The Best of Radarsite

A Note From Radarsite

2009-07-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

This newest Radarsite blog is in response to a suggestion from my dear friend and Radarsite supporter, Molly H. As Radarsite approaches one thousand articles, it seems appropriate to come up with some sort of a "Best Of List". Here then are my personal choices for the 50 best articles written by myself, for Radarsite. Such a list is of course purely subjective and may or may not reflect the opinions of my readers. As you all know, Radarsite is blessed to have some great contributors, many of whom have generously taken up the slack since the onset of my illness. For this I am deeply grateful. However, there is no way that I could presume to create such a list from their wonderful contributions.

It is my hope that this "Best Of" blog will prove useful to some of my loyal readers, and perhaps serve as an introduction to Radarsite for any new readers. All comments and suggestions are of course welcome - rg

http://www.post-trib.com/news/blogentries/index.html?bbPostId=Cz8neME9DYOr5Cz34JXBtDpWXHCzAlAn5nhmpJXBD8mZBSUmw2M

A post-election update:

There may come a time in the life of an individual, or in the life of an entire people when they are offered a great choice. Fundamentally, this choice may be relatively simple: either to honestly accept responsibility for their own lives and their own actions, and seek to improve their lives through hard work and disciplined endeavor; or to make a different (and often the easier choice), one which avoids responsibility for their own lives and their own actions and seeks to improve their lives through viewing themselves as victims, victims of an evil and omnipotent oppressor, the prima facie cause of their suffering. From Black America: The Great Choice

On November 4, 2008 America made its choice and now we must live with the consequences of this fateful choice. It is Radarsite's opinion that this was a horrific mistake and that we will suffer greatly because of it. Our mission will stay the same, with this one major readjustment. We can no longer attempt to influence our readers against voting for BHO, it's a done deal. But we can and will watch his every move like a hawk. And we will accord him that same measure of respect that the liberals accorded to President George W. Bush: we will not refer to him as President Obama, but just Obama, and sometimes, just BHO. After suffering through 8 years of vitriolic anti-Bush rhetoric that's the very least we can do. - rg 11/6/08

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Radarsite's Mission Statement

Radarsite is a conservative pro-American, pro-Western, pro-Israel, pro-military website. Radarsite was developed as an attempt to counter the self-loathing, self-destructive leftist anti-Americanism rampant in today's Western culture. Our skewed MSM is overflowing with it. To be considered knowledgeable in today's ungrateful topsy-turvy world one must be loudly and proudly anti-American. Patriotism is now to be considered some lower form of life, a weakness demonstrating a lack of intellectual capacity or historical awareness. In this current environment it takes more courage to be patriot than to be a dissenter. In fact, if one is unabashedly patriotic, one automatically becomes a dissenter.
America and the democratic West are presently at war-- and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Western world is in the midst of great cultural upheavals, virtual civil wars that will ultimately determine the nature of our civilizations for decades to come. Our traditional democratic Judeo/Christian values are arguably in more peril at this particular moment in history than ever before. We are even more imperiled because half of our Western societies refuse to acknowledge this imminent peril and hide under a blanket of lies and euphemisms.
Daily we are besieged by enemies from both without and within. We are battling against ruthless fanatics who seek to dominate or destroy us, and against delusional multiculturalists who would gladly give our great societies away. We are fighting against terrorists, collaborationists, propagandists, appeasers, apologists and deniers. Our enemies have innumerable resources at their disposal and innumerable venues from which to expound their negativities. They find themselves warmly welcomed at our most prestigious universities, in the hallowed halls of Congress, and at trendy Beverly Hills cocktail parties.
But not here.
Here we still believe in the American dream. Here we fight back against those who would destroy that dream. Many of our readers are veterans, all are patriots. We do not come together here to debate the merits of America, but to protect her. We have studied the issues and have worked hard to understand just what is at risk. Our opinions are not borrowed, but are the results of our studies. We defend our opinions only so long as we believe them to be true. The moment we begin to doubt them, we will abandon them.
I am so immensely proud of our readership. I believe we have accumulated some of the most intelligent, knowledgeable and most honest writers and thinkers on the web. We believe in America and we believe in each other. And we will not give in to negativity and despair, no matter how popular it becomes.

