Sifting Through Google Hits for Jihad Instructions

Well, thanks to a link at Norm Geras’ site, we now know why Gates of Vienna has had so many searches appear on the site meter for “how to make a bomb.”

Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.

Evidently it’s not all that clear who cut the lines, though the Times article claims that “the Israelis” know that British intelligence did it. However, they don’t say how the newspaper came by this information from the Israelis, nor do they link to any site with such information. Poor form. Lousy reporting.

The article prates on, rehashing the very stale news that “the web has become the new battleground of terrorism”:

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down.

In case we forget this news comes from the Times, they remind us with this bit of editorial comment:

	However, the scales remain weighted in favour of global jihad, the first virtual terror organisation. For all the vaunted spying advances such as tracking mobile phones and isolating key phrases in telephone conversations, experts believe current technologies actually play into the hands of those who would harm us.
	“Modern technology puts most of the advantages in the hands of the terrorists. That is the bottom line,” says Professor Michael Clarke, of King’s College London, who is director of the International Policy Institute.

Well, as my Irish mother used to say, "the man says more than his prayers." Here's the same Michael Clarke, oozing his European condescension in June, 2004:

"The Europeans are simply not as shocked by terrorism as Americans were. March 11 in Madrid was a wake-up call to Europe, whereas September 11 to America was the beginning of a new kind of war. So we say we've got to do more of the same, only a bit more vigorously, which is a very European reaction. But for the United States, September 11 meant not just new policies but a new way of thinking about the world."

So, Mr. Clarke. That was 6/04 and now you’re living in post 7/05. Any new thinking going on? Pray tell, share your wisdom, sir. In the meantime, while he’s cogitating, thank God for the boots on the ground. The head-in-the-clouds Mr. Clarke sounds mighty like a useful idiot. Not of much use to his country, but perhaps of utility to the official Iran website where I found his quote.

The MSM and academia in America is bad enough. The footsie played by the MSM and British academe is worse. A bunch of quislings.

The Times obviously know how poorly written this article is, too, since it lacks a by-line. More affirmative hiring, chaps?

Meanwhile, gratitude and congratulations to whomever shut down those wells of poison. And piss in your eye to the bloody London Times and the supercilious Mikey.

Hot and Cold: the Extremes of War

Time to put the fire out. Having let it rage on for so long, the West seems to be donning its helmets and getting out the fire hoses. Or so says Mr. Youssef M. Ibrahim -- and he's telling the people of Dubai they'd better be prepared:

The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both of them on.

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

The emphasis is ours. But the sentiment is Mr. Ibrahim's. Do we dare hope that he is right, that jihad as it is currently practiced and preached is an aberration? From his pen to Allah's ears.

But Mr. Ibrahim isn’t done with his fellow Muslims yet. He talks about the internecine warfare in Palestine. While he doesn’t say so, have you noticed how vicious they are towards one another? All of them busy killing off potential rivals as they position themselves for power in a ‘government’ as corrupt and cynical as anything Hilter ever devised.

Mr. Ibrahim lists just some of the murder and mayhem since jihad became the disaffected and envious young Muslim male's fad:
· London
· Madrid
· USA
· Morroco
· Africa
· Indonesia
· Thailand
· Afghanistan
· Egypt
· Yemen
· Pakistan
· India
· Turkey
· Tunsia
· The Netherlands
· Saudi Arabia

Oh, yeah —let’s not forget “the entity,” Israel.

So what has all this mighty Muslim fire extinguished? Muslim liberties and respect in the rest of the world, that’s what:

	The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students, with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their countries to preach against those countries under the guise of political refugees.
	Well, that is all over now. Time has become for the big Western vengeance.

Then he reminds his readers of the bit of Western history they don’t teach in those madrasses where little kids are trained for jihad. If they did so, their recruits might be less than enthusiastic:

	What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed.
	I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.
	In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity.

There you have it: Muslim ignorance in a nutshell: "demented so-called jihadis." Islam's problem is going to be (a) how to cull these mutants from the pack, and (b) how to prevent more of them from being created. Their existence is neither the fault or the responsibility of the West.

The time for pity is long past.


(Hat tip: Mojocar Hawk via Barcepundit). And here is an example of the koinonia in action.

We Have Your Bomb(e) Recipe Right Here

Your site meter can be a bellwether. Sometimes you'd rather now know how people wandered over to your blog, and sometimes you hope they don't return.

Here's a list of searches from the last few days. The ugly, perverse ones about little girls are not included. Note that Bush the slave owner only appears once; his popularity as measured by the polls must be on the upswing.

Definitely, the bombs win the prize this time --due no doubt to the aftermath of the London bombings. Tossers in their underwear are sitting in front of their computers all over the world, telling themselves that if those twits in England can do it, so can we.

* thought that god cursed gay people with aids in the 1980 * "ice pick"+"ice axe" * custom ice axes * alluh akbargoogle uk * alluh akbar * european major cities muslim majority demographic * bush slave owner * islam tolerance * bill gates christian google uk * non-believers of empiricism * muslim women in pornography * how to make a bomb (be) * how do you make a bomb (be) * making a bomb (za) * “how make bomb” (uk) * how make bomb (au) * how to make a bomb (uk) * making a bomb (nz) * making a bomb (uk) * making a bomb (pacific rim) how to make a bomb (peru)

So. We know there are any number of people world-wide who are looking for bomb know-how. Never one to turn away from a teachable moment, here is the Gates of Vienna recipe for a bomb to serve at your next jihad:

Bombe With a Bang

10oz shortbread cookies, finely rolled
1 cup flaked coconut
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 pkg. (4-serving size) chocolate Instant Pudding & Pie Filling
1 TBS. good cocoa
2 cups milk
1 cup whipped cream
1 qt. strawberry ice cream, slightly softened


MIX crumbs, coconut and butter in medium bowl; press against bottom and side of 2-1/2-quart foil-lined bowl. Place in freezer 10 minutes.

PREPARE pudding as directed on package using milk and adding cocoa; fold in whipped cream.

Spread ice cream evenly against crumb layer, then spoon in pudding mixture.

FREEZE overnight. Unmold bombe onto serving dish; garnish with additional whipped cream and strawberries if desired. Let stand at room temperature for a few minutes to make slicing easier. And use a serrated knife.

NOTE TO PURISTS: Make your own chocolate pudding. I mean how hard is it to use cornstarch and milk?

A Small Measure of Good

 
The word “unique” has got to be one of the most irritating words in the English language. And not just because it looks so French — which it is, from about the 17th century but originally, of course, from Latin. Mostly when it’s used the speaker is trying to communicate something extraordinary or quite unusual.

So maybe Michael Yon is not unique. It’s just that we don’t hear of anyone else who’s gotten permission to embed with a group of soldiers and who seems to be planning to stay there till the fat lady sings. Or until they carry him off in a body bag.

Yon is a photo-journalist but he doesn’t belong to anybody, especially does he not belong to the MSM. No doubt a best-seller awaits the final compilation and editing of all his stories. It is a book that all of us who subscribe to his newsletter will line up to buy. The book will be full of the stories of “ the Q” and of Lieutenant , and Rat…and, of course, the formidable Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger, the alpha male soldier in Iraq at the moment.

