfly is unusually vigorous in winging from blossom to blossom. Hence what we have here today is a summertime variant of a thoroughly secular but nevertheless utterly delightful Christmas song: “these are a few of my favorite things.”
The first link is to a dog story. Dogs are unquestionably my most favorite of all living creatures, genuinely down-to-earth and truly magical all at once, and this story illustrates some of the more wonderful attributes of canine consciousness and being. I caution that it will probably not leave you dry-eyed, but whatever sadness it evokes, it seems to me it is the kind of sadness that is more blessing and inspiration than cause for depression, close kin to the triumphant sadness of a life ended in some heroic cause or victory, and thus an undeniable expression of profound gratitude that such benevolence exists, however ephemeral it might seem. The story – of a very special dog who served a very special need – is here.
In one of the more intriguing accounts that surfaced during the weekend’s flow of news, a British newspaper reports that 100,000 Greeks are attempting to revive classical paganism. The revivalists may even include rural folks who never abandoned paganism, though the story merely implies this and does not make it clear. In any case, these pagans are encountering all sorts of obstructions from the fact Greece is officially a Greek Orthodox Christian country. Among the obstructions is an absurd ban on using the Parthenon – a temple of Athena – for its original purpose. Once again we see how infinitely blessed we were by our Founders, who gave us a Constitution that protects religious liberty (the recent efforts of the Left to pervert the Constitution into a weapon against Judaeo-Christianity not withstanding). The Grecian link is here.
Last is the sort of story you should keep to show your children or grandchildren when they lament that there is nothing left anywhere on earth to investigate or explore. It is a description of a recently discovered phenomenon in Africa – a widespread, curiously repetitive circular formation that is apparently a creation of nature but nevertheless stubbornly refuses to yield its secrets to science. It is thus a bit like the Appalachian balds (said by the Cherokee to be the mountain-top shrines where the fair-skinned Old People invoked their gods – magically kept clear of trees even now in anticipation of the gods’ return) or the Mima Mounds of Southwestern Washington (about which local Indian myth says absolutely nothing – at least nothing that has been shared with White Eyes). The African link is here. I hope you appreciate my whimsical mood and eclectic choices.
Display all comments »I cannot focus well enough to post anything of genuine value today; the constant oppression of an apparently endless wave of personal setbacks has once again strangled this column at birth. The project by which I had intended to finance my return to East Tennessee has proven impossible – a direct consequence of the unreported but growing economic panic triggered by runaway fuel prices – and there are no other fund-raising options available to me, now or ever. Given the fact the fuel price-hikes are likely to be permanent, and the fact the attendant economic dislocation is likely to last for many more years than I (at age 64) am likely to have left, this means I am now forever trapped in a hopelessly uncertain, thus infinitely miserable living situation – an emotional miasma from which there is no longer any possibility for escape. Hence my selfish, straw-clutching need for the dark comic relief of gallows humor, as in a strange episode where life not only makes a mockery of art, but imitates the deliciously outrageous satire of South Park at that, a story available here. Perhaps it is only my present frame of mind, but I think elements of this story are extremely funny, especially the solemnly reported part about “swords,” all the more so in the context of fanatically self-righteous, zero-tolerance public-school bureaucrats who clearly know nothing whatsoever about the elaborate adventure-fantasies of boy-children. I truly hope none of you are offended by my choice; perhaps I will feel somewhat better tomorrow.
Display all comments »I believe that this article needs a lot of attention.
This is the face of one of our children, bereaved by 9/11. It is also a telling insight into the character of the man who declared War on Terror.
It isn't about oil. It isn't about imperialism. It isn't about big corporations, or money, or any of that.
It's about making sure it never happens again.
It's about keeping families whole.
It's about keeping our children safe.
(Hat tip to Blackfive.)
Display all comments »Anyone who doubts that hatred of all things Jewish is already institutionalized in certain organizations within the United States need only listen to National Public Radio’s brazenly antagonistic coverage of Israel: as if even the most depraved acts of the most viciously fanatical Islamic terrorists are thoroughly justified by the mere existence of the Jewish homeland state. This is one of the main reasons I stopped listening to NPR long ago – its bigotry, formerly subtle, had become as blatant as a Ku Klux Klan rally.
