House of Sand

 
My recent post on The 10 Postulates of PC generated a thread of comments over at Neo-neocon. Part of it was a conversation with Michael B., and it went like this:

	Michael B: Via Daniel Pipes, some attenuation may be in order as regards the President and the religion of peace motif.
	Baron Bodissey: Michael -- Yes, I saw that one, too. I'll defer judgment until I see how he modifies his public statements when he's at ecumenical prayer breakfasts with the CAIR and AIC guys. At some point the public rhetoric simply has to change.
	Michael B: I understand perfectly what you're indicating, though it's a point upon which I've decided to suspend judgement. It's the real-world effect, short and long term, rather than the immediacy of the rhetoric per se, that is important. Too, it's not a matter of honest vs. dishonest rhetoric; instead it's a matter of tempering or finely tuning one's rhetoric (at the level of the presidency) such that it conveys the appreciable, if also varied, content it needs to convey to the various audiences it will be received by and in turn, and inevitably, variously interpreted by. This type of over-arching rhetoric seeks to set a general tone; not supply an inviolable definition to be set in stone.
	Baron Bodissey: I don't require honesty in presidential rhetoric. He has a job to do, and being totally, personally honest in presidential speeches is not part of the job description. He has to pretend to like people he hates, and express approval of things that he does not really support, as a part of public diplomacy.
	But rhetoric does matter. At some point, if public policy is going to change, the change in rhetoric will have [to] precede it. We can't keep warbling about the Saudis being our best friends right up until the moment the Special Ops boys parachute into Mecca to capture the Grand Mosque. There has to be a period of rhetorical change first, beginning with the polite but public disapproval of the regime and its actions, right up through diplomatic isolation to the ultimatum before the ambassador is pulled.
	Things like this take a long time to change, but I am looking forward to the first visible steps.

Rhetoric does matter. Before we change what we do vis-à-vis the Saudis, we will have to change how we talk about them.

And a change in what we do is definitely necessary. President Bush has said that liberty is the birthright of the people of every nation in the world, and Saudi Arabia is among the most repressive regimes on Earth. In addition, the Saudis fund, encourage, and supply the manpower for the bulk of Islamist terror worldwide.

So something has to be done. If we are in thrall to Saudi oil, it is time to get us out of thrall. Yes, I know, I've read the rumors that say the regime has booby-trapped all its oil-production facilities and infrastructure with dirty bombs, and will render all the oil unusable for thousands of years if anyone touches so much as a hair on its keffiyeh-covered head.

But the fact remains that the US could survive if Saudi oil disappeared. Life would be difficult; the economy would tank; but we would survive. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, can't grow enough food to feed itself, and its people would starve to death fairly quickly if it destroyed its own oil and could no longer sell it to the rest of us. Collective suicide does not seem all that likely. We should call their bluff.

So, in anticipation of the day when American policy changes, as a service to the Bush administration, I have written the President's speech announcing the change in policy to the American public. Karl Rove can keep it in the icebox in the West Wing so it's fresh when needed:

My fellow Americans,

Tonight it is my sad duty to report to you that the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia can no longer continue as it has in the past. After conversations this afternoon with Ambassador bin Sultan and Prince Abdullah, I have concluded that the Saudi regime, as presently constituted, cannot be democratically reformed, and will continue to undermine peace in the Middle East and the entire world.

In the early years of the 20th century, the United States made a bargain with the House of Saud: "Keep the Arabian peninsula quiet, maintain the flow of oil, and we will protect your regime." Ladies and gentlemen, the term of that bargain has run its course.

As I have often stated, the expansion of liberty in the world is the calling of our time. Unfortunately, the cause of liberty is ill-served by the House of Saud. In Saudi Arabia all the basic freedoms that you and I take for granted are denied. In Saudi Arabia women have no rights, and their fathers, husbands, and employers can abuse them abominably with impunity. In Saudi Arabia, practicing your Christian or Hindu faith can cost you a limb or even your life. In Saudi Arabia no one has the right to speak out against the regime or against Islam, and nobody has the right to choose the people who will govern him.

But, most importantly, the House of Saud is a danger to the peace and stability of the entire world. By funding, educating, and supporting terrorists, the Saudi regime has exported its illiberal culture to six continents. It utters unctuous words of flattery to our governments and our news media even as it hands out suitcases stuffed with cash to the most depraved and deadly terrorists across the globe. It even prints and ships vile anti-American and anti-Christian propaganda to mosques in this country, propaganda that advocates the violent overthrow of our government and the establishment of an Islamic state.