	My first day in Baghdad, about six months back, the sun was rising as I walked to the mess hall. It was cold and there had been explosions through the night, automatic weapons fire, and "flares" floating down on parachutes casting long, flickering shadows before their fires burned out. Helicopters zooming all around. There was a lot more war going on than I had expected; and I had done my homework.
	But the birds were singing like they do at sunrise. War or peace, I can depend on the birds to sing in the mornings, and I selected that sound to hear as I walked out of the tent and headed for the mess hall. A group of soldiers, loaded for combat, were gathered in front of the mess hall. With serious expressions, their attention was trained on a map they'd spread across the hood of a Humvee. The soldiers were preparing for combat.
	As I approached, one soldier in particular took a step toward me in a way that spoke loudly and said, Alpha. In a synchronicity that still registers as bizarre to me, the soldier was Jeffrey Mellinger, the Command Sergeant Major for Coalition Forces in Iraq, the very man I most wanted to meet.
	The Command Sergeant Major is the right-hand man of the top General in Iraq, the premiere Non-commissioned Officer for every Soldier, Marine, Airman and Naval enlisted person. This includes all Coalition members such as the Poles, the Estonians, Koreans, and all the rest. In other words, Mellinger is Alpha. His principle job is to walk the line, whether it be in combat in Mosul, or a ship in the Arabian Gulf. Because he walked the line, he was the man; and his first question to me was, "Who are you?"
	My passport was already opened to the page—I did not yet have an ID card—and I handed it over to him, saying I am an author and wanted to go to Tikrit. I asked if he was headed that way. "You aren't one of those journalists who will sit in a Baghdad hotel room and write about the war, are you?" It was as much accusation as question.
	"Sergeant Major," I said, "I didn't come to Iraq to hang out in a hotel. I am trying to get to Tikrit."
	"We're going to Mosul."
	"Can I hitch a ride?"
	The translation of his answer was "no," but it wasn't a complete shut out. He gave me his card, saying I should contact him if I wanted to get out and see what the soldiers are really facing out there. "I'll be in contact," I said, and I asked to take a photo and he okayed, then a soldier instructed me to wait while he covered the map.

Yon is that rare photo-journalist whose writing is almost as good as his pictures. “Almost,” because no words could convey what he accomplished when Yon managed to get a photo of Major Bieger hurrying, a dying child in his arms. There are no words for the futility, the grief, the heroic effort you see in the red-striped blanket, the bent form of the major sheltering mortally wounded Farah, her tiny, bloody ankle hanging from the blanket as he runs, runs eternally in that brief snippet of reality.

There are lots of requests for donations from blogs. People want to defray the costs of their time and effort and this is understandable. But in Yon’s case, the request is uniquely justified, uniquely worthwhile. He really is bringing you information you wouldn’t get otherwise. Yon’s war journal is worth the price of a subscription.

If you feel the same gratitude because he gives you the opportunity to know things you can’t get from anywhere or anyone else, go Michael Yon’s blog, scroll to the bottom of the screen, and click the Paypal link to make a donation.

It’s definitely your unique opportunity to add a small measure of good to the total in this bloody war.

The Ruut Causes of Terrorism

The recent terrorist attacks in Britain and Egypt have once again highlighted the need for Westerners to understand the root causes of terrorism. Dr. Eugene Urquhart, professor of sociology and Resident Sociometrist at the University of Virginia, thinks he has found the answer.

“We tend to overlook the fact that the Arabs have been deeply affected by the removal of the letter ‘u’ from its customary place behind the ‘q’ in Arabic words, names, and place names,” says Dr. Urquhart. “It’s not significant to us, but it’s extremely important to the Arabs. Every time an Arab looks at a map and sees Al Ghardaqah or Qatar, it reminds him of his loss.”

There is even a scientific name for the phenomenon: hypo-upsilonuria, meaning “a deficiency of the letter ‘u’”. Dr. Lucius Burroughs of Oxford University is a linguistic biologist and an expert on hypo-upsilonuria. “It began in the Middle Ages when the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land brought back the vowels of their Saracen victims as trophies attached to their shields. But it wasn’t until the early 19th century that the exploitation of the Arab ‘u’ really took off.”

That was when enterprising British inventors discovered that the vowels could be used for fuel in lamps and stoves, and were cheaper to extract and process than whale oil. The u-trade continued, dominated by the British, until the development of petroleum refineries in the latter half of the 19th century. By then the impoverished indigenes of the Arabian peninsula had been systematically stripped of their u’s, leaving them in a distressed condition, one that they remain in to this day. The trade has declined considerably since then, but u’s are still in demand for some uses, such as specialty jewelry items featuring horseshoe motifs.

The effect of this condition on the Arab world is significant. For example, in the original Mesopotamian dialect, the name “Iraqu” meant “Pleasant Land of Peace and Plenty”, but “Iraq” means “Land Where One’s Feet May Be Amputated Without Anesthetic”. Some places, such as Saqqara, tried to make up for the loss by doubling up on the “q”, but to little effect.

“The entire Arabic-speaking community experiences this as a profound loss,” says Dr. Urquhart. “There is even an accompanying psychological disorder listed in the DSM-IV: ‘Vowel Inadequacy Syndrome’, or VIS. Members of Al-Qaeda such as Zarqawi are known to suffer from VIS, but it afflicts many ordinary Arabs, and even prominent leaders such as Qaddafi are said to experience it.”

It is a source of great shame for Arab men, even though certain occupations — such as muezzins, ulemas, and mullahs — have been protected from hypo-upsilonuria. Unfortunately, the shame for men is intensified by the fact that women were generally exempted so that they could make hummus and ululate at weddings and funerals.

When I was Yemen I talked to Qasim al-Qatif as he sat chewing qat in the bazaar in ’Irqba. “I feel this shame as a stab in my heart every day,” he said. “My brother Tariq and I are planning to go to Iraq and join the jihad against the u-stealing Americans.” Another man sitting nearby, Qatadah al-Qatari, nodded his head in agreement. “My sister Nuha constantly paraded her shame before us, so that my uncle Iqbal and I were forced to kill her to preserve the family honor.”

Hypo-upsilonuria has spread to the West along with Arab immigrants, especially to northern Europe. Restive Arabs in Denmark and Norway are demanding the return of what is rightfully theirs. The problem is so acute that the U.N. has scheduled a conference on the topic, “Fighting the Scourge of Hypo-Upsilonuria”, to be held in Timbuktu in August of 2006.

But the U.N. will have its work cut out for it, since Arabs in Norway are demanding that restitution be made to them in the form of the letter “v”, as is the custom in Norwegian names. “This will be very difficult for us,” says Gunnar Inqvist, the Norwegian Minister of Immigrant Affairs, “because at the moment there is a severe shortage of v’s in Norway.”

The Welsh are experts in the field, and are sending a team of Vowel Restitution Engineers to the conference in Timbuktu. The team leader, Mr. Kynwyl Llwyd of Llandudno, says, “We have had centuries of vowel deprivation in Wales, due to the cross-border vowel raids conducted by the English from the 13th through the 19th centuries. If anybody can help those poor bloody Arabs, we can.”


Staff writers Dudley Sununu and Ursula Underburgh contributed to this report. For further frivolous satirical information on other topics, see Point Five.

Manipulating the News, Big Time

 
Don’t hold your breath waiting for NPR to report this item about the Palestinian victims in Gaza.

As you know, there is much contention over the decision to evacuate Israeli citizens from the Gaza strip in preparation for turning the land over to the Palestinians. It is a fractious issue and an emotional decision. Some Israelis have threatened civil war rather than be moved from their homes. Nonetheless the unilateral removal continues in the face of fierce objections.

