Strawberry Shortcake Does Jihad?

 
Thanks to the miracle of Google Images, I happened upon a website today called Hilal Plaza.

The image you see at right is the cover of an ABC book for children learning Arabic script. Now, I ask you, where do you think those cute li’l scapers live? The West Bank? Islamabad? Nigeria? Jeddah?

Such adorable red-headed Arab boys ‘n’ girls!

Here’s the product info on the book:

	Detailed Description
	This small workbook can help you learn the actual Arabic script as Arabs write it in everyday life. The book contains practice sentences and provides room for practicing the script. Contains 28 pages of Arabic script for practice.

I, for one, can’t wait to get started.

But Hilal Plaza isn’t only for children’s books. Their “About Us” page contains the following message:

Welcome to HilalPlaza.com, where we provide you with best of class Islamic clothing, Islamic Art and other quality products coupled with excellent service. Our Islamic Clothing includes a very wide variety of products that includes abaya, hijab, jilbab, denim western suits, long skirts and others. We also feature Islamic Books that are an excellent source of information for non-Muslims and Muslims. The books are meant for Adults as well as children.

No burqas. But the “denim western suits” were what interested me, because I couldn’t quite picture what they were — maybe matching denim pants and jackets with a string tie, and nice leather boots with Inshallah tooled on the sides? Unfortunately, I couldn’t find them.

However, I did see this:

All items are shipped from the United States making shipping quick, and dependable.

So not only can you shop easily for what you want, you can “Buy American” at the same time!

I was most interested in jihad-related products, but a search within the site for “jihad” and “mujahideen” produced no results. I wonder why that might be?

My most serendipitous discovery was “Zamzam water”, which I had never heard of before. Here’s the product description:

This zamzam water in a nicely packaged bottle is from the Zamzam well in Makkah. From a Islamic religious viewpoint, zamzam water can provide cure from sickness. Every year, millions of pilgrims that flcok to Makkah bring zamzam water with them to use for various cures and purposes.

And only $2.99 a quart! How can anyone resist?

My advice is to rsuh to Hilal Plaza so that you can qickly fill all your needs for Islam-related prdoucts.

An Amended Note to Our Readers

Phone service to our house just got knocked out. I am at work, but will have to return home immediately, because I can’t be out of contact with Dymphna for any length of time, given her precarious physical condition.

Since we have dial-up, this means that Gates of Vienna will be incommunicado for a while. But we will read and respond to comments eventually.

In the meantime, go visit Belmont Club or Dr. Sanity (or anyone else on our blogroll) to keep yourselves occupied and out of trouble...


UPDATE from Dymphna: the phone magically started working again. The phone fairies were having a bit of fun and got carried away. The ones who chewed the wires were sharply rebuked by their supervisor and have been made to crawl under the house and rub fairy spit on the whole works so that service just magically resumed. In other words, I haven't the faintest idea why it quit working or why it resumed on its own.

If you'd ever met our phone repairman you'd know why I was not looking forward to a visit for repairs. That man can talk. I know his family stories now back to the last four generations..in great, excruciating detail I know them, down to his second cousin once removed and his 80 year old daddy who runs a mile every morning.

Does this mean service will continue unimpeded? Who knows? When things like this happen I remind myself I'm glad I only live in the Back of Beyond. I mean, it could be Russia and then who knows when the phone would be with us again?

Russia and the Caliphate Sign Non-Aggression Pact

 
Leaders finalize protocols to the Hudna of Lausanne

September 11, 2067
By Mahmud O’Connor, European Correspondent

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Meeting in the historic Kinsky Palace in Prague today, Russian President Yevgeny Ivanov and Caliph Hassan bin Laden signed the supplemental protocols to last year’s Hudna of Lausanne, paving the way for a final resolution of outstanding security issues in Europe.

The last several months have seen protracted wrangling over the disposition of Russian and Islamic troops, the status of certain territories, and the treatment of Orthodox Christians in the territories occupied by the Caliphate. “The Russians have driven a hard bargain, as usual,” said Omar al-Belgi, a spokesman for the Umma.