Occasionally while I was still listening to NPR I wondered if perhaps I was hearing something akin to the hateful propaganda with which the German people were deluged in the years just before Hitler’s electoral triumph. During the period in question, the late 1920s through the middle 1930s, the Germans were the best educated, most literate people on earth: one study I remember from my long-ago undergraduate days stated that in the years of Hitler's ascent, Germans also had the planet’s highest-per-capita numbers of houses wired for electricity and therefore the greatest per-capita numbers of telephones and radios. Of course the Germans also suffered from genuinely ruinous inflation – something the obscene spiral of petroleum prices is bound to inflict on the United States -- but even allowing for the climate of fear and rage such inflation inevitably produces, the fact that an electorate so well educated and so materially modern so enthusiastically embraced Adolf Hitler and his “final solution” surely puts the lie to all the bleeding-heart theories that tyranny is bred of poverty, deprivation and ignorance. Moreover, “embrace” is precisely the correct verb, for the man known as Der Fuhrer had spelled out in graphic detail on the pages of Mein Kampf his intent to exterminate the Jews – just as the Arafats and imams with whom NPR is so toxically smitten make no secret of their genocidal intentions today.
Precisely because I do not listen to NPR, I missed NPR reporter Julie McCarthy’s denunciation of a murdered Israeli mother and her five murdered children for “provoking” their own slayings merely by their presence in Gaza. Though the world already knows of the atrocity itself, it is entirely proper to repeat the names of its victims: the roll-call of the dead is one of the ways my Scots ancestors invoked the divine curse of vengeance on their enemies. The murdered mother’s name was Tali Hatuel, and she bore in her womb a son, who was slain but 30 days from his birth. Knowing expectant parents – having been one once myself – I don’t doubt the son had already been named too, but apparently today’s journalists are such craven cowards, no one possessed enough courage to defy pro-abortion censorship and ask what that dead boy’s name might have been. The other four murdered children were Tali’s daughters, ages 11, 9, 7 and 2 respectively; their names were Hila, Hadar, Roni and Meirav. The two Islamic “heroes” (the title with which the Palestinian terror organizations have already canonized the slayers) disabled the mother with a burst of gunfire and gleefully shot each of her children in the face while the children were still conscious and screaming in terror. Finally one of the two killers pressed the muzzle of his 9mm pistol against Tali’s infant-swollen belly and fired three times to destroy the precious life within. Then the two terrorists fled but were promptly wasted by Israeli riflemen – unfortunately clean quick ends for gloating sadists who deserved to be gut-shot and left on some desert anthill in ever worsening agony to contemplate the slow approach of their own extinction.
Probably if I had heard Julie McCarthy say what she said about Tali Hatuel and her five children, I would have picked up my radio and hurled it across the room and my blood pressure would have surged somewhere past the 200-psi mark and maybe some blood vessel somewhere in my skull or chest cavity would have blown and I would now be one of the staffers pounding a phantom Royal Standard in the great newsroom in the sky, so I am once again glad I stopped listening to NPR years ago. But Jeff Jacoby of the The Boston Globe did not stop listening to NPR and he heard everything McCarthy said, and this is part of what Jacoby said in response: “In NPR's warped moral calculus, Tali Hatuel and her children are in early graves not because Palestinian culture celebrates the mass murder of Jews but because Jews have no business living among Arabs. If McCarthy had been reporting from Birmingham in September 1963, would she have blamed the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on the provocative ‘presence’ of the four black girls who died in the explosion?" The rest of Jacoby’s remarks are just as worth reading and are available here.