In short, the House of Saud is a danger to the freedom and well-being of the American people, and the time has come for it to step down. Therefore, I am issuing the following ultimatum to King Fahd and Prince Abdullah...

That'll do for starters.

Fake But Deadly

 
Newsday reports:

	A Bronx man has been charged with possessing an illegal cache of about 1,000 counterfeit law enforcement badges, authorities said Tuesday.
	[...]
	ICE agents arrested [Sergio] Khorosh on Monday at his home after he accepted delivery of about 100 fake U.S. Marshals Service shields. The delivery was being monitored by the agents, who had first intercepted the badges last month in a shipment from Taiwan to San Francisco.
	During a search of Khorosh's home, agents discovered about 1,000 more badges, some resembling those of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and New York Police Department, court papers said.
	[...]
	Ficke said the badges were in good condition, made of the same materials as authentic badges, even with some of the same markings on the back.
	"It's the first time we've seen something this legitimate," said Ficke. "These are very, very good. Counterfeits that look as good as the real thing."

This is where the real GWOT action is -- not at the airport, where the TSA is spending 18 gajillion dollars of your tax money to search your grandma for icepicks. Thank God for an alert Customs official.

Guys holding these IDs would breeze right through airport security. How many more of these are in circulation right now?

Bordering on Insanity

 
In his latest post, An American Expat in Southeast Asia writes about the intricate process by which Muslims from Southeast Asia enter the United States illegally via the hawala money-changing system:

	The majority of the money changers don't just simply change money, they also perform a remittance service known as hawala sending money around the globe but without ever actually transferring any money. Besides the changing money and hawala, there are a few others involved in something much more insidious, involving not the movement or transfer of money, but rather the movement of people.
	[…]
	In support of militant Islam and groups such as Al Qaeda, these agents and money changers have now in recent years expanded their operations into Central and South America where they work together to their counterparts in Mexico who will assist in getting the workers across the border and into the United States. Once across the border and into the United States the workers will be met by yet another group who will then take charge of the workers and deliver them to their respective jobs.
	[…]
	While many in America tend to see this precarious situation as a human rights violation, they need to be fully aware that these illegal immigrants are not victims. They have consciously elected to become indentured servants and have given their full faith and fealty to their agents and handlers. Whatever "work" that they may be required to do whether it be legal or illegal will be done and done without question. As difficult as it may be for many to accept, the threat we face is real. An army in the service of militant Islam is flooding across our nation's land borders completely unimpeded.
	The solution to the problem is simple and the onus lies with no one except ourselves. Close the borders and close them now. Our nation's national security depends upon it.

Coincidentally, the Daily Telegraph reports that EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom advocates the abolition of national borders (Hat tip: Fjordman):

	A senior European Commissioner marked VE Day yesterday by accusing Eurosceptics of risking a return to the Holocaust by clinging to "nationalistic pride".
	Margot Wallstrom, a Swede and the commissioner who must sell the draft constitution to voters, argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s.
	[…]
	She blamed the Second World War on "nationalistic pride and greed, and … international rivalry for wealth and power". The EU had replaced such rivalry with an historic agreement to share national sovereignty.
	[…]
	The commissioners also gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of Nato and the United States.

Let me see if I have this straight: the EU drove the Soviet Union from Eastern Europe and ended Communism by making its borders porous, allowing in all the Muslim immigrants who want to come, creating a lavish welfare state, and reducing its defense spending as close to zero as possible.

The American Left, in its admiration of all things European, presumably approves of this no-borders policy. Let all who wish to come walk across from Canada and Mexico – why, that would eliminate the need for the hawala people-smugglers! No more illegal aliens dying in overheated shipping containers! No more desperate parched immigrants crawling the last few yards over the border!

Then NPR could do one of its tear-jerk pieces about the plight of the newly unemployed hawala workers in Southeast Asia. The copy would write itself.

The Little Engine of Cant

 
Dymphna has recently lamented the deleterious effects of political correctness on the culture at large. Earlier I addressed the issue of "the enemy within" and how PC undermines our country and our culture. This narrow thinking puts us in mortal danger from the Great Islamic Jihad.