Under the terms of the agreement, Russia will occupy islands in the Baltic, including Gotland, and will be granted access to all of Poland and Romania. Switzerland and the Czech Republic will retain their neutrality, but Bulgaria will become part of the demilitarized “Dhimmi” zone, and Austria will be fully occupied by the Umma. According to sources close to the Caliph, bin Laden plans to name Mohammed bin Rashid al-Masri as Sultan of the new Austrian Province of the Caliphate.



Of particular contention was the status of the mujahideen in the Caucasus. Russia insisted that bin Laden withdraw his troops at least 60 kilometers south of the Caucasus Wall, creating an additional demilitarized zone in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Under the final terms of the protocols, the surviving Chechens in the Russian Federation will be given safe passage through the Wall, and will be resettled in what used to be Armenia.

With her territories in Southwest Asia secured by her alliance with China, and her Far East buffered by Chinese Siberia, Russia is expected to enjoy more security than she has in at least a generation. “Stability in Holy Russia and stability in the Near Abroad enhance the security of all nations,” said Mr. Ivanov.

The last several weeks of negotiations were taken up with the status of Orthodox Christian communities remaining within the Umma and the Dhimmi Zone. The Caliphate has agreed that Orthodox Christians who accept their dhimmi status, pay the jizya, and do not overtly express their faith will be left unmolested in the territories controlled by the Umma. In return, Russia agreed to allow the Caliph’s troops to occupy all of Greece.

Roman Catholics and Protestants, however, are not offered the same protection. Observers expect the mujahideen to begin razing cathedrals and rounding up infidels in the newly-occupied territories, just as they have done in the French and Belgian sultanates. No non-Muslim journalists are permitted in these areas, but escaping refugees arriving in Israel have reported massive and brutal atrocities inflicted on non-Orthodox Christians by marauding bands of Islamic irregulars.

Russia and the Umma, however, are unwilling to let such events cloud their historic occasion. “Islam has made treaties with non-believers since the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him),” said Caliph bin Laden to reporters at the joint press conference. “We will accord this momentous agreement the same respect we have granted all the earlier ones, Allah willing.”

The Caliph of Ice Cream

 
The Religious Policeman has a good post on the latest Islamic paranoia making its rounds through the blogosphere. You know, the Burger King caper in Britain, the one where BK tried to go under the radar and insult Islam by putting Arabic script on the covers of their pre-packaged ice creams. And not just any Arab script, mind you. These kaffir put “Allah” smack dab on the top where you couldn’t miss it, right where it could insult you as soon as you had the cone in your hand. Such would be your rage that your shaking hand would cause the ice cream to fall and you would be forced to buy another one. Do you not see the evil genius in this plot — first to insult you and second to rob you of your hard-earned dole money cash?

Infidels are insidious. Their veiled threats against the coming Ummah never stop. It takes great vigilance to keep up with these attempts to undermine the obvious superiority of Islam compared to their whore-ridden, diseased and dissolute culture.

Fortunately, they are not being allowed to get away with this latest offense. Thanks to the keen observations of one Mr. Rashad Akhtar, a Burger King customer who spotted the sacrilege and called the company, BK has “shown great cultural sensitivity” and will have a new design drawn up. ASAP.

This is not enough for the intrepid Mr. Akhtar, however. He is demanding that the designer of the ice cream lid be fired and he wants Muslims to boycott Burger King. According to the Religious Policeman, this devout idiot believer says,

...."These people who have designed this think they can get away with this again and again. This is my jihad".

Oh. Right. I scream, you scream, he jihads for ice cream.

This rampant paranoia regarding designs and logos is not new. In The Jihad That Refreshes we reported on the hallucinations surrounding the Coke logo. Notice that Coca Cola just rolled right on, oblivious to the brouhaha. But they don’t have to care, they’re the phone company superpower, mega Coke.

And Burger King? Have they finished crawling yet? Probably not. As the RP remarked,

Sadly, Burger King have "shown great cultural sensitivity" or "crumpled under pressure", depending how you look upon it.

If this idiocy were happening here we could perhaps institute an anti-boycott; from this distance, though, it's hard to do more than ROTFL.

Or maybe buy some Burger King stock.