I humbly thank you all for your loyal encouragement and support. - rg

JEW

2009-07-16T11:24:00.001-07:00

What a great explosive word!
Jew.
Think about it. What other proper name for a people contains its own epithet?
For every other people and nation we have had to create a special, derogatory slang word to express our disdain or contempt. For the Italians we created Dagos and Whoops, for Blacks we came up with Niggers (yes, Al Sharpton, I'm actually saying the N-word. Why should you be an exception?), for the fickle French we've got Frogs and for the Spanish, Spics.

But the Jews are a special case, aren't they? So special are they that we don't even need to create a new word to insult them. Their name alone does the trick. We're still having trouble saying the word aloud. We prefer to ask, Are you Jewish? We simply can't bring ourselves to ask, Are you a Jew? It sounds like an insult, doesn't it? But why should the name itself sound like an insult? Is it that loaded with ulterior meaning? Is the word itself that dangerous?
Evidently the answer is Yes.

For more than two thousand years this world's been trying to come to grips with that powder keg of a word. And it seems to me that we're no closer now than ever to comprehending its vast impenetrable mystery.
Jew.
Just one little word.
Just one little people.
Yet, such power, and such agony...

Today, January 25, 2008, in the latest edition of the Chesler Chronicles posted at Pajamas Media, the inimitable Phyllis Chesler details, with characteristic incisiveness, the latest evidence of the ongoing "Hate Israel follies". With unassailable authority, Dr. Chesler delineates the undeniable growth of these great disturbing truths. These great old disturbing truths.

But why? That's the seemingly eternal question that still haunts our Twenty-first Century Western World.
Why now?
Why the Jews?
Why the Jews again?

And why, for heaven's sake, Israel? Can anyone in the West in their right mind justify denying support to our only reliable ally in this whole bloody hate-filled region? How is it possible -- after the horrors perpetrated on us on September 11, 2001 by those nineteen unrepentant Arab Muslims -- that we can still embrace these moral monsters and side with them in their never-ending onslaught against the tiny democratic Fortress Israel?

How the hell can we continually ask our imperiled and vastly outnumbered ally to give up yet more land for yet more cynical empty Arab lies? More land for more rocket-launchers? Yet we do ask, don't we? Every day we ask Israel for more. Endure, we say, endure and give up more.

And why should you give up more? You should give up more, we say, because you're in the wrong. You're in the wrong by existing, and as long as you continue to exist we can not in good conscience defend you.

Am I wrong in thinking that the only possible answers to these troubling questions are the obvious ones: oil and anti-semitism? Are there perhaps other more abstruse and complicated reasons of statecraft that are simply beyond my limited comprehension? Can it be that this ancient evil presence is still slithering amongst us after all these years? After all these bloody pogroms and endless persecutions? After the unspeakable horrors of the holocaust? And the unspeakable shame of our despicable present-day holocaust deniers?

It seems to this particular student of Western history that the descent of decent civilized societies into chaos then anarchy or fascism is almost invariably attended by a disturbing rise in that society's gradual but unmistakable acceptance of anti-semitism. It is an almost perfect bellwether.

Take note. Look around you now and what do you see?

With the undeniable and alarming rise of militant Islam throughout all of Europe and Scandinavia and Britain, and the growing empowerment of the secular left, we can plainly read those same old unmistakable signs of a resurgent anti-semitism -- the hastily-scrawled Swastikas and the over-turned tombstones, the hate-filled rhetoric, the crude propaganda and the relentless demonizing.

Wake up everyone! It's here right now. It's all around us. It's undeniable and it's evil and it's growing.

Get ready World, here we go again!

Rethinking the GWOT: Maximalists versus Minimalists

2009-01-31T13:12:00.000-08:00

The terms "maximalism" and "minimalism" are used with great regularity in biblical studies [primarily by Middle Eastern Archaeologists to refer to the degree of their acceptance of the biblical narrative as historical truth. Those who believe that the Bible is mostly figurative and contains very few reliable historical references refer to themselves as Minimalists. Whereas those researchers who believe that the Bible is actually an archaeologically-substantiated historical record describe themselves as Maximalists]. To the best of my knowledge, these terms were coined by William W. Hallo in his 1989 Presidential Address to the American Oriental Society, published as "The Limits of Skepticism" in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 110 (1990): 187-199.