Political correctness insinuates itself into the body politic under many aliases – multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, conventional wisdom, progressive thought (how’s that for an oxymoron?), all the smelly little orthodoxies of our time. It comes in a number of varieties and flavors.

As a public service, I have gathered together the ten basic principles of PC. You might call them the Ten Postulates of PC; or maybe they could be couched in the imperative as the Ten Commandments of Multiculturalism.

1. America is uniquely evil.
2. America is never justified in defending itself.
3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.
4. The Earth would be better off without human beings.
5. Making a profit is always immoral.
6. Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.
7. For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.
8. Policies informed by Judæo-Christian principles are inherently suspect.
9. Conservatives are hypocrites; liberals are sincere.
10. There are no acts of God; there are only acts of Government.

There are numerous corollaries, extensions, and exceptions to the Ten Postulates, so a little exegesis is in order.

1. America is uniquely evil.

American “democracy” is a charade. The US is really a fascist dictatorship ruled by the Bush cabal manipulated by Zionist neocons.

Other countries can be arranged in descending order of evil: Israel, Britain, Australia, Italy, and so on, until we arrive at the Arab countries, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. Cuba, of course, has no evil in it whatsoever.

There are occasionally exceptions to American evil, but only under a Democratic administration, and with the approval of France and Germany.

2. America is never justified in defending itself.

War never solved anything. Negotiations through the UN are always the best way to address issues. Nations coming together in goodwill through common dialogue can work with each other to solve their problems. If Americans were more sensitive to the diverse concerns of other cultures, there would never be any aggression against us.

Etc blah yak.

3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.

People who are raised without all the technological distractions that afflict us in the West are better able to reach intuitive understanding of the world and live in tune with their environment. Just ask Drew Barrymore – she thinks it’s better to live in an earthen-floored hut without electricity than in a Malibu beach house.

Like, y’know, these people, they can, like teach us stuff about Mother Earth and all that.

4. The Earth would be better off without human beings.

Humankind is a scourge, an affliction, upon the face of the planet. We must reduce our ecological “footprint”, preferably to zero. The human population must be drastically reduced.

Exception: we Greens will remain, in order to decide who has to die.

5. Making a profit is always immoral.

Property is robbery. All economic activity should be controlled by special government bodies to make sure prices are fair and nobody gets ripped off. See #6 below.

6. Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.

Affirmative action. No child left behind. Everybody is above average. No game has a loser. Nobody is richer than anyone else. Nobody is stupider than anyone else. No one knows more than anyone else.

We await with eager anticipation the equality of the grave.

7. For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.

When South Central LA is burning, it’s understandable because members of a Designated Victim Group were aroused to ire by a court verdict. When Arabs crash jets into skyscrapers, they’re angry because our policies have made them poor and backward, and, besides, Israel oppresses their Palestinian brothers. When a junior thug eliminates half his high school class with gunfire, it’s because he was bullied and held in contempt by jocks.

8. Policies informed by Judæo-Christian principles are inherently suspect.

To act on moral principles is judgmental, and we must not be judgmental. Except, of course, when condemning racists, sexists, homophobes, bigots, fundamentalists…

9. Conservatives are hypocrites; liberals are sincere.

If a conservative’s policies benefit his constituents, he’s being cynical. When a liberal lines his pockets with public funds, sleeps with his secretary, and assaults his subordinates – well, he’s doing it “for the children”.

10. There are no acts of God; there are only acts of Government.

When a tornado takes out a trailer park, the government’s warning system is inadequate. When a hurricane devastates South Florida, building codes must be improved, and FEMA will pay for the damage. When people die in floods, earthquakes, ice storms, and asteroid strikes, the government is to blame for not warning them or protecting them.

On the positive side, government creates jobs and distributes benefices through the generosity of its welfare programs. Government makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall, especially on subsidized agriculture.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is a corrosive ideology that has eaten its way through most of the major institutions of Western culture, leaving them hollowed out and weakened in the face of the Great Islamic Jihad. Our enemy is filled with righteous zeal, ready to die for his beliefs, and has no doubt in the superiority of his religion. We Westerners, with our self-deprecatory posturing and theology of self-loathing, have inadequate spiritual defenses against this onslaught.

Scandinavia is the canary in the coal mine of the West. As Rune and Fjordman have repeatedly demonstrated, something is rotten in Denmark (and Sweden and Norway). The Netherlands is already plucking the first fruits of its radical multicultural tolerance.