This post is dedicated to the Baron's Boy, currently struggling to decipher the meaning, if any meaning there be, in The Emperor of Ice Cream with its "concupiscent curds" and the dawdling wenches in line four. Now wouldn't that poem blow the sanctimonious lid off Mr. Akhtar's dessert?


UPDATE: The manuscript of the actual poem has been found! Wallace Stevens was a late-comer, stealing from the Arabs.

The Caliph of Ice-Cream

by Walid al-Astifanis
Translated from the Arabic by Baron Bodissey

Call the killer of big kaffirs,
The crepuscular one, and bid him whip
In dungeon clasps recalcitrant Kurds.
Let the houris dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring bomb-belts inside their underpants.
Let Sheol be finale of scream.
The only caliph is the caliph of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser surreal,
Lacking the three front teeth, that burqa
On which she embroidered fatwas once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let imams fulfill the scheme.
The only caliph is the caliph of ice-cream.

The Great Jihad in Thailand

 
In this AP story, Muslim Violence Destroying Economy in Southern Thailand, Rungrawee C. Pinyorat writes:

	The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.
	[…]
	“My business has been bad as customers are afraid to come out,” said Thanchanok Putroy, 39, chopping up a catfish in the market where most stores were shut and buses aren’t running.

In the time-honored tradition of Islamic terrorists, zealous radicals are determined to have their way, regardless of the damage to their country’s economy.

	Bombs have exploded at a department store, a cinema complex, the international airport at Hat Yai and a department store owned by the French Carrefour chain. Now investors and tourists have been driven off and some workers are leaving.
	“Trade has dropped 70 to 80 percent. Shopkeepers complain loudly. It is very quiet at night and people from outside dare not to come to the area,” said Panya Ongsakul, chairman of the three provinces’ chamber of commerce.
	Always among the country’s poorest regions, per capita monthly income in Narathiwat is 2,120 baht ($51), less than half the national average. Many Muslim villagers are angry at the government, but also want them to quell the violence so they can continue what have traditionally been peaceful lives in this rural region of 1.8 million people.

The Thai branch of the Great Islamic Jihad is determined to expel the infidel from their areas and purify Islamic practices. An interesting economic note can be found at the end of the story:

Prices of quarried rock have doubled, because the government severely limited the use of explosives that were reportedly being stolen for bomb attacks. The government eased the curbs as part of efforts to revive the economy, but Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya, while warily approving the measure, said he expected coffins would have to be stockpiled for bomb victims.

So the investor in Southern Thailand is advised to sell shares of Suntory and buy shares of… what? Krupp? National Coffin Company? Prosthetic Limbs ‘R’ Us?

Remember: Wherever you live, the Umma is coming to you.

The Bush Doctrine at Work

 
Well. What have we here?

Saudi women will be able to fully participate in an election for the first time in this ultraconservative Islamic kingdom, after the government ordered a local chamber of commerce to allow female voters and candidates.

No matter how you cut it — and you can be guaranteed this will not get anywhere near the attention Cindy Sheehan has, even though it is historic and maybe even earth-shattering — the rocks George Bush threw into the slime hole that is the Middle East continue to make their ripples.

Look at that quote. Women are not only voting, they’re being permitted to run for office. Unlike the previous municipal elections, where women were permitted to submit their votes through a male guardian, this will be a real step. A baby step, but a true beginning.

Will they have to campaign while wearing the portable telephone booths they are required to don when going out in public? Perhaps. But that’s beside the historic point: women are going to vote in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

While the troops roll on in Iraq, while women hold elective office in Afghanistan, and now, while the Saudi women turn out for the vote for the Chamber of Commerce elections in November, the turbulence in the pool continues. For a desert country these Saudi princes are learning to roll with the waves President Bush has created.

Read it and weep, Osama. Maybe even your momma will be voting someday, eh? Meanwhile, keep sending those cards and letters and videos, boy.


Hat tip: Captain's Quarters.

Murderous Synchronicity?

 
Is there a correlation between certain feast days in the Roman Catholic calendar and the dates of Muslim attacks on Western countries? A startling idea proposed in a post by Fourth World War.

Before considering his proposition, a short primer on the Roman Catholic Liturgical Year is in order.