But whether you read this Jacoby piece or not, here is the thing to bear in mind: Israel’s war and our war is the same war – the defense of liberty and civilization against Islam’s 1300-year onslaught. The men who murdered Tali Hatuel and murdered her daughters Hila, Hadar, Roni and Meirav, and murdered Tali’s unborn son whose name no reporter was brave enough to ask – these killers are the very same savages we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. If we do not win this war in those places, we will eventually be fighting it here at home, and the doom of Tali Hatuel and her children will be the fate of our very own kin.
Display all comments »I don’t have a lot to say today. I spent a good part of yesterday doing springtime chores rather than surfing the ‘Net, so instead of linking to some breaking story, I’m going to dig into my special-occasion file – special occasions such as “I’m too tired to blog,” with the “tired” part just now underscored by the fact I tried six times in a row to get quotation marks (“) but could only get single quotes (‘), then began bitterly cussing the machine – and felt an absolute fool when I discovered I’d been hitting the caps lock instead of the shift key. Tired indeed: so much for competence, verve, alacrity – not to mention simple intelligence – all the qualities a writer allegedly possesses in abundance. Thus my apologies to anyone who is disappointed by the brevity of today’s remarks.
Back to the topic of Focal Point, what follows is a psychological profile of Muslims prepared by two research psychiatrists and summarized by the formidable Phyllis Chesler PhD. Chesler is the bold pioneer who turned the realm of psychiatry on its sexist head something like 33 years ago with Women and Madness, a seminal (or perhaps I should say “ovarian”) work that exposed how, in far too many instances, the science of mind had been perverted into a vindictive scheme for furthering the oppression of women.
(Yes, you’re hearing me right, and this is neither a sudden about-face nor the emergence of a contradiction. It’s absolutely true I condemn victim-identity cultism, and I especially deplore matrifascism – the Nazi-influenced brand of feminism, predominant on the Left and in the United States in general, that has as its objective the overthrow of American liberty, the destruction of Western Civilization and the imposition of “gynocracy,” a female-supremacist version of the Third Reich, with males as the new untermenschen. But I have always been profoundly supportive of genuine female equality – especially intellectual equality and equality in the contexts of civil rights and equal pay for equal work – and one of my private definitions of Hell is a personal relationship with a woman who is incapable of thinking for herself or holding her own in a conversation.)
In any case, the doctors about whom Chesler writes have extensively researched the phenomenon of Islam from a psychoanalytic perspective, and their conclusion, bolstered by the overwhelming evidence of terrorism, suggests that the group mentality of Islam and the individual mindset of a Ted Bundy – particularly in terms of a truly infinite hatred of the female gender – are virtually the same. Thanks to Front Page Magazine, Chesler’s dramatic preview is available here. Think of it as a follow-up to my April 30 Focal Point, which linked to a women-as-entrepreneurs story I described as not only something for all of us to be proud of, but a perfect example of just what it is Islam despises most about America – the blessed fact that women here are genuinely free to live the lives they choose.
Display all comments »I understand Linda’s rage at the now-deservedly-dead Muslim fiends who murdered the pregnant Israeli mother and her four daughters yesterday in Gaza. Indeed there is a part of me that is sorry the two terrorists were not gut-shot and left to die slowly in screaming agony, for it is obvious the lesson of maximum suffering is the only kind of lesson these people understand. Which is of course why I am so angry over the fact that – thanks to an absolute failure of leadership – we have now frittered away our advantages at Fallujah so thoroughly, the mainstream media is reporting that the key terrorist leaders, smug at having shamed the “Great Satan” once again, have withdrawn from the city and escaped through the strong but nevertheless undermanned Marine blockade. There is a staggering quantity of payback coming due in Fallujah, Big Time, and I can only hope the Marines will yet have adequate opportunity to mete it out as deserved.