These brave people in Europe are giving us their early warnings. It is past time to update our virus definitions before the PC Worm shuts us down.

So Just How Long Do We Have to Continue Our Charade with Saudi Arabia?

Saudi 'justice' has a strange and exotic flavor. It must be an acquired taste.

A month ago, an Indonesian maid was left at the hospital by her employer. She had been beaten, tied up for long periods of time in the bathroom, not permitted to sleep in the house, and not given sufficient food.

A 25-year-old maid who came to Saudi Arabia as a guest worker will leave behind most of her fingers and toes and part of her right foot when she is repatriated to Indonesia. In addition to the amputations, necessitated by gangrene, several teeth had been knocked out and she is in danger of losing an eye as a result of severe beatings.

The doctor who treated her on arrival described her condition as "critical." Her employer was charged and arrested, his wife was interrogated and released.

Her case was so outrageously criminal that even Crown Prince Abdullah intervened, sending his Minister of Health to investigate, and having her transferred to King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center. Both the Prince and the Minister declared the situation "disgusting."

That was then. This is now. Here is the latest report:

All the principals in the case of an Indonesian guest worker who was believed to have been tortured have been charged in the case. Indonesian maid Nour Miyati who accused her Saudi employers of torture has been charged with making false allegations; the sponsor and his wife face charges of neglect, with the husband also charged with residence permit violations and the wife charged with assaulting the maid. [emphasis added]

Brutalization is not just a family affair in Saudi Arabia. The state is a willing and eager partner. And it can twist arms with a mighty force, especially arms with hands whose fingers are missing. On the one hand, there is the medical committee's report:

A medical committee set up by Riyadh Governor from a number of specialists from the Ministry of Health concluded that the maid suffered wounds and bruises to her body, "suggesting she has been the victim of violence and that the gangrene could not have been caused as a direct result of beating and that it probably was caused by an inherent disease suffered by the patient."

On the other hand is the reality. Here is the new story:

The maid denied she had been beaten by her sponsor and said the injuries to her hands and feet were because she felt pain and sickness and that the itching in her hands and feet was because of her excessive use of chemical detergents. She also said she did not ask her sponsor to take her to hospital until after her condition worsened. She also denied she has been tortured or tied or denied food," the statement said.

And here is the outcome of this charade:

	As a result, the couple has been charged with neglect. The employer also was charged with violating the rules governing issuing residence permits for domestic helpers, and his wife was charged with assaulting the maid.
	Miyati, for her part, was charged with making false allegations that misled the inquiry and led to the detention of the sponsor throughout the investigation before he was released on bail.

There has been no trial date set, though all three will appear in court as defendants.

Whatever.




Here’s what you’ll look like if you use those dangerous chemical detergents. Maybe she could sue Procter and Gamble?
 

A Synchronicity of Council Votes

 
The winner for this week's Watcher of Weasels submissions is Carpe Bonum, and deservedly so. He speaks to the painful problem of hostages and even more important has some creative ideas about the situation:

In a nutshell: Eliminate both the propaganda and financial value of taking hostages. Make it extremely expensive and dangerous to play any role in hostage-taking, in either the financial or propaganda realms.

Go there and see his strategy. Then buttonhole everyone you know and make them read it.

The non-council winner won outstandingly, with three votes. This is an important vote because it was so large and because it sounds the warning for coming World War:

	Make no mistake about it: a new world war is brewing. And, as before, we in the liberal west are sleepwalking towards it, not really daring to state the terrible and unbearable truth.
	There is no co-existence possible with the Islamic Fascists. It’s them or us.

Perhaps they are right, that WWIV is coming. However, at Gates we think it's already here.

New Sisyphus uses the incident of the downed helicopter and the subsequent shooting of the wounded to begin the post,

The nature of our enemy could not be made any clearer. From Beslan, to Manhattan, to the field in which the helicopter’s passengers met their doom, one theme is constant: the absolute cowardly and craven nature of the Islamic Fascists themselves.

Now, see the point at which these two winners intersect. They are telling us that the old ways are not only useless, they are lethal in the face of Islamofascism. However, it might be best to take one step back here at home and slay, once and for all, the dragon of political correctness.