The Church marks time by this ancient, teleological calendar. The Liturgical Year begins always on the First Sunday in Advent (right around the American feast of Thanksgiving). It moves through the periods of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time (the longest season, taking up all of the summer and autumn). Properly considered by the early church as a spiral, the cycles within the year were meant to replace the Greek notion of time as circular with Hebrew idea that it was linear and historical. Christian theology laid out its claim that history was irrevocably changed by the irruption of Christ into human history. It fleshed out this idea over the centuries with the development of the Liturgical Year.

Within this framework are two divisions: the main one, the Proper of the Seasons and then the overlay, the Proper of the Saints. The former has to do with the fixed cycles mentioned above of Advent, Christmas, etc., all of which center around the earthly life of Christ and the stories in the Gospels. They follow in their unvarying and particular order — automatic to one who is raised to consider the year in this way — though the dates may vary.

Some feasts are moveable. Easter varies according to the Spring equinox and the date was set (after many ancient quarrels) in the Western Church as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Christmas, on the other hand, never varies from its date (at least in the some countries) of December 25th.

Each cycle has its own color, rhythms and mood. Advent, for example, spans the four weeks before Christmas. “Advent” means coming and the color is purple (penitential), the mood one of expectation as the seasons of the year wind down and preparations are made for the coming of the Christ Child. The scriptural readings for this season are centered around the passages in the Gospels which cover the emerging of Christ into his short life of preaching. It is here you will find his Baptism by John. An old hymn of this season, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is plain chant dating back to the ninth century.

The proper of the Saints is a more detailed calendar, a filigree overlaid on the liturgical cycles. These are the “feast days” assigned to commemorate individual saints — Doctors of the Church for example, or martyrs or events of particular note in Church history. Thus each day of the year has the feast of a saint, sometimes more than one. In the liturgy (the church service) for that day, this person’s life will be celebrated and commemorated, much as we celebrate birthdays in our families and recall the memories we retain of our ancestors.

The liturgical calendar is old, its rudiments dating back to the earliest days of the Church. While saints’ feast days may vary in emphasis from country to country, throughout the Christian world the liturgical year does not change. In Sweden, St. Lucy’s Day is a major feast within the Christmas cycle. The Festival of Lights, on December 13th, marks the beginning of Christmas in Sweden (and to some extent in Sicily). Like many Catholic feast days, its origins pre-date the Christian era.

All of this is by way of introducing the rather startling correlation laid out in the aforementioned post in Fourth World War, to wit:

Dr. J. Michael Waller lists the dates of terrorist attacks and points out the timing of the “some of the most notorious terrorist bombings over the past four years...” Noting the dates of the more notorious of Muslim attacks against the West, he proceeds to assign them to feast days from the Proper of the Saints in the Liturgical Calendar. Three of these feast days he points to are commemorations particularly of Christian and Muslim conflicts from the past and the last one -- the first London bombing — commemorates three English Catholic martyrs executed under Elizabeth I for refusing to renounce their Catholic faith.

Read his ideas and see what you think:

Beginning with 9/11, we have the feast day of Blessed* Louis of Thuringia, a 13th century German prince who died on the Sixth Crusade in 1227. *“Blessed” is a designation for a person who is a step below actual sainthood, thus it is a minor feast.

3/11 is even more interesting. It is the feast of St. Eulogius, bishop of Cordoba, Spain. The Muslim invaders executed the bishop for having helped a Christian convert from Islam to escape the authorities. This occurred on March 11th, 859.

7/7 is the commemoration of three English martyrs, also with the designation of “Blessed” who were killed by Elizabeth for their illegal Catholic activity in 1591. This is an unusual feast day in the Church since, as Dr. Waller points out, there are very few English Catholics commemorated on the Roman Catholic calendar.

7/21 honors another victory over the Muslims, this time by St. Lawrence of Brindisi, who defeated Turkish invaders in Hungary in 1601.

As Doctor Waller says,

This could be a pattern. Or it could be nothing more than a coincidence. Any meaning remains to be seen.