So how is the Palestinian “state” helping? Here's how:

	Hamas has been using its official radio station in Gaza to broadcast instructions to terrorists in the field firing mortars and rockets at Gaza's Jewish communities, security sources told WND.
	Hamas regularly fires mortars and Qassam rockets at Gush Katif, the slate of Gaza's Jewish communities scheduled for evacuation Aug. 17. The terror group launched more than 120 rockets and mortars the past two weeks, killing one woman and injuring more than eight. Yesterday, a Qassam rocket hit Neve Dekalim, a large southern Katif town.
	…
	Sources say Hamas operations coordinators in Gaza use the station to provide terrorists with directions such as the exact coordinates in and near Gaza City from which to launch the rockets and mortars and the trajectory to be used in firing the Qassam missiles.

But the best part is the punchline. Want to know why Hamas and the Voice of Al Aqsa are coordinating this effort? Because then Hamas can say it drove the Israelis from Gaza, rather than the truth of it, which is that the Israelis decided to unilaterally withdraw from the area.

Analysts expect the rocket attacks to increase as the evacuation date gets closer so that Hamas, popular in the Gaza Strip, can claim to its Palestinian supporters it drove Israel from the area.

That’s Islamofascist manly warrior priniciples in action, folks. The kind of military that indoctrinates its kindergartners in Jew-hatred and trains them with toy missle launchers. The same people who make their women hide weapons in their underwear.

Is there a state — to use that term loosely — more perverted than Palestine?


Hat tip: the as-ever intrepid Jihad Watch.

At a Loss for Words

For too long we have been using the wrong word. I don’t mean the substitution of “insurgent” where “terrorist” or “murderer” would better serve the truth. Except for the recalcitrance of the MSM, we’ve solved that one already. What we need is a new word, a neologism for the new world entropy.

It’s obvious that human beings are the animals who use words. We play with them, create them, adapt them to new uses. We make verbs and nouns and then make the nouns serve as verbs and all of it in constant flux. Except for the French, of course, who pass their words through a committee and end up with with lumpy, lame neologisms that look and sound vaguely like camels...all just so they won't have to resort to English.

Different fields develop their own jargon but not all of it is self-explanatory even to its initiates. The military is famous — or notorious, given your prejudice — for creating acronyms. Here’s one that shows soldierly ingenuity: BASH. No, it’s not a fancy party and it’s not when someone is struck on the head —though that’s closer. BASH is a bird aircraft strike hazard. The military is usually in a hurry, thus the shorter the word, the better. BASH does nicely to describe a messy, dangerous situation.

Medicine, too, has more than its share of buzz words. Many of them are so designed that medical personnel can talk amongst themselves in front of you while not actually giving you any information. Since they often work in crisis conditions, this is understandable. No one wants to make an already anxious patient go into melt-down. That’s why “carcinoma” used to be so handy; unfortunately most of the rest of us know that one now. Then there’s “gomer.” How many people know what that is? Let us hope not the person to whom it refers. Sometimes doctors seem like parents talking Pig Latin in front of the children. Ixnay.

Today, the most creative field for neologisms is IT. Information technology. These guys are in just as much of a hurry as any soldier, and often seem as much in crisis mode as a medical team. Just ask the Help Desk when people need their laptop fixed. Usually yesterday, and those asking for help aren’t known for their intelligence or courtesy. By now so many hacker terms have been incorporated into the real world that we don’t even notice their presence anymore. Spam, flame, spyware, emoticons, etc., have been taken over by the rest of us because they’re useful. And hackers don’t mind sharing, especially since anything they’re using today is tomorrow’s doorstop (that’s one hacker term for obsolete).

All of this is a long introduction to the search for a neologism which serves the reality we face when some terrorist blows himself up and takes other people with him. “Suicide bomber” isn’t really accurate. He didn’t just commit suicide, he also committed homicide, and often on a large scale. To call what he did ‘suicide’ is too genteel, and essentially inaccurate because it does not convey the utter cruelty of his act.

I don’t have a good term yet; it's a work in progress. For the moment, the word that comes to mind is “omnicide.” Or maybe, just to make the point that no man --not even an infidel -- is an island, we could start calling this slaughter what it is: fratricide. If nothing else, the name would annoy the bejesus out of Allah's annointed, now wouldn't it?

Any suggestions from the blogosphere?

The Birds

 
An irritating and irresponsible feature of the MSM is its “Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling” approach to bad news. It’s Bad News All The Time but the form seems to be of the bread and circuses genus of news reporting. There is no ordering of information; Valerie Plame’s machinations and Carl Rove’s infamy costs us thousands of trees and waste hours of irretrievable time while important stories are ignored. We are treated to breathless deathless prose on what Judge Roberts’ children wore. The purpose of such stories seems to be to keep the pot stirred without actually adding anything nutritious to the soup. It’s pretend news from pretend people.

This morning comes Joe Katzman with a link to The Alexandria Archive Institute. One of Mr. Katzman’s readers points out a looming problem, one of such proportions that once it hits, will completely occupy our thinking. It will revolutionize how we live and move and have our being. Here is Eric Kansa’s report:

“I want to direct your attention toward avian flu, an issue that, given its scope and potential consequences, receives very little attention both in the traditional press and blogosphere. I’ve been following this for some time, basically the World Health Organization is doing everything NOT to raise the alert level from stage 3 to stage 5 or 6, and has tried to explain away clear cases of human-to-human transmission (these cases mean we’re at Stage 5 at least). There are also LOTS of rumors China is covering up an outbreak of Stage 6 human-to-human bird flu. China has been completely uncooperative with the WHO, refuses to let out most medical samples, and has even threatened epidemiologists…”

This is the point at which I admit editorial bias while urging that avian flu be put on the front burner. In the “Spanish” influenza epidemic of 1918, my grandmother and an uncle (he was six) died within weeks of one another, smashing our family for several generations. That was in Ireland.

In America, and across the world, the flu destroyed towns and wreaked havoc on common civilities. In Philadelphia, people stole coffins, dumping bodies so they could use the caskets for their own loved ones. In six weeks, it killed more than three quarters of a million people in the United States. (I don’t know what percentage of the population that was back then, but much of the mortality took place in urban areas and in military camps).

The destruction and horror was sucked down the memory hole because the butchery of the Great War took precedence. The world never mourned all those deaths. Anywhere from twenty-five to fifty million people died world-wide, most of them in the prime of life. However, due to the war, the full story was downplayed by the media. Yes! Even then the MSM was finagling the bagel.

Sociologists claim one of the consequences of the epidemic was that afterwards, the circle of our ‘personal space’ was drawn much larger as parents internalized the necessity to be more physically distant from their children in order to avoid infecting them.

Thus, even though the actual depth and breadth of the catastrophe was deliberately downplayed, for years it has seemed to me that the Roaring Twenties was a rebound cultural effect not only of the War but also of the terrible losses from the flu epidemic. It was at this juncture, when healthy young men and women died in droves, and orphanages began to be built to take care of the children left homeless, that rather than do our mourning, we simply went into frenetic escape.

Mr. Kansa has more to say about the spread of this new virus:

…the few published samples available from China (obtained from dead birds in Qinghai) all have genetic traits of strains that infect mammals, including humans. The worry is that these samples come from a major nexus in bird migration routes, meaning that this dangerous virus will soon be dispersed throughout Eurasia (it’s already popping up in Russia).”