Let's start by ripping its claws away from the State Department so that our foreign service officers can function in an environment of truth and in the interests of our country. Then we continue on down the road to academe, where we cut off its food supply by refusing to fund any more ghettoized study devoted to victims and resentful multi-culti frauds. Ward Churchill goes first, followed by any supposedly adult and professional academics who faint or vomit when they hear something they don't like. Having banished those folks back to a world of real work, we can make life uncomfortable for the anti-Americans within our borders, the seditious ones who make jokes about assassinating the President.

Only then will be sufficiently prepared to deal with the foreign fascists -- i.e., when we've dealt with our own.

Go read them all. Thoughtful, provocative ideas.

May Your Heart Sing

What we have here may be the ultimate tongue-in-cheek subversion. Who even knows if the Burka Band is female? Maybe it's Afghanistan's version of transgendered rock 'n roll. Whatever the genre, please support their efforts. Whatever the truth is, here's the promotional materials (with no corrections):

	Burka Blue comes into being during a music workshop in the state music school 'Institute of Learning Music' in Kabul in October 2002. The workshop is co-promoted by the Afghan Ministry of Culture.
	Together with the band 'a certain frank' (Kurt Dahlke (Pyrolator) and Frank Fenstermacher), the drummer Saskia von Klitzing is also invited to participate. All three play together with the renowned German group 'Fehlfarben'.
	Two concerts take place as well as the workshop on pop-music instruments and modern recording methods. A small music studio is set up.
	In the course of the workshop Saskia gives some drumming instruction. A young woman called Nargis who just happens to be present is so enthused, she decides to learn the drums.
	Played on a drum, which had been hidden from the Taliban for over 6 years by another indigenous musician, the Burka Blue beat is the result.
	The vocals are written to the track's rhythm and are recorded on a cassette recorder in what usually serves as a kitchen in the Institute.
	Nargis reads the vocals aloud and realizes a name for Afghanistan's first woman's musical group, the 'Burka Band' as the Afghan answer, but at the same time an ironic one to the western superstar – and the girl-group challenges.
	2 young women spontaneously join in the project.
	With their support, the Burka Blue video originates from the Institute's kitchen and other 'safe' public places in Kabul.
	Burka Blue appears on Gudrun Guts Monika Enterprises Label in Berlin on vinyl as a single together with the expressive remix by Barbara Morgenstern.
	The Burka Band eclipses the summer media in 2003, appearing in the online edition of the German magazine Spiegel, Charlotte Roche's 'Fast Forward' on viva TV and Yahoo's opening page which leads to diplomatic irritations. The TV channel SAT 1 broadcasts extensive coverage in its evening news. The BBC and AFP and different European daily newspapers publish articles as does the world's largest US music publication, Spin Magazine.

Sounds like they've gotten out and about quite a bit. More than Gates of Vienna does, at any rate. So if you've already heard them, enjoy the photo. If you haven't' make arrangements to buy the disc.

Meanwhile, enjoy the delicious victory that plays like a counterpoint to the whole story. The Taliban tried to make the music die and Burka Band is the flagship of their abysmal failure. Sure, the capture of yet another "third in command" Al Qaeda hotshot is good news, but it doesn't cheer the soul. Burka Band makes your heart sing. Even if you don't like rock 'n roll. Or maybe even if you do, knowing how much it makes the Taliban gnash their teeth in the outer darkness every time they hear one of BB's melodies.



Hat tip: Buzz Machine

Trunk vs. Tail

 
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPACUK) reposted a list of prominent Jews in the media made by Jeffrey Blankfort and posted on the al-Jazeera.info website, including with it the following commentary:

If Jewish groups can help their community to do so well in the Media, why can the muppets who run our Mosques not establish a simple program that a monkey could organise to teach Muslims simply how to get jobs in the Media ...man are our Mosque Leaders losers or what, or is asking why Mosque Leaders dont have a brain a stupid question ?

These comments are followed by a list of prominent media people, including such familiar names as Wolf Blitzer, Larry King, Michael Savage, Dennis Prager, and Michael Ledeen.

This brought to mind part of an earlier Gates of Vienna post:

Is the rich and fertile culture of "The West" even conceivable without the Jews? In every enterprise open to them Jews excel. They are over-represented in the highest reaches of the arts and sciences, and in the academy; despite historical obstacles and discrimination, they are to be found among the greatest mathematicians and physicists, composers and musicians, historians and novelists. Examine the masthead of a magazine, the credits for a movie, or the members of a university faculty, to see the contributions of the Jews.