Meanwhile, again thanks to National Review Online, here is more utterly damning analysis of what has gone wrong in Iraq and what might yet be done to salvage the situation. However, before I type out these hyperlinks, I think it needs to be stressed that the Charley Foxtrot in Iraq is all at the level of the civilian administrator and above – that the performance of the troops and their commanders is as fine as anything ever witnessed in modern warfare and may in some instances be without peer. I say this because at least one person with whom I regularly exchange e-mails mistakenly believed I was criticizing the military effort – something I most assuredly have not done (and would not think of doing) simply because I am not there on the ground in Iraq, have no access to the operations order and its intelligence annex, and in any case have no current knowledge of Army or Marine tactical doctrine. The small-unit tactics with which I am familiar are those of another era: the era of the U.S. Rifle Caliber .30 M-1, the Browning Automatic Rifle and the .45ACP caliber M1911A1 Colt, with the 12-gauge M1897 Winchester trench gun as the favored close-quarters weapon. Moreover I am told on good authority that a five-man fire team today has many times more firepower than the eleven-man infantry squad of my youth, which in its heyday was itself considered more formidable than any comparable formation on earth. In any case, my point here is that – especially since I was once a soldier myself – I would not presume to criticize the brave and long-suffering people who are actually doing the fighting or leading the fighters. If I have given any impression to the contrary, I can only apologize and take full blame for not expressing myself with sufficient clarity. That said, here are the NRO links: The first, by Michael Rubin, adds important details to the emerging portrait of a State Department that is (once again) so out of control it is brazenly sabotaging the President’s intent. The second, from David Frum’s blog, adds additional dimensions to our understanding of the crisis. Bottom line, President Bush may well have been hornswoggled by his advisors, quite possibly by Secretary of State Colin Powell himself.
One more point before I shut this machine off and go to bed: another frequent e-mail correspondent wrote to me yesterday morning that she thought I had given up on Iraq – that I had concluded our cause there was lost. This is surely not true, and I carefully re-read everything I posted here yesterday to see if I could find the source of her misconception. I could not, but at the same time I could see my words left an overall impression of angry negativity, and again I have to accept the fault is mine for not making it clear I believe we can still prevail in Iraq – that indeed I am certain we dare not fail, lest our failure drag all of the world into darkness. That my correspondent thought I believed otherwise was all the more worrisome because she is such a perceptive and talented writer. She is certainly not one of the knee-jerk, Bush-can-do-no-wrong cheerleaders who decry any criticism of the President as High Treason and – by their attempts to censor the flow of ideas – are the very people who contribute most to the unspeakable possibility we might fail. What we need now is precisely the conservative criticism the cheer-leaders would silence. To paraphrase the old-time Southern radio preachers of my youth, it is the duty of all of us “out here in Internet-land” to respond accordingly -- even if that response is merely e-mailing hyperlinks to one another with a “you gotta read this” memo attached. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of American liberty and Western Civilization.
Display all comments »I'm not going to bother linking the news articles outlining the abuse of Iraqi detainees. It's all over the news. Go Google it yourself.
This blog was started as a means of keeping the home fires burning, as it were; providing my fellow Americans with news from the other side of the coin. I wanted people to know that what they were reading and seeing via mainstream news outlets wasn't necessarily the unvarnished truth.
Secondary to that was the desire to show people that backstabbers and apologists like John "Medals, ribbons -- who cares" Kerry and Teddy "I can swim" Kennedy really have no place in office.
This blog has abjured people to remember 9/11; to keep firmly in mind that our safety is at stake.
Mostly, I want to do whatever it takes to keep the American homeland safe so that there's no risk of me and my baby being gunned down by Islamic terrorists like this Israeli woman and her baby girls. What's more, I want horrors like that to come to an end, altogether. I just happen to know that it takes more than good vibes, hugs and diversity training to defang murderers. Sometimes you have to kill them before they kill you. It's called "self-defense".
Then, a group of sick bastards soiling the uniform of the United States Army go and abuse Islamic prisoners. That is wrong on so many levels, I just don't know where to start.
They deserve the most horrible punishment we can dream up.
Not only are these individuals abusive, sadistic slime -- which is reason enough, in my book -- they've also aided our enemy by giving them anti-American propaganda to dine out on. They've given the likes of John Kerry, the Clintons, Teddy Kennedy, and Michael Moore something to crow about: "Lookit! We told you sheeple voters that the military consists of Neanderthal knuckle-draggers!"