In turn, Winds of Change provides its usual encyclopedic links to more information, all of which need to be pursued and pondered. Better to consider ahead of time your likely options in this coming disaster. Refusing to look to the western horizon doesn’t mean you get to avoid the storm when it arrives.

One of the consequences to consider is how groups will be affected. Will colleges close? Schools did in 1918. Will businesses shut down temporarily? Will the stock market become a telecommute for everyone, including those on the floor? Maybe it will be the nail in Hollywood’s coffin as people stay away in droves and Health Departments close theatres? Concoct your own scenes and you’ll get an idea of the scope of this problem.

On a cheery note (the secret is out: I was Pollyanna in a former life) just consider what this may do to the Islamofascists. Due to population density, it’s likely they will be dying faster than we do, and in greater numbers. So what becomes of the passion to wage jihad? Will sectarian hatred decline in the face of massive random death? Will it be seen as a message from Allah? If so, how will they interpret the communication?

Perhaps it will be construed as an ugly infidel plague released upon Islam in order to spread Satan’s spoor upon the Ummah. Or some such poppycock. When you read these guys long enough, you can mouth the dialogue along with them, like a movie you’ve seen too many times.

Finally, consider this possible consequence: if the avian flu acts like the one in 1918, it will take many of the young and healthy. Already, our demographic picture is grim. What will it be like after the plague has finished with us? One effect may be some hard-wiring in the coming generation which will make abortion distasteful, anathema, uncivilized. The mind-body-community connection is a strange and wondrous mystery we barely comprehend.

Whatever you do, bookmark Joe Katzman’s page here so you can follow all the links he has thoughtfully provided. If nothing else, these sites will give you something to read while you wait for the first symptoms to appear...

Don't Just Do Laundry — Do Jihad!

 


Warning: contains satire.

Next Door to Al Qaeda

 
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently toured our end of the Anglosphere, meeting with President Bush to discuss issues of mutual interest to India and the United States. Before that he visited Britain, stopping off at Oxford.

The university awarded Dr. Singh an honorary degree, and his acceptance speech was charming and gracious. At times he seemed to be reading from the Gates of Vienna talking points:

	Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India's experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age old civilisation met the dominant Empire of the day.
	These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well.
	The idea of India as enshrined in our Constitution, with its emphasis on the principles of secularism, democracy, the rule of law and, above all, the equality of all human beings irrespective of caste, community, language or ethnicity, has deep roots in India's ancient civilisation.
	However, it is undeniable that the founding fathers of our republic were also greatly influenced by the ideas associated with the age of enlightenment in Europe.

Dr. Singh reminded his audience of the startling fact that India has the largest number of English-speakers of any country in the world:

	It used to be said that the sun never sets on the British Empire. I am afraid we were partly responsible for sending that adage out of fashion!
	But, if there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English speaking people, in which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component.
	Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system. That is, if you leave out cricket!
	Of course, people here may not recognise the language we speak, but let me assure you that it is English! In indigenising English, as so many people have done in so many nations across the world, we have made the language our own. Our choice of prepositions may not always be the Queen's English; we might occasionally split the infinitive; and we may drop an article here and add an extra one there.
	I am sure everyone will agree, however, that English has been enriched by Indian creativity as well… Today, English in India is seen as just another Indian language.

All those local dialects of the same language, modified and adapted to serve the needs of commerce and government all over the world… Roll over, Shakespeare!

But Dr. Singh’s tour did not meet with universal approval at home. In an editorial in The Times of India, Percy Fernandez wrote:

	On being asked whether India would expect the United States to say no to Pakistan for a similar nuclear technology agreement that was signed between Bush and Singh, the Indian Prime Minister did say what he had to and rightly, that it’s a decision the United States has to make. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to add that he was realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan.
	He also said Taliban was a creation of Pakistan extremists, how Wahabi Islam flourished and, numerous madrassas were set up top to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we all know. One would not want to doubt the intentions of his remarks but it was the timing and its appropriateness that is fiercely in doubt.
	[…]
	Was Dr Singh any different than his predecessor, Prime Minister AB Vajpayee? No, not in any sense. Vajpayee in his address to the US Congress in 2000 said that religious war has been proclaimed to be an instrument of Pakistan’s state policy. He said that he believed forces outside India could use terror to unravel the territorial integrity of India.

Dr. Singh’s comments seem sensible and commonplace to those of us who urge resistance to the Great Jihad. But India is in the process of a delicate rapprochement with Pakistan, and some members of his own party find the Prime Minister’s remarks less than tactful.

And Dr. Singh has cannons to his right as well. Former Prime Minister Vajpayee is in the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has criticized the Prime Minister for his shameful embrace of India’s former masters:

The Bharatiya Janata Party has demanded an apology from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for praising the British colonial rule during his speech on Friday at the Oxford University.

So it is a fine line that must be walked by the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy.

Just imagine it: more than a billion people, dozens of languages, several major religions including a large Muslim minority, and still India is a functioning democracy. One can only hold its leaders in awe.

And just next door in Pakistan lies one of the world’s largest concentrations of Muslim extremists and terrorists. The Great Islamic Jihad makes itself felt every day in Kashmir, and the restive Muslim minority in the other parts of India continually pushes the envelope, wanting more space, more rights, more Islam. With the nuclear option hanging over both countries, the diplomatic abilities of Dr. Singh are of great moment indeed.

Brother? What Brother?

 
Iraq the Model made a good point in his July 17 post about the Arab double standard used to parse events in Iraq. He was speaking of the previous day’s “barbaric attacks” which killed a hundred Iraqis.

The image is astounding for its ability to show ordinary life against the backdrop of blazing annihilation. Notice that one person stands and watches but another walks down the street as though nothing is going on behind him. “Not my affair…”

What angers Iraq the Model is the double standard the Arab world applies to Iraq’s suffering:

	The government here announced Wednesday a national mourning day in solidarity with the families of the victims of the latest two massacres in Iraq. But we hear nothing from our Arab “brothers” not even a word of consolation, rejection, condemnation; no nothing.
	Even Annan condemned the attacks with a few words while the secretary of the Arab League, Amr Mousa didn’t utter a word.
	When Mohammed Al-Durra was killed by presumably Israeli fire, the Arab world got literally crazy and countless speeches, articles and protests were made in response to it but when Iraqi children are massacred by an Arab, Muslim jihadist then it’s just another sad consequence of the American invasion!

He’s right about the double standard. We have it here, too. One standard for the poor insurgents, another one entirely for the nazified American military.

Iraq the Model makes a telling point against those who claim that this wouldn’t be happening were it not for the presence of the Americans:

They hate to admit the fact that terrorism existed in Iraq long before America came to Iraq; terrorism and the regime were one hand committing a genocide against the people of Iraq, only it was broader and crueler than today’s war but the difference is that no one could hear of that genocide; concrete walls and basements that housed countless torture chambers and the bodies were buried in secrecy and under the cover of the night.

No suicide bombers were needed because the regime was able to take anyone whenever and wherever they liked to torture and kill silently and without making any noise; no media was there to cover beheadings or to tape blowing up people or catch them being fed to the wild dogs.

And that’s really the point, isn’t it? Since it was all nice and quiet from where we sat, why bother? The supreme moral relativism has become “My brother’s keeper? It depends on the meaning of ‘brother’ doesn’t it? I mean everyone may define ‘brother’ as he sees fit. Those people have a right to decide for themselves. Not my problem.”