Interesting: Muslims observing the same data came to a slightly different conclusion. What do you suppose the "simple program" was that the Jews organized in order to insinuate themselves into the loftiest eyries of Western culture? Was it the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Or the Ten Commandments? Or a culturally-based striving for excellence in all intellectual endeavors?

In any case, MPACUK seems to have its arm up to the elbow in the tail region of the elephant, while here we are poking with our red-tipped cane at the tusks and trunk.



Hat tip: Andrew Apostolou

A Rose By Any Other Name

Have you ever heard of muta'a? It means ecstasy in Arabic — but a truer definition might be prostitution.

Saddam Hussein outlawed the practice in Iraq; it’s generally looked down upon by the Sunni Muslims. However, the Shi’ites have Mohammed on their side as he is supposed to have recommended it as a way for widows to earn extra income.

Muta’a is a pleasure marriage, a temporary arrangement lasting from an hour to a decade, depending upon the ability of the man willing to pay for such an arrangement.

A turbaned Shiite cleric who issues wedding permits from a street-side counter in Sadr City says he encourages permanent marriages but gives the OK for pleasure marriages when there are "special reasons"...{he} grants licenses for muta'a in cases where the woman is widowed or divorced, or for single women who have approval from their fathers.

Your probably don’t need to be told that this arrangement is legal only for men. Women cannot and do not initiate any such arrangement.

According to the news report,

	Most Shiite scholars today consider it halal, or religiously legal. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest religious authority in Shiite Islam, sets conditions and obligations for muta'a on his Web site. ("A woman with whom temporary marriage is contracted is not entitled to share the conjugal bed of her husband and does not inherit from him ...")
	Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and other Shiite lawmakers have said they want Iraq's new constitution to use the sharia, or Islamic law, as its basis. That could give muta'a formal legal protection. Sunni Arabs and Kurds, who are mainly Sunni, oppose the idea. But the practice is growing among Sunnis and Shiites alike.

Why is this not surprising?

The renaissance of the pleasure marriage coincides with a revival of other Shiite traditions long suppressed by the former regime. Interest in Shiite customs has accelerated since Shiite parties swept Jan. 30 elections to become the biggest bloc in the new National Assembly.

Good on them. It hardly bears thinking about what the “revival of other Shiite traditions” might entail.

Meanwhile, with the addition of each new Arabic word to our rather sheltered vocabulary, there is no commensurate addition of esteem for a supposedly poetic language. If this be poetry, let's hear it for prosaic Anglo-Saxon.

How Political Correctness Lowers IQ

Walter Williams doesn't fly commercial airplanes much anymore. He used to, traveling to speaking engagements several times a month. But then along came 9/11. Or rather, along came Norman Mineta with his truly bizarre idea of “security”:

"While the security procedures are not based on the race, ethnicity, religion or gender of passengers, we also want to assure that in practice, the system does not disproportionately select members of any particular minority group."

Never mind that the sentence itself is strange bureaucratese. We’ve become inured to the debasement of the language. Here’s what’s appalling: we may not speak about the reality that a particularly gendered ethnic group created the hell of 9/11. The elephant in the airport is the disproportionate self-selection of Muslim males on the “Most-Wanted” terrorist Lists.

The only group we avoid criticizing more than Muslim males are gay Episcopalian bishops.

This demand for political correctness has gone beyond the ridiculous into the regions of banal evil. There is an ugly strain of utopian idealism in our country, a virulent insistence on ‘fairness’ that undermines intelligence, merit and achievement. Not to mention virtue, the refuge of the uncool.

The malignant organism that rips the social fabric of American life, leveling differences while it pretends to celebrate them, PC everywhere insinuates itself into the crevices, using a cover of well-meaning to create vacuous, bizzare realities like “zero-tolerance” and unattended college sports programs for women (while men’s programs are eliminated).

It demands — and gets — bathrooms for the transgendered who cannot decide which restroom to use.

Pornography is our constitutional right but we shouldn’t be looking at images of the Twin Towers falling.

“Give Peace A Chance” means no dodgeball at recess.

"No Child Left Behind" means all will be mired in ignorance together. Even fewer will be able to point to Europe on the map, or know a quadratric equation from an interrogative sentence. A what??