Finally he brings us up short with this historical date:

Operation Enduring Freedom, the US response to the 9/11 attacks, began on October 7, 2001. That day is the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto (1571), a huge naval engagement in the Mediterranean between the Christians, led by John of Austria, and the Muslim Ottomans led by Ali Pasha. In their first major defeat of the Ottomans, the Christians destroyed the Muslim fleet and prepared the way for more than a century of military successes in central Europe.

For the Christians, these ruminations are most interesting. Atheists would have no problem dismissing them as “nothing more than a coincidence.” The Jungians among us would offer the suggestion that these are eruptions of the collective unconscious. The scientists and the cautious would maintain a “wait-and-see” attitude, keeping a record of the feast days which escape any violence, and those which end with death and mayhem.

But what would the Muslims say? It would appear they have two choices: to proclaim it was their intention all the time — while quickly finding a liturgical calendar, noting the feast days germane to their ongoing intention to “restore” the Caliphate to the whole world, and then using the appropriate saints’ days in aid of their subjugation of dar al Harb. Muslims’ other choice would be to join with the atheists and dismiss the whole thing as a coincidence and a Christian plot. Either way, it would seem they end up looking over their shoulder, wondering who is leading this whole thing, while chanting with somewhat less certainty, and even more defensiveness, Allahu Akbar.

Meanwhile, the other religions — Jewish, Hindu, etc., — might consider a look-see at their calendar of feast days and commemorations and see if there is a correlation with some, or any, Muslim defeats in the past with current Muslim attacks in their countries.

Time will tell. Or, having the whole thing brought to consciousness, the pattern may cease.

Dr. Waller notes the next feast day to watch:

The next Muslim-related feast day on the Catholic Church calendar is September 24, honoring St. Pacificus, who prophesied the 1688 victory of Christian armies over the Turks in Belgrade.

Would that Hobbes, late of Calvin and Hobbes, were here to offer his views on this mysterious synchronicity. Since he is no longer with us we will have to fall back on Shakespeare’s rumination in Hamlet, when he says: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.

There are indeed. The task is to sort out these things “in Heaven and Earth” and to know which tools to use to discern events and their meanings. There’s the crux of the matter: what meanings to assign to wild and wondrous happenings we encounter.

What do you think?


Hat tip: The High Post (alas, the permalink for the post doesn’t work; scroll down a bit).

Sustainable Corruption

 
Yesterday Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was treated to the diplomatic version of “Talk to the Hand.” Playing to a house of empty seats, Mr. Ahmadinejad preached on a variation of the Islamofascist theme of Muslim supremacy, Iranian style.

Last we heard, the US was not going to honor this thug’s visa. What with the breathless 24/7 Katrina coverage, Ahmadinejad must have somehow slipped by the Customs agents while they watched nonstop death-and-doom New Orleans. Or maybe the State Department weenied out again.

This whole affair would be disturbing except for one thing: the UN — corrupt and degraded beyond any possible salvage — has rendered itself irrelevant. When you think of the UN, think of a bunch of decrepit eunuchs singing “Stouthearted Men.”

Having John Bolton holding down the Fort on First Avenue is George Bush’s greatest joke. The perfect subterfuge, it lulls everyone into thinking the Administration gives a damn about what goes on at Turtle Bay. Bolton is a man of integrity set down in a cesspool, a “diplomat” who has said that he would like the top ten stories of his bailiwick done away with. Just the man for the job of watchdog. Sheepdog. Guard dog.

And what is he guarding, precisely? Why, nothing. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. Sending Bolton sends the message that we care about the UN, and we want the best possible person in there, taking care of business.

With that sleight of hand, we can now simply ignore the UN. Sure, the President will show up for speeches and will make all the proper noises at the appropriate time, but the reality is that we will ignore the whole dog and pony show while maintaining the polite fiction of paying attention. A kind of “listening between bathroom breaks” attention.

That’s why we need Kofi Annan in charge. Or, rather, we need not to waste energy on having him removed. As Mark Steyn says,

…if, as I do, you believe 90 per cent of UN ‘reforms’ are likely to be either meaningless or actively harmful, a discredited and damaged secretary-general clinging to office is as good as it’s likely to get — short of promoting Didier Bourguet, the UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic charged with running a paedophile ring. A UN that refuses to hold Kofi Annan to account will be harder to pass off as a UN that represents the world’s ‘moral authority’, in Clare Short’s blissfully surreal characterisation.