And so the Iraqis are to be left to fend for themselves? Here’s his take on that particular piece of politcally correct detritus regarding “brothers:”

	But when the coalition came and freed Iraq from the head of terror and organized murder, the liberation was considered outrageous.
	And then more terrorists started coming to Iraq announcing shamelessly that they want to avenge their master and help their “brothers” after they lost a key supporter who provided them with much of what they needed to spread their evil in the world.
	Wake up people; they terrorists are declaring their intentions without fear or shame, so why do you try to ignore what they are not ashamed of declaring?

Why indeed? And why do we not make an equally loud declaration? Actually some of us have; it’s called The Bush Doctrine.

How to Make a Bomb – Jihad

 
Just in case you thought they were finished atttempting to demolish London, see this little gem. Someone found their way to Gates of Vienna by typing “how to make a bomb – jihad.”

The page found was Demographic Jihad in Europe. Here are the details:

Domain Name		btcentralplus.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address		86.131.11.37 ? (IANA - Reserved)
Language		English (United Kingdom)
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor Resolution		1024 x 768
Monitor Color Depth		32 bits
Time of Visit		Jul 25 2005 5:10:47 am
Last Page View		Jul 25 2005 5:10:47 am
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...ake+a+bomb+%2D+jihad
Search Engine		google.co.uk
Search Words		how to make a bomb - jihad
Visit Entry Page		http://gatesofvienna...jihad-in-europe.html
Visit Exit Page		http://gatesofvienna...jihad-in-europe.html
Time Zone		UTC+0:00
Visitor's Time		Jul 25 2005 10:10:47 am
Visit Number		58,433

Islam is notable for its refusal of all things Western… all things Western except its instruments of war. This idiot, while not very useful, is handy for illustrating this particular point. And “idiot” is deliberate since only a fool would think you can extract the bits and pieces of a culture while remaining uncontaminated by the rest of it.

This character trait of Islam, its delusion/ignorance re the dangers of simple extraction rather than creativity and adaptation, is one of the reasons it will eventually wither. Either that or morph into something more compatible with the rest of the world.

Old Soldiers Not Fade Away

Goesh, a commenter on our page, has a proposal that meshes nicely with a news headline of the the other day which said that the military wants to raise the age for its recruits:

I liked the part about being a middle aged blogger who can't take much action against the great jihad - sort of fits me to a T, having had my war in viet nam and done a spot of similiar service in some other places, I now sit and write. I reckon I could still hump a few clicks with a full load, having done a hard day of labor in the heat we are having just yesterday, i.e. brushing with axe and machete and moving rock with a wheel barrow and digging with a pick and shovel. I put in 9 hours with a short stop for some food and alot of gator aid drinking. Maybe they should sacrafice us old bastards first, round us all up, arm us and have a great human wave assault somewhere. Think of all the social security money that would be saved down the line. The last charge of the light geezer brigade…

This seems to be a developing theme. A friend from high school sent the following email. There have been others over the last year or so, but this version from Chuck is the best so far:

	They've got the whole thing backwards. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn't be able to join until you're at least 35.
	For starters:
	Researchers say 18-year- olds think about sex every 10 seconds.
	Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.
	Young guys haven't lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. If we can't kill the enemy we'll complain them into submission. "My back hurts!" "I'm hungry!" "Where's the remote control?"
	An 18-year-old hasn't had a legal beer yet and you shouldn't go to war until you're at least old enough to legally drink. An average old guy, on the other hand, has consumed 126,000 gallons of beer by the time he's 35 and a jaunt through the desert heat with a backpack and M-60 would do wonders for the old beer belly.
	An 18-year-old doesn't like to get up before 10 a.m.
	Old guys get up early every morning to pee.
	If old guys are captured, we couldn't spill the beans because we'd probably forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real brainteaser.
	Boot camp would actually be easier for old guys. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and we actually like soft food. We've also developed a deep appreciation for guns and rifles.
	We like them almost better than naps.
	They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however. I've been in combat and I didn't see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training. I can hear the Drill Sergeant now, "Get down and give me...er...one."
	And the running part is kind of a waste of energy. I've never seen anyone outrun a bullet.
	An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He's still learning to shave, to actually carry on a conversation, and to wear pants without the top of his butt crack showing and his boxer shorts sticking out. He still hasn't figured out that a pierced tongue catches food particles, and that a 400-watt speaker in the back seat of a Honda Accord can rupture an eardrum.
	All great reasons to keep our sons at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off to possible death.
	Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten cowards who attacked our hearts on September 11. The last thing the enemy would want to see right now is a couple of million old farts with attitudes.

I like your attitude, guys. And I’m sure your sons do, too. Obviously, since you’re refusing to fade away perhaps I’d better start making plans for a “Wives of Old Soldiers” club. If you're all away, we'll have to resort to bossing one another around. Or maybe raise Corgies or something. We're damn sure too old to raise hell anymore. In fact, just think of what it will be like when the old guys go on R&R.

R&R? Heh.

Changing the Subject

 
On Dymphna’s post last Friday, commenter erp said:

	All these essays and articles, as well written and insightful as they may be, won’t rid us of those who want to kill us and make the world into their own image.
	What is needed is force, and unfortunately, force is something we western effetes are very uncomfortable talking about, never mind actually implementing.

Alas, a sedentary, civilian, and middle-aged blogger has very little chance of taking any kind of action against the Great Jihad. Not even aspiring to be an armchair general, one is lucky to be an armchair subaltern.

But this war is primarily a war of ideas, a war of ideology, beliefs, and value systems. If it were a matter of simple firepower, the outcome would never be in doubt. But our principal enemy is the enemy within. The outcome of this conflict depends on whether the nagging voice of self-doubt and self-loathing within the mind of the West can be silenced.

To that end, these “essays and articles”, these ideas and syntheses, these rants and diatribes, are crucial. If we hope to change enough minds to save the West from self-sabotage, we must argue fiercely and unceasingly.

So it is important to remember that by and large the mainstream international news media have gone over to the enemy. Sedition may not be the intent of Reuters or CNN or the New York Times, but their unceasing hostility to the Bush administration and America in general has had a seditious effect. Their enmity tilts public opinion towards despair and defeatism and undermines our collective will to carry this fight to its necessary conclusion.

And this is where the blogosphere and new media come in. Fifteen or twenty years ago we would not have had a prayer; we might just as well have laid down our arms and paid the jizya. The establishment media had full control of the public discourse then, and their actions would have had a catastrophic effect.

But times are different now, and we can change the subject. If we are serious about resisting the Great Islamic Jihad, this is our function as warbloggers. That is, we storm and occupy the national conversation.

So “Torture at Guantanamo”, “Quagmire in Iraq”, and “The Legitimacy Which Can Be Conferred Solely by the United Nations” can be left to CBS News and the Washington Post. Blogs can discuss the truth.

To begin with, we can consider and argue the following topics:

1.		Whether we like it or not, we are in a religious war.
2.		The demographics of Islam are against us.
3.		There is a significant portion of unassimilated Muslims in the West, including the USA. They comprise a danger to our security.
4.		Our enemy is adept at using our tolerance and “multiculturalist” sentiments to his advantage.
5.		Islam is deeply misogynistic and abusive to women.