No, ignorance is not the perceived problem. Unfairness is. The smallest infraction is insufficiently negligible to escape its notice. Yet PC has so blinded formerly normal people that children wander the school halls bent on murder and no one sees them until bodies are lying on the floor. "But he was such a nice boy." More calls for gun control and therapy for bullies.

Political correctness has made us so stupid that some of us demand conversation with vaginas.

If we don’t rise up and call a halt to this social rot, terrorism will be irrelevant. We'll be protozoa.

Orwell had no idea, absolutely none.



Read all of Walter Williams' "The Sad, Stupid State of Airport Security." It's a three-parter at Human Events, beginning with the above link.

UPDATE: Broken link fixed. Thanks, Greg.

Swedish Twilight

 
Fjordman has a powerful post today about the coming collapse of Swedish democracy and culture. He just sent us this note on the same topic:

Only a couple of generations ago, Sweden was talked about with respect, and the "Swedish model" referred to as an example to follow by other countries. Some of this may have been an illusion. A significant number of the problems we are witnessing now have their roots in the ideology of the all-encompassing state, the generous welfare system and the long period of Socialist dominance that has crippled a genuine political debate. Education teaches people to respect the consensus, and not sabotage it. As Roland Huntford demonstrated in the book The New Totalitarians, Sweden is a "peaceful utopia" totally controlled by a bureaucracy which actively discourages all signs of individuality and dissent. Sweden hasn't been involved in war since Napoleonic times. It managed to stay out of both world wars, was neutral during the cold war and has never experienced invasion or occupation in modern history. In short, there are few if any Western nations less suited intellectually to deal with the Islamic challenge than Sweden. It shows.

Sweden is already a banana republic, perhaps on its way to becoming an Islamic republic. Swedish culture is disappearing with astonishing speed in front of our eyes. If the trend isn't stopped, the Swedish nation will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way during the first half of this century. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe. The "Swedish model" will no longer refer to a stable and peaceful state with an advanced economy, but an Eurabian horror story of utopian multiculturalism, Socialist mismanagement and runaway immigration. Sweden has national elections in 2006. This will be one of the last opportunities the country has to resolve its towering internal tensions in peaceful and civilized ways. Some fear it's already too late.

No Democracy, Whiskey, or Sexy for You!

 
Religion of peace update: According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal,

Terrorists order hotels in Miranshah to stop showing television and films

Islamist terrorists in the Miranshah town of North Waziristan have reportedly ordered hotels and music shops to stop showing television and selling movies or face dire consequences. In a leaflet distributed overnight in Miranshah town and signed "from Al Qaeda group and Taliban group", the terrorists gave businesses five days to stop showing movies and television, according to Reuters. "Remember this is not an idle threat. Do not dismiss it. Also stop showing sexy movies or else there will be a strict punishment after five days," said the hand-written leaflet. The owner of a Miranshah shopping plaza reportedly assembled all shopkeepers and urged them to follow the instructions, a witness said.

In Afghanistan, Girls Just Want to Have Fun Find Work

The partially clothed bodies of a woman and her two daughters were found on the side of a road near the capital of the northern Afghanistan province, Baghlan. There was a note attached to their chests calling them whores and warning other women not to work with non-governmental aid groups.

Dr. Abdul Khalil, a doctor in Pol-e-Khomri, 95 miles north of Kabul, said that the women had been sexually assaulted.

The desperately poor in this region of the world have few opportunities for employment or income. There are several micro-credit organizations which extend small loans to women who want to start their own businesses. Two of these NGOs, BRAC and Grameen, deserve to be supported.

BRAC, formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, moved into the northern province in Afghanistan in 2002 as some of the refugees who fled to Bangladesh began to return home when the Taliban were driven out of power. It was this group that the women probably worked for.

BRAC was founded in 1972 in Bangladesh. BRAC and Grameen have assisted women in rural areas, improved thousands of lives, and made formerly destitute families self-supporting. With micro-loans, women are able to keep up their small businesses without going into debt to usurers for capital or product. The rate of default on these loans is extremely low; the programs are structured so that women help one another, in addition to agreeing to a code of living for the duration of their involvement with the programs.

BRAC's core approach and competency is the delivery of health, education, microfinance, and microenterprise services on a large scale to the rural poor, primarily women. BRAC decided to train local women to help deliver these services and organize local groups. As a result, BRAC's service delivery contributes to building local leadership and local organizations.