You see, there is no cure for the UN. It can’t be reformed, regrouped, or ever made into anything resembling an effective bureaucracy (pardon the oxymoron).

So let’s keep Kofi:

What’s important to understand is that Mr Annan’s ramshackle UN of humanitarian money-launderers, peacekeeper-rapists and a human rights commission that looks like a lifetime-achievement awards ceremony for the world’s torturers is not a momentary aberration. Nor can it be corrected by bureaucratic reforms designed to ensure that the failed budget oversight committee will henceforth be policed by a budget oversight committee oversight committee. The oil-for-food fiasco is the UN, the predictable spawn of its utopian fantasies and fetid realities. If Saddam grasped this more clearly than Clare Short or Polly Toynbee, well, that’s why he is — was — an A-list dictator and they’re not.

Wasn’t that easy? The UN done and dispensed with. Crossed off your to-do list. Now we can get on with the job of building strong alliances with our real friends, the ones in the Anglosphere.

Sail on, Kofi. Sail on.


Hat Tip: Jihad Watch.

The Votes Are In

 
The Council winner this week was the Sundries Shack for his well-placed sarcasm re the British Muslims’ feelings of exclusion because they’re not being included in the Holocaust memorial for the Jews murdered in WWII.

Pardon me??? Muslims were in which prison camps where? Not that Hitler wouldn’t have gotten around to them eventually — those dark skins and un-Aryan noses would’ve spelled their doom had ol’ Mustachio stayed around long enough. Fortunately for these “snivelers” the Brits cooked his bacon falafel, allowing them the continuing freedom to whine about their lot.

The fact that this post won is encouraging: it means there’s a general dismissal of the Religion of the Hypersensitive.

Doc Sanity’s second place post on regression is a nice riff on the inestimable Thomas Sowell. Highly recommended.

Gates tied for second place with the doc. I think it was the cool picture of Jabbar that did it. Does anyone know how that kid is doing?

On the non-Council side, Bill Whittle’s Tribes walked away with first place, amassing five votes. A slight demur here: as brilliant as this essay is — after all, Gates’ comments on Mr. Whittle’s ideas won second place in the Council submissions — it’s a bit unbalanced to put up a mega-watt quasar against us mortal folk. Kind of took up all the wattage in the joint.

So, in the name of balance here, second and third places both got one vote each and deserve your attention. Ace of Spades has a send-up of the Roberts hearings. Hilarious and wicked. The Bernoulli Effect fisks a whiner from Michael Moore. As he says,

Moore’s juvenile sarcasm is anything but constructive; but as with all of those on the Left, that wasn’t his goal in the first place.

Go see it all at the Watcher's Place. And thank him while you’re there.

Babysit This!

 
Some people got stranded by the hurricane, and some people got shafted. Barbara Roberts’ family managed to do both.

Chris Hardin and Tina Roberts traveled from Missouri to New Orleans on a weekend business trip. Maternal grandma Barbara Roberts was enlisted to babysit for Trisana, her 18-month old granddaughter.

Along came Katrina. The couple was stuck in a New Orleans hotel, with all flights cancelled.

	“There was a Category 5 hurricane with a bull’s-eye on our butts, so we called Barb and said we didn’t know when we would be coming home,” said Hardin, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. “We truly didn’t know what would happen down there.”
	With no other relatives in the area to take care of the child, Roberts said she had no choice but to call work on Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit, and tell her boss that she would be missing a few days.

By the time the couple returned home, Grandma had used up all her time off from work, and then some. When she called in to explain the situation, she was told on the phone that she was fired.

	Hardin said his mother-in-law’s firing was “absolutely unethical.”
	“People speak of family values, and I don’t see what’s a more central family value than a grandmother stepping up in this sort of situation,” he said.
	“I sit here trying to imagine what kind of world it would be if grandmothers didn’t make that decision.”

Barbara Roberts had been employed by Positronic Industries, whose website states that they are “a manufacturer of high performance, high reliability connectors.” Judging by the pictures on their site, they make the back of your computer.

Well, it looks like they’ve learned to make some new connections. Could it be that all the publicity has had a salutary effect on the company? In any case, Ms. Roberts has her job on the assembly line back.