And then we can research the following questions:

1.		Are we at war with all of Islam, or only a small portion of it?
2.		Can Islam be politically reformed to accept democracy?
3.		Can Europe pull out of its suicidal demographic spiral?
4.		Is profiling for a “Muslim” appearance preferable to enduring more terrorist attacks?
5.		And most importantly: Is the West worth saving?

If the traditional media had their way, none of these topics would ever be discussed. And, instead of posting on this blog, I would be limited to writing curmudgeonly letters to the editor.

I like it better this way.

Muslim Bullies

 
Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, “Every Hindu is a coward and every Muslim is a bully.”

Regular readers of Gates of Vienna know of our continuing interest in India’s position on the front lines of the Great Jihad. Fortunately, the amount of intelligent and literate reporting in English emerging from India is almost limitless, so the alert blogger will never lack for material.

For non-Muslim Indians, the problem of militant Islamism asserts itself virtually every day. In News Today of South India, V. Sundaram writes:

As a historian, I am overawed by the scrupulous concern for fidelity to facts shown by many Muslim historians during the last 1000 years. Nowhere have they tried to hide the fact that they came to establish Quwwatul Islam, which means the might of Islam, in India. What is notable is that various deeds of comprehensive brutality relating to desecration of temples were recorded by the Sultans themselves or by their Court Chroniclers.

These desecrations had a cruelly vicarious side to them. For, there is no record or mention anywhere that the idol of the presiding deity was removed and handed over to the priest concerned for taking it away to another temple. In fact, in many cases, there are gleeful references that the idol was destroyed and its broken pieces were placed below the entrance of the Mosque, so that they could be trampled upon by those who came for their ‘Ibadat’.

The assertiveness of the Muslim minority in India, like its counterpart in Europe, is driven by demographics. In an article in Organiser last year, Dr. D.P. Sharma wrote:

	Many European nations including Britain, France and Spain are facing separation threats from minority groups. Minorities are no more silent groups; they have gone to the extent of adopting terrorist means to achieve their separatist aim. Many nations on the globe are badly disturbed by these minority groups. So, a disproportionate population growth of any minority community above the national average is not in the interest of any nation, particularly when the minority community has a political ideology which is antithetical to democratic values, as we find with the Muslim fundamentalist groups, no matter where they are.
	Muslims in India are the largest minority group with a population larger than the Muslim population in Pakistan or Bangladesh. They are very united and reactive. They are an influential pressure group and they know the art of extracting the maximum benefits from the government. The growth rate of Muslims exceeds by 10 per cent over the growth rate of Hindus and it was even more during the previous decades.
	[…]
	Hamid Dalwai, an angry, young crusader against communalism, has candidly written on this issue. He writes:
	“All Muslim leaders unanimously complain that injustice is done to Muslims in India. However, they have a strange definition of injustice. They suggest, indirectly no doubt, that the very fact that India has a Hindu majority is in itself a great injustice to Muslims… A professor from Aligarh University was quite frank about this. He said: ‘Hindus cannot keep us permanently in a minority… This country will eventually be swept by an Islamic tide.’ The professor was quite forthright in expressing his views. There are other leaders of Indian Muslims who say the same thing although they couch it in clever phrases. They say, ‘Our religion does not permit family planning. Grant us the freedom to practise our religion’.”
	The Urdu newspaper Radiance, commenting on the report of the last Census in India, said, “In the last ten years the Muslim population in India has increased by 4 per cent more than the Hindus. Therefore, Muslims need not despair about their future,” (Muslim Politics in India, p. 63/6.)
	He further says that according to the Muslims, the only solution to their problems “is the establishment of an Islamic State in India. The Jammat-e-Islami has already a programme to achieve this objective. And if they fail to achieve it, then they would seek to establish within the sovereign State of India a sovereign Islamic society. This idea of a State within a State and society within society, appeals to them…the Majalis-e-Mashawarat has demanded that the Indian Parliament should have no power to legislate in matters concerning Indian Muslims. Salahuddin Owesi publicly suggested, ‘There should be a separate Muslim State within each state of India’,” (ibid, p.64).

It is clear that the Hindus and Sikhs of India face the same daunting task as do the Europeans. The Muslim minority in India is comparable to that of the Netherlands, and has had centuries to entrench its postion.

This throws into greater relief the recent discussions between President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concerning issues in which the United States and India have a common interest.

Just Asking

 
You have to feel sorry for the Iraqis. There they are under the gun to produce a constitution and have it up and running by October.

It is as though Uncle Sam is standing by, foot tapping and eyes raised to heaven, with outstretched hand, demanding, “Okay, where is it? What’s taking so long? Are you guys fighting again? Play nice, why don’t you?”

So twenty-five million people who have lived under the worst sorts of government for generations are all of a sudden supposed to sit erect, grab their pencils and start acting like gentlemen of the Enlightenment.

Western-style feminists are demanding equal rights and their conservative counterparts held their own counter-demonstration declaring for stricter rules for reining in the women folk. Meanwhile the Sunnis are off sulking because they’re not in charge anymore. The Kurds are pushing for a quasi-federalism — at least that’s what their detractors claim — while everyone suspects the Shi’ites will try to slip the Koran into the works and send the citizenry spinning back to the Middle Ages.

Not that anyone remaining in that country would say so, but oy vey. What a mess.

It would be salutary to remember at this point that our constitution was a very long process. From the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 to the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 was a long and winding road. In the process, the question of slavery got shelved just so we could be done with it and get on to making a country. Thus our hurry and our fear led us to a bloody and ruinous Civil War seventy three years later. We are still feeling the effects of that “hurry-up” back in the years from the Declaration of Independence to the final states’ ratification. We left out Negroes because we were afraid and we are still paying for our cowardice.

So let’s back off, hey? The Iraqis can learn from our mistakes, including our sense of urgency and our failure of nerve. Three questions to ponder as the Iraqis scrabble to find a workable solution:

1. What would our country have been like had we been willing to duke it out with the South for a no-slavery clause in our Constitution instead of postponing the inevitable for seventy five years?

2. What would our country be like if the 700,000 people who died in the Civil War had lived out the normal span of their lives? Those were our best and bravest, weren’t they?

3. What would it cost us to let the Iraqis have more breathing room if they want it?

Just asking.

What Islam?

 
A quote in this morning’s CNN story about the Sharm el-Sheik bombings draws the eye:

	“We are trying to find out who committed these crimes,” [Egypt’s interior minister] Habib al-Adli told reporters while viewing the extensive damage at the Ghazala Garden Hotel in Naama Bay, a popular tourism area of the city on the Sinai Peninsula. “It is likely that they have some relationship to the Taba operation.”
	[…]
	Al-Adli said it was not yet known who was behind the Saturday attacks, “but whoever it is, or whatever groups they belong to, this is ugly terrorism, and there’s no humanity or values or feel of belonging in these acts.”
	Asked whether he thought the blasts might be related to Islam, he replied, “What Islam? This terrorism has nothing to do with any religion, because all religions do not allow aggression and do not allow killing civilians in innocence. Those don’t belong to Muslims. They are a gang of criminals.” [emphasis added]

Islam??

Me no see no Islam. Me no hear no Islam. Me no speak no Islam.