What's more, they've given ammunition to our external enemies. This coupled with the fact that we've begun to negotiate with terrorists, just means that the danger to our homeland has increased.
We're looking awful weak on the world stage, folks. This is going to encourage continued attacks upon our integrity, our purpose, our fitness for the task, and perhaps even our soil.
This enrages me inexpressibly.
There is a way to pull this out. If the POTUS gives the fight back to the Defense Department, and tells the State Department to take a flying leap, while telling the public exactly what horrors he's inflicting upon those assholes who saw fit to abuse detainees, AND gives the UN an eviction notice (effective immediately!), we may yet prevail.
What's more, we will win this war if we pull together and focus on the end result: safety for our children.
To that end, there is no price too great to pay. Regardless of the crimes committed by only a FEW of our soldiers, I intend to go on supporting our troops and the War on Terror. I shall go on writing to the White House and to all my elected representation, encouraging them to focus on the long-term goal.
I shall not see my child enslaved because of terrorist sympathizers, apologists, and the transnationalists who would trade our freedom and sovereignty away.
Display all comments »Reading the news reports out of Iraq, I am struck more than anything else by the utter chaos they portray. Even allowing for so much of the media’s obvious hate-America bias – and most of all, its infinitely vindictive anti-Bush bias -- it is clear the U.S. and its allies have totally lost control of events in Iraq. However it is spun, the situation is what military men of my generation would have aptly labeled a “Charlie Foxftrot” – phonetic alphabet-speak for “Cluster-Fuck” – a term of art used in those halcyon years before political “correctness” mandated all soldiers speak like Sunday-school teachers, lest they be charged with “sexual harassment.” Iraq would also be described as “FUBAR” – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Indeed all that is lacking is the appearance of a well-known Marine Corps sub-demon of the pre-PC era – no doubt banished since Tailhook: Needle-Dick the Bug-Fucker, infamous for fomenting grief, whether on the battlefield or off. Indeed, based on the media reports, ‘ole Needle-Dick is there already in Iraq and has clearly joined hands with that insufferable prick Murphy.
But what is happening is absolutely nothing to make light of despite my former-soldier’s penchant for indulging in latrine humor at the expense of the chain of command. Frankly I don’t know which disturbs me more: the fact Iraq is on the verge of becoming yet another in a long, miserable succession of U.S. foreign-policy failures dating to the ascendance of the State Department in aftermath of World War II (think Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia ad nauseum -- not to mention the breathtaking betrayal of our Israeli, British and French allies at Suez in 1956, which truly was “all about the oil”); the fact that the neo-conservative intellectuals in the Pentagon (the very officials I hoped would save us from U.N. treachery and diplomatic-corps folly) have now apparently been checkmated by the ruling clique of careerists, Neville Chamberlain clones and anti-Jewish bigots at State; or finally the fact that the loss of Iraq means not only the loss of the most vital strategic toehold in our defense against Islam’s 1300-year war on civilization, but also the loss of the 2004 election to the internationalist/appeaser John Kerry (who regards this 1300-year war as a mere crime problem). A Kerry victory would lead ultimately to the loss of the war itself, and -- via the inevitable triumph of the global caliphate -- the descent of humanity into such darkness as will make the post-Roman Dark Ages a time of enlightenment by comparison: a darkness so black humanity will never recover. That is what is at stake in Iraq. We need an Arthur, a Gwydion, and all we have is George Bush, with mounting proofs of his ineptitude, whether in Iraq or at home.