Gates of Vienna has obtained the rough draft of Positronic’s press release:

	The nation has never before experienced a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina. The effects of this tragedy caught us with our pants down were more far-reaching than could have ever been imagined.
	This event has caused Positronic Industries to recognize that it is up to its eyeballs in merde its employee policies are inadequate when dealing with unfavorable press disasters.
	We regret the difficulties this has caused our PR office Barbara Roberts and her family. An offer of re-employment was extended to her and she has accepted in lieu of suing us into bankruptcy.
	Positronic Industries is now in the process of covering its ass creating a company wide disaster policy.

I wonder how much vacation she’ll get next year?

Watch Out, Oz!

 
We get a lot of referrals from search engines at Gates of Vienna for word combinations like “how to make a bomb”, “make bomb jihad”, etc. The frequency of such hits intensified after Dymphna posted on the topic, and I expect we’ll get even more after today.

But I had to warn my fellow racist Islamophobic infidel crusaders Down Under: this afternoon an enterprising individual in Australia, using the ISP w3c.com, found his way to us by googling for “i want join jihad and make bombs at home.”

Better watch out for this fellow if he ever leaves home…

Coming Back to Life...Part Way

 
Thanks to everyone who wished me well following my fall from grace. I am now recovered enough to sit in front of this screen for short periods, though I’m still using the ‘sick’ bed the Baron set up for me in the laundry room since it means fewer steps to the computer, the kitchen and the bathroom.

Back in the old days, one could make meaning out of pain by “offering it up for the souls in Purgatory.” Now that Purgatory has been dispensed with, one must simply endure it and that makes the whole thing more impersonal and therefore harder. Sometimes I do miss “the power of the fire and the beads” of my childhood faith. Fortunately, movies like Sixth Sense come along sometimes and I get to indulge my intuition that there must be some interval of wandering after death.

The Baron’s grandmother died suddenly of a heart attack. She was at the dinner table and simply keeled over. Grandma Belle was a rather forbidding figure to the young Baron; she had great moral authority in the family and was one of those old-fashioned southern matriarchs. Did only southern women get named “Belle”? I never heard the name while I lived up north but it’s not uncommon here, especially for women of her generation.

After Grandma Belle died, Grandpop eventually remarried. His new wife was a widow also and it was understood that when Grandpop died she would remain living in the house until her death. Which is what happened; after she died the house then reverted to the Baron’s family and his aunt and uncle eventually retired there. Family members go to Grandpop's to visit sometimes.

On several occasions there have been disturbing experiences.

The first one I heard of was from Shelagh, many years ago. She came out of the bedroom to which she had been assigned during our visit and told me she wasn’t going to sleep in that room. There was a woman in there who didn’t want her in the place. Poor Shelagh had more experiences with the thin places in life than she ever wanted.

The second incident happened with the Baron’s niece. She, too, felt the presence of a woman who was unhappy. Nicki, always more practical, airily dismissed her night visitor.

The third occurrence was with the Baron himself. He woke one night to ‘see’ Grandma Belle at the foot of the bed. She seemed her old forbidding self and was agitatedly folding laundry. Gradually the apparition faded and the Baron went back to sleep.

Shoot. All the times I've slept there and she never visited me. I have an idea it’s because we’re so much alike. I know that in the afterlife I shall be forced to fold all the laundry I've let moulder in the basket in my time, having to return it to the dryer again to remove the wrinkles caused by sitting so long. Either that, or I’ll scare the bejayzus out of someone sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight snack because there my ghostly remains will be, distractedly cleaning out the refrigerator. I don't think the Powers That Be will accept my excuse, which is that I believe there is a Laundry Fairy. What happens is that if you leave the darn pile sitting there long enough, she'll show up and take care of it for you -- including putting all of the clothing away. The fact that no one has ever shown up to do this little chore doesn't shake my underlying hope that she's merely been delayed and will arrive any day now.

At any rate, thanks to all of you for your thoughtful notes. It’s comforting to be remembered.

“Appeasing the Critics”

 
That’s the snarky headline over a story from a Pennsylvania newspaper regarding the controversial memorial design for Flight 93, which fell to the earth in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11.