This Week’s Council Winners

This week's winner is a matched pair, at least in terms of subject matter. Here at Gates, the question was whether or not Britain is too decadent to survive, to wit:

	Charles Krauthammer put it best:
	"Decadence is defined not by a civilization's art or music, but ultimately by its willingness to simply defend itself."
	From your pen to the citizens of Britain, Dr. Krauthammer. Quit fiddling around over there. London is burning. It's not the job of moderate Muslims to extinguish the fire; it's their job simply to get out of the way while "the authorities" begin acting as if they had sufficient testosterone to take the hose in hand and start spraying down the conflagration.
	Enough with the Nero imitations.

Meanwhile, Norm Geras won the non-council vote with his post proposing that it is indeed time to take the hose in hand. However, being British and well-spoken, he was also more eloquent:

It needs to be seen and said clear: there are, amongst us, apologists for what the killers do, and they make more difficult the long fight that is needed to defeat them. (To forestall any possible misunderstanding on this point: I do not say these people are not entitled to the views they express or to their expression of them. They are. Just as I am entitled to criticize their views for the wretched apologia they amount to.)

You can see it all over at The Watcher's Council, here.

The Sick Man in Europe

 
In a comments thread on Little Green Footballs last night, I had an interesting exchange with commenter DP111. Here are excerpts from the thread, redacted and edited for spelling; the initial comment was a response to Fjordman:

	DP111
	I have stopped paying Jizya to the BBC. I can no longer watch BBC news commenters without feelings of revulsion, and don’t feel like paying to be sick.
	---------------------------------
	What we are seeing in the West is the opening salvoes of the continuation of the Jihad against Christendom, that was brought to a close at Vienna in 1683. The new onset has come about as a direct consequence of allowing Muslim immigration to the West. Muslims are mandated to the Jihad and it is foolish of us to expect that they will refrain from doing so. It is our foolishness that gave them the opportunity to do so from within.
	Muslims and their religion are not yet ready to accept pluralism, democracy and free thinking. Democracy is in fact incompatible with islam, as many Muslim imams have openly stated. That is their interpretation of the Koran. It should therefore come as no suprise to us, that muslims in the West are waging Jihad against us. In their eyes, if we didn’t realise that this would happen, the fault lies with us and not them. I agree.
	I do not think our societies, geared as they are to free and open thought, can continue with this continuous assault on freedom. If this assault is not brought to a halt soon, then free society will start to perish, and with that the economy. It may not be evident immediately, but perish it will in the fullness of time. If the current trend of increasing conflict continues, then we are irrevocably headed in the direction of a major armed conflict with the Islamic world. This is also going to lead to a civil war within Europe of unimaginable proportions. Europe’s civil wars (WW 1 and 2) have not exactly been powder-puff affairs.
	Each day brings news of events that seem to bring us to that inevitable reckoning. We do not wish to fight for religion but we are being engaged in a religious conflict, quite against our will. Our politicians find it difficult to imagine that we are in a religious conflict. So passé - that sort of thing went out of fashion in the Middle Ages. It is all so pointless and avoidable. Time is short, and we need to act now to avert a human tragedy, which this commenter just does not wish to see.
	Separation recognises, that at this moment in time, Islam and democracy are irreconcilable. Thus a separation leaves hope for the future for everybody. This is important, as Muslims like all humans will reach a stage in their social development, when they do indeed welcome democracy and pluralism. It is just that at this stage in their history, they are not ready for it. A war, which is where we are headed, will stop their progress, as well as cause a split within humanity, that will be hard to patch up.
	The basic impulse of Islam is to expand into Infidel territory. Unable to do so, it will collapse quite quickly in historic terms, and thus release the 1.2 billion souls in its enslavement and bring about true freedom for them. What more can one ask for?
	Baron Bodissey
	DP111 —
	Boy, you sure do sound like us at “Gates of Vienna”...
	DP111
	I’m flattered.
	I have stated many times over the last couple of years, that we will easily win a full scale war with the Islam. What worries me is that in the event of a nuclear event in the West, we will rapidly go for the THIRD CONJECTURE option. Over the last two years I have stated on LGF and Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, that our inevitable large scale nuclear response, will also shatter the foundations of our own civilisation. Our Judaeo-Christian civilisation has a built-in guilt complex, and we will not be able to sustain the shock of our victory bought at such expense. That is why the war option is not really a good one unless.. unless we can re-define what this war is about.
	To state the obvious, there are two principles in any war. The first is that the home front is secured. The second is to carry the war to the enemy. However, if we do NOT carry the war to the enemy with a correctly defined moral and political purpose, we will not be able to have public backing for the war. The Jihad in the meantime will continue, for in the eyes of the jihadis and the Muslim world, they have a clear moral and religious purpose, and divinely sanctioned to boot.
	The question is how do we carry the war to an enemy whose ideology we recognise as a religion, while ours is multi-culturalism. You see the difficulty here. There is no way we can conduct a war, so long as we subscribe to either one of those two tenets. Even if we discard multi-culturalism, this in itself is not sufficient. This inevitably leads us to ask, can we somehow re-define Islam, in particular for a Western audience, not as a religion but as a political ideology, and one whose tenets are sufficiently evil, so that it merits destruction, much as Nazism. (Note here that I do not recognise that Islam is susceptible to reformation). This construct has to take place so that the Western populace sees it as justifiable to actually give the physical and moral support that is required for such a large scale venture. (In passing it is worth noting the political difficulty that Bush and Blair are having in Iraq in sustaining political support for the war, once they had proclaimed that Islam is a RoP — they had conceded the moral ground). They now have the same problem here in the West, as the bombs go off.
	The jihadis have a clear moral purpose, and thus we too have to define an even more powerful moral argument as to why our cause is more just, more moral and better — not just to our public, whose unwavering support we need, but to many Muslims around the world. Once we have such a clear moral purpose, then indeed we can go to full scale war and even respond to a nuclear attack in an appropriate fashion without being fatally afflicted by guilt.
	Baron Bodissey
	Your arguments are powerful. As you probably know, I’ve touched on this before in “The Enemy Within” posts (links 1 2 3 for those interested), and pretty much come to the conclusion that unless the West “gets religion” in some form, it can’t fight this war with a whole heart, the way the Jihad can. I don’t know what form this religion might take, whether it would be some kind of Jewish-Christian-Hindu amalgam that united the principle victims of the Great Jihad, or some new form that we can’t even imagine.
	But without something that resembles religion, we can’t stand up against our enemy and know that we are in the right. Just think how archaic and atavistic the word “righteous” sounds today; that’s how secular and anti-religious we have become. But righteousness is what we require if we are to win.
	I believe that the American heartland can hold on against it, but I grieve for Europe.

Fjordman expands on the same theme in a post today, “The Second Fall of Rome?”

…the population movements we are witnessing now are the largest and fastest in human history. In Europe, they can only be compared to the period often referred to as the Great Migrations, following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, during the 4th and 5th centuries, the total human population of the world was in the order of 200 million. Today, it is 30 times larger than that, and still growing fast. We also have communications that can transport people anywhere on earth within hours, and media that show ordinary people how much better life is in other countries. On top of that, the Romans didn’t have human rights lawyers advocating that millions of barbarians be let into their lands.

Fjordman and I are singing from the same hymnal: he concludes his post by quoting some of the same comments by DP111 that I have listed above.

And he is not sanguine about the prospects for Europe. In a comment here on yesterday’s “Preventable Evils” post, he said:

There will probably be a blood bath in Europe in the not-too-distant future, with massacres and ethnic cleansing across much of the continent. Some of the smaller countries, such as Norway, will probably be lost. Given the huge migrations we are witnessing now, I find it difficult to imagine my own country remaining a place where I want my children to grow up. Scandinavians will be persecuted minorities in our own land. “White Indians”, as one Muslim immigrant put it. In some ways, we already are.