When the founder of the Grameen project was asked by the US Congressional Forum why more than 94% of their loans go to women he said,

Women have plans for themselves, for their children, about their home, the meals. They have a Vision. A man wants to enjoy himself.

In other words, they have ambition and tenacity. What happened to the men, that all they have left is the violent, envious subjugation of women and children?

Flashback – Fallujah

 
Scandinavian correspondent Rune, who appears to be quite a polyglot, sent us this message last week:

Here's a French piece dating from before the battle of Fallujah; I didn't see it on any of the blogs, in fact never saw it in an English translation. It's out-of-date now of course, but sometimes it's worth revisiting old horrors so as to congratulate oneself that things really are going in the right direction. Also to remember that we have not, and shall never, forget Nick Berg's killers and who we're dealing with. This month [April] it's a year ago.

	After staying for six months in Iraq after the end of the war, French journalist Sara Daniels managed to set up a meeting with the Islamic executioners hiding in Fallujah.
	Marseille, France
	The large report makes your spine shiver. The journalist Sara Daniels of the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur [The New Observer] finally managed to set up a meeting with the Islamists whom have abducted and killed several foreign hostages in the recent months.
	Inside their Fallujah headquarters -- Fallujah where American troops have not dared venture since their withdrawal April 29 -- they are laughing about why they have cut the throats of the hostages and why the world can expect more hostage taking in the future: it works.
	"I'm responsible for the decapitation of the American agent Nicolas Berg, of the Korean Kim Sun-il and of other Iraqi spies working for the Americans" says the chief of the new military top command of the Islamic groupings - a man of about 30 years, whose name in the article has been changed to Abou Rachid.
	Video with Murder
	Sara Daniels listened with growing horror to the laughs and taunts of Abou Rachid and his recommendations that she watch the DVD the murder of Nicolas Berg twice -- then she'll get used to it. Meanwhile he offers her to participate in the next. Abou Rachid denies that foreign troops control the struggle against the Americans. After the American withdrawal Fallujah is considered the first liberated city of Iraq; an Islamic emirate. The chiefs for 13 Islamic groups have installed a religious regime of terror with summary execution of opponents, spies or people who will not subject to the draconian Islamic rules. According to the leaders, all the Islamic groups now cooperate and abdications and attacks are planned and staged from Fallujah.
	The Method Works
	"We don't abduct people to scare them, we withhold, but solely to put pressure on the countries which help the Americans. They cooperate with the Americans because of economic interests, but their contracts are stained with the blood of Iraqis. Should we merely fold our hands while they murder us? It is not a good thing to decapitate people. But it is a method which works" says Abou Rachid and continue: "Just look at the just reaction of the Philippines. Thanks to their attitude we could free the hostage and show the world that we too love peace and leniency. I by the way tried to negotiate a transfer of Nick Berg with Iraqi prisoners, but the Americans refused. So they are the ones truly responsible for his death."
	According to Abou Rachid, the 13 Islamic groups have different tasks, but they have centralised inside Fallujah the hostage negotiations and the struggle across the whole of Iraq, the better to be able to increase the number of attacks and coordinate future attacks and show their strength. The Islamic leader acknowledges that many foreign Arab holy warriors participate in the fight on their side, but deny that the attacks are controlled by foreigners. When several of the hostages have been executed by Arab warriors it, according to Abou Rachid, is because they have reached a higher religious level.
	"But little by little the Iraqis learn to imitate their Arab brothers" he says and promise the struggle will not end before the occupation has ended and Islamic Sharia introduced into Iraq.
	Prophetic Preaching
	Sara Daniels also interviewed the extremist Islamic religious leader, imam Janabi, who with satisfaction tell her that he already in a preaching in 1996 predicted that an American invasion would first finish off Saddam Hussein and then the American themselves. On tours through Fallujah, it quickly become obvious to Sara Daniels that the Islamic warriors are in possession of all actual powers and that the Iraqi security forces, which according to the ceasefire agreement, should control the security after the American withdrawal are simple irrelevant.

"Higher religious level" huh?! Oh yeah, Religion of Peace. Anyway, Sara Daniels is a very courageous woman, and the lessons are clear; never give in to threats and never negotiate with hostage takers. Also this is a fight to the end. There can be no negotiations and never any settlement with such men.

-- Rune