As we have maintained, words matter. Whether the designer of the site, Paul Murdoch, unwittingly chose a crescent shape to memorialize the forty people who died at the hands of Islamic fanatics is not the issue. What matters is the effect of his choice of words for the symbolism behind his design. Peter Drucker was right: “communication is the act of the recipient.”

It speaks to the naiveté of the group — family members, “design professionals,” and people from the community — that they and Mr. Murdoch seem taken aback by the criticism of the memorial so inaptly named “The Crescent of Embrace.”

Consider this: suppose that instead of a crescent shape, the design proposal consisted of two straight roads which intersected at the point of Flight 93’s impact. Suppose further that the design had been christened (so to speak) “The Cross of Embrace”? Which critics do you think would have to be appeased for that symbolism?

Here’s a solution that will appease some and raise further objections by others: change the design so that if follows more closely the shape of an arc rather than a crescent. It would entail reducing the angle by which the arc is subtended from the center of the circle. In other words, flatten out the crescent so it looks more bow-shaped. This could still be made to follow “the curving land form” Mr. Murdoch says he was incorporating into his design.

Everything else could remain the same, except for those two changes —

1. Make the shape look more like an arc;
2. Call it “The Arc of Embrace.”

Stephen Vincent was right when he said “words matter.” In fact, either they are crucial bonds or they are dividing lines.

And if they don’t matter, well then — just put in two roads and call it “The Cross.”

The Stakes in Europe

 
Longtime commenter DP111 — who comments on Gates of Vienna, Fjordman, Little Green Footballs, and other blogs, but has no blog of his own that I know of — is featured today in a post on Fjordman. His remarks are worth reproducing in full; I have edited them for typos. DP111 is British (I think), and the European perspective on the Great Islamic Jihad is a valuable one:

	The long-term goal — and we shouldn’t be squeamish about stating this — is to encourage mass apostasy among Muslims. Apostasy in the widest sense — that is, Muslims either leave Islam or leave infidel lands. The question is how do we arrive at this point rapidly enough and before the demographic imperative leaves no choice for either us, or for potential apostate Muslims. In the first instance, deporting illegal aliens, particularly Muslims, then following it by deporting those who advocate terrorism, will deplete the Islamic base in the West to a sufficient degree, that it is unable to facilitate jihadism in the West as easily.
	As Islam is mainly a profit motive political ideology, masquerading as a religion, the pressures on Muslims to change their ideology must also be based on a profit-cum-political basis. Islam has no real philosophical base, and as such, is immune to arguments based on morality or ethics. Thus deportation of the advocates of Islamisation, terror etc will start to demoralise the Islamic base. continues the Islamic base. A number of Muslims will leave of their own accord, or will leave Islam, as they see no future for themselves or their children in a modern society.
	What I’m getting here is that we have to give Muslims some incentive to either leave Islam or leave infidel lands. They are unlikely to do either, if what they see is the continuing Islamisation of the West. Why would anyone in their right minds, wish to join what is perceived as the losing side? This to be followed by an insistence that the rules that define a liberal secular democracy have to be adhered to. For instance
	1.   The electrically amplified calls of the muezzin are an invasion of the public square as well as an affront to other faiths. 2.   Wearing clothes that signify the oppression of women is a symbol of acceptance of slavery as legitimate. Totally unacceptable. 3.   Teaching Islam in public schools is not acceptable, as the texts violate several; cherished values of the West.
	What is being proposed here are certain ideas, none are racist or Islamophobic, bigoted or anti-religious. They are just what defines Western civilisation i.e. rule of law, separation of church and state, equality of sexes etc. As I pointed out, 9/11 and others such massacres were chastisement delivered to the Western donkey to make it move in the right direction. It is the stick and carrots approach. In essence, this what I’m proposing - stick and carrots approach. Generally works. The basic impulse of Islam is to expand into Infidel territory. The territory is not just physical but spiritual and intellectual. Unable to do so, it will collapse quite quickly in historic terms, and thus release the 1.2 billion souls in its enslavement. What more can one ask for.
	The other great thing of this approach is, that we are will not be untrue to our own ideas of who and what we are.