If the rest of the world gets its ideas about America from the mainstream media, it may not realize that there is a vast beating heart in America, one that practices Christianity, is confident in its values, and bears a fierce and steadfast temperament. I live and work among these people every day, and know that they will not got go gentle into the night of dhimmitude. Long after the elite literati in New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles have paid the jizya, veiled their women, respected the Prophet, and muzzled their voices, the rednecks of the Heartland will be standing firm and reloading their shotguns as the waves of jihadis come over the barricades.

But grieve for Europe.

Preventable Evils

 
Jonah Goldberg’s column in yesterday’s NRO reminded me of Enoch Powell’s famous "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968. There have been other reminders of it recently — one of the commenters here at Gates of Vienna mentioned it, and, as a result, people searching for “Enoch Powell rivers of blood” often wash up here at the Gates and are detected by our site meter. Apparently Enoch Powell is making something of a comeback.

Like the designation of Churchill’s famous words as the “Blood, Sweat, and Tears” speech, the shorthand “Rivers of Blood” for Powell’s speech is something of a misnomer — the eponymous sentence is actually this: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’”. But such are the vagaries of collective memory; people recall “Rivers of Blood”, so “Rivers of Blood” it is.

Enoch Powell was a Conservative member of Parliament when he gave the speech. I was living in England at the time, and I remember the occasion well. He was immediately reviled in the press and on the BBC, and lost his position in the Tory shadow cabinet as a result. The conventional wisdom loathed him, and he was depicted as a demagogue and a would-be Hitler.

But he was also ridiculed. I was a teenager in those days, and avidly read the satirical weekly Private Eye. In its pages he was mocked as a ludicrous throwback and a bigot. The editors enjoyed using file photos of him and adding silly graphics and speech balloons to make their points. Since he attracted a following among Sir Oswald Moseley’s heirs, all the derogatory labels tended to stick.

It is hard to look at the writings of people who have been declared beyond the pale. Presumably there are points worth noting in Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, but the verdict pronounced by history on their authors tends to prevent close scrutiny. Even so, it is worth revisiting what Powell said in the light of today’s events. His words were not those of a frothing madman, but an intelligent and carefully-chosen argument.

The key paragraphs of the speech were at the beginning:

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: “If only,” they love to think, “if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.”

Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician.

There’s the rub for an elected politician who also feels a duty to posterity: how to identify and deal with those events which occur now but will have significant effect so far in the future that it is politically safe to ignore them.

He goes on to describe an encounter with a constituent:

A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.” I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: “I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.”

I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?

Notice that even in 1968 the reign of PC thinking had already taken hold; Powell knew that his words constituted a heinous thought crime in the eyes of the enlightened.

Notice also that it was the black immigrants from Commonwealth countries who were considered to be the great danger. It was to be another decade before Elvis Costello sang, “London is full of Arabs” (in a song mocking the successors of Enoch Powell). In 1968 the Arabs weren’t a danger. Why would the Arabs come? They were not in the Commonwealth.

But come they did, seeking political asylum to avoid persecution by their own governments for their dangerous versions of Islam. And, in even greater numbers, Muslims from Commonwealth member nation Pakistan immigrated to settle in Britain.

Powell went on:

What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

…It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.

No matter how much it pains us to say it, we have to acknowledge that Powell was precisely right. Whatever his motivations, despite any racism or bigotry on his part, he was right.

And he hit other nails on the head:

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it “against discrimination”, whether they be leader writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same news papers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.

These words can only remind 21st-century Americans of the unchecked flow of illegal immigrants across our borders, and of the bedclothes pulled up over the heads of most of our elected leaders.

Demonstrating that he was not your typical racist, Powell said:

Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American negro. The negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service.

And then there is this, all too familiar to us in 2005:

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine.

Plus ça change…

And this one is uncannily prescient:

We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population.

Powell concluded his speech with this:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”… Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Regardless of his racist motivations, regardless of any demagogic ambitions he might have had, Enoch Powell was right. He lived until 1998, long enough to see that much of what feared had already come to pass. In 1968 he was in the unenviable position of someone in 1931 warning of the danger that Hitler posed to the world.

But the timeline of Islamofascism is slower than that of the Nazis. It is not yet 1940 for us; it is still 1938 or 1939. There is still time. But is there any evidence that our leaders have the nerve and the wherewithal to deal with the preventable evils of our time?

Nuking Mecca

 
Yesterday’s post about Tom Tancredo’s remarks provoked a lot of unexpected argument in the comments, with some excellent contributions by a number of people. To clarify my position, here is the text of an email I sent to Pastorius last night:

	Pastorius,
	I think we only disagree on emphasis and timing, and not on substance. My position is that a sword should remained sheathed until time to use it.
	And my main objection is to the idea that we would destroy Mecca because some subset of Islam attacked us. Until we know for certain that all of Islam is lined up against us, that is morally indefensible. And, since one of the features of this war is our enemy’s total lack of what we consider morality, it is important that we always act morally.
	That said, if we do end up fighting all of Islam, and the imams of Saudi Arabia declare against us, and jihadis set off nukes in a dozen of our cities, then a reasonable and appropriate response would be the destruction of Mecca. Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it would shorten the war.
	Then, for the rest of time, we would be blamed for our awful deed, but so what? It would be the right thing to do at that point.
	But revealing this card now is a bad idea. We are not at that time yet, and with God’s grace we may never get there.
	As the Tao te Ching says, “A country’s weapons should not be displayed.” — Baron B.

This can be a jumping-off point for further argument, if anyone feels so inclined.

The Tancredo Option

 
Hugh Hewitt has issued a challenge concerning Tom Tancredo’s remarks about bombing Mecca:

I want to be very clear on this. No responsible American can endorse the idea that the U.S. is in a war with Islam. That is repugnant and wrong, and bloggers and writers and would-be bloggers and writers have to chose sides on this, especially if you are a center-right blogger.

Mr. Hewitt, I agree with you. To assign all Muslims the blame for the actions of the Great Jihad is both repugnant and counterproductive. The extent of general Muslim support for the Islamofascists has not been established, since the “moderate Muslim” has proven so elusive, and has yet to condemn unequivocally the actions of his fanatical co-religionists. Until such support is demonstrated, it ill serves our cause to utter such inflammatory rhetoric.

However, you also say this:

Anyone defending Tancredo's remarks has got to make a case for why such a bombing would be effective.

I am not defending Congressman Tancredo. However, the destruction of Mecca might be strategically quite effective. Since a devout Muslim believes that no action occurs that is not willed by Allah, and Mecca is Allah’s most sacred site on Earth, the act of destroying it might well deconstruct the basis of fanatic Islam: either Allah sanctioned the destruction of his holiest shrine, or Allah is not in charge. Either way, the Great Jihad would deflate.

But for the West to do so would destroy its own collective soul. Not doing such things is what distinguishes us from them.

Culturally and ideologically, fanatical Islam still resides in the 7th century. The proper 7th-century response would be for us to destroy Mecca and Medina, so that not one stone be left standing upon another, and then sow the ruins with salt.

No matter how appealing the idea is to the atavistic and rageful warrior deep within us, it must not be acted on. We are 21st-century Western Civilization, and we do not do such things. It’s as simple as that.