I have been convinced for some time now that part of the problem with the war against Islamic terror is that far too many people both in and out of government fail to take it seriously, memories of 9/11 not withstanding. Hence the war becomes a playing field for politics-as-usual (with the “usual” radically intensified by the antagonisms that divide the U.S. into to two increasingly hostile camps). Thus too it becomes a court upon which the mainstream media play out their malicious “gotcha” games – never mind that these morally imbecilic expressions of the competition for viewers and/or readers sometimes savagely wound the U.S., precisely as did the CBS broadcast of the Iraqi prisoner-abuse pictures last week. Which broadcast surely underscores my point. POWs are often abused, especially if they are terrorists or terrorist cadre. Hence -- if we truly believed ourselves at war -- we would have in place such stringent operational security measures, those photographs would never have been taken, much less leaked. The fact such op-sec orders were not in place mirrors a chain-of-command failure of truly staggering proportions. Had we attempted to fight World War Two with such careless attitudes and slipshod practices, we would all speak German today.
Because I long ago read The Ugly American, a novel by Eugene Burdick
and William Lederer about a notably homely American civil engineer (hence the title) who did more in a day for a Southeast Asian people than all the Lord Plushbottoms of the diplomatic service were able to do in a year; because The Ugly American was a novel so powerfully truthful it moved President Eisenhower to try to reform the diplomatic service; because I had covered politics and had been on speaking terms with some of the Cold War’s more astute politicians; because I study history the way some people study the weather; because in my own personal ethos, journalism is not a job but a way of life, something that one is and therefore can never truly retire from – and yes, perhaps because of this more than anything else – I still watch public affairs as closely as when I was paid to do so. And for all these reasons, and probably for a lot more reasons too subconscious to articulate, I have watched events in Iraq with suspicion ever since I ran across the text of a Radio Free Europe report speculating that the Bush Administration’s sacking of Lt. Gen. Jay Garner represented a profound defeat for the Defense Department and a huge triumph for the State Department. Garner, an up-by-the-bootstraps professional soldier who knows the Middle East intimately, had been viciously trashed by U.S. media – in retrospect, almost certainly in service to the same State Department clique that has repeatedly leaked damaging material about various Bush Administration plans and projects. Garner was hastily fired by the administration, and his replacement -- L. Paul Bremer, a State Department favorite and member of the pampered Ivy League aristocracy, a professional diplomat whose expertise is Northern European affairs (and not the Middle East) -- was clearly some kind of payoff, whether to satisfy a partisan political debt or reward a cabinet-level backstabber. Indeed, it was Burdick and Lederer all over again. But I still hoped for the best, if only because I recognize the critical importance of victory in Iraq.
Until a few days ago, all I had were growing suspicions I was watching yet another in the long and dismal successions of State Department Charley Foxtrots brought about by the lethal combination of arrogance, ineptitude, stupid optimism and the singularly American psychoses of a desperate craving to be loved by murderous savages rather than feared and respected by them. But now – little by slow – the story is coming out, and I can only pray it grows the legs it deserves. Here are two links to disclosures about what happened to Lt. Gen. Garner and what the dire consequences are: the first is to a scathing report in National Review Online, the second to a more general but nevertheless important column in The Palm Beach Post. And for anyone who doubts what is truly at stake in this war, I offer in conclusion an especially grisly report from Turkey, where the stubborn persistence of “honor killings” proves that Islam is probably beyond redemption.
Display all comments »Today is a Holy Day for Pagans. Beltane is the first day of summer, and the time when the Wheel shifts to the Light half of the year.
Now is the time when the Springtime Goddess has wedded the Youthful God, and they keep watch over the greening and fruiting of the fields.
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Sorry, no picks or focal points this weekend, and maybe not ever again on any weekend. My sanity requires two consecutive days off -- especially now that all this other stuff is happening in my life.
Which reminds me: there's good news relative to my living situation and thus also to my continued participation in this blog: sometime this summer I will move back to East Tennessee, the region of Appalachia in which I grew up. Yes, I will be temporarily silent, but after a several-week hiatus to drive across the country with one of my sisters and both of my dogs, then get established in my new dwelling and finally get reconnected to the Internet, I will resume my daily posts. I might move the posting in some new directions, too -- new for me, that is -- but the Muse is now only whispering, and I am still not certain what She is saying. After all, one of the unavoidable conditions of old age (or too much time at shooting ranges) is deafness...
More later, as it develops, including the relevant dates. Meanwhile, have a good weekend!
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