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A note from Radarsite: For the purposes of the following article I have borrowed the terms Minimalism and Maximalism from the biblical archaeologists. It is my hope that by reframing the concept of this Global War On Terror (GWOT), we can gain a more meaningful appreciation of what we are actually up against: that is, whether or not we are actually in a war, and if we are in a war, what this war actually is and is not. I believe that these two terms more accurately define the true nature of our national differences than do our present inadequate and often confusing labels of Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives, Pacifists or Warmongerers. Here then is a new paradigm. We begin with the Minimalists. - rg

The Minimalists

There are two diametrically opposed views on our current "War on Terror", what it is, and how it should be prosecuted. The minimalists hold the view that the problems issuing from Islam are not representative of Islam as a whole, but are rather discreet and episodic criminal actions, perpetrated by a fanatical few. Therefore, they believe, that the proper response to these provocations should likewise be discreet and contained. By no means should we reproach, hold responsible, or punish all Muslims for the actions of a few. It is the minimalists' fundamental belief in the inherent goodness of all humankind that drives them and sustains their worldview. With a few rather negligible exceptions, for the past four decades American foreign policy has been directed by the minimalists. Beginning with the Islamic Revolution in Iran of 1979 (and, arguably, even some centuries before this event) we have treated these ongoing and escalating Muslim attacks against the West in general and Americans in particular as isolated criminal activities -- as opposed to what many believe are clearly acts of war. Our responses have therefore been -- to be somewhat kind and euphemistic -- 'measured'. Our national response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979, for example, was one failed and pathetically ill-advised helicopter attack. And that was it. And since 1979? Here is a partial list of what followed, together with our subsequent responses.

1993 World Trade Center bombing, New York. Truck bomb set off in basement of 110 story tower blocks holding up to 50,000 people. 6 killed, 1,000 injured but tens of thousands of civilians escape down stairs.
Law enforcement and Intelligence Response: tracks down and convicts some members of Osama Bin Laden's gang on US soil, including 'blind Sheik' Omar.

1995 Operation Bojinka (Airliner hijack, bomb) plots foiled by US intelligence, Bin Laden believed responsible.
multiple airliners intended hijacked over Pacific.
Arrest of Ramzi Youssef yields his computer with good intelligence.

1996 Khobar towers barracks bombed in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US troops.
Protective response: since intelligence was hard to come by, the US moved and secured its barracks more carefully.

1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya, Tanzania: 224 killed, many civilians wounded outside. Intelligence believed Bin Laden was responsible.
Military Response: Clinton administration ordered bombings of a pure drugs factory in Sudan and a bunker headquarters in Afghanistan. Neither holding any terrorists, the retaliation was unsatisfactory.

2000 USS Cole, guided missile destroyer, bombed in Aden harbor by small boat with suicidal crew; 17 killed but ship is saved; intelligence indicates Bin Laden responsible. Owing to military target, probably not to be defined as terrorism.

2000 millennial bombings plotted but foiled by US intelligence. Several major incidents are found in captured plans. Plotters have links to Al Qaeda.
Law enforcement: 2000-2001 some plotters from previous Al Qaeda bombings tried and convicted in US courts.

The Clinton Administration offers us a perfect example of the minimalist response to Islamist terrorist attacks against Americans. Here is an excerpt from National Review's excellent Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez with Richard Miniter, "Clinton's Loss?". Richard Miniter is a Brussels-based investigative journalist. His new book, Losing bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror has just been released by Regnery.

Q.
How [did] the previous [Clinton] administration fumble on bin Laden?
A.
1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.
2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.
3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.
4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.
6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.
7. Objected to Northern Alliance efforts to assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.
8. Decided against using special forces to take down bin Laden in Afghanistan.
9. Did not take an opportunity to take into custody two al Qaeda operatives involved in the East African embassy bombings. In another little scoop, I am able to show that Sudan arrested these two terrorists and offered them to the FBI. The Clinton administration declined to pick them up and they were later allowed to return to Pakistan.
10. Ordered an ineffectual, token missile strike against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.
11. Clumsily tipped off Pakistani officials sympathetic to bin Laden before a planned missile strike against bin Laden on August 20, 1998. Bin Laden left the camp with only minutes to spare.
12-14. Three times, Clinton hesitated or deferred in ordering missile strikes against bin Laden in 1999 and 2000.
15. When they finally launched and armed the Predator spy drone plane, which captured amazing live video images of bin Laden, the Clinton administration no longer had military assets in place to strike the archterrorist.
16. Did not order a retaliatory strike on bin Laden for the murderous attack on the USS Cole.

Minimalists base their threat assessments on mostly secondary sources, i.e., their stable of policy experts, popular pundits, authors, and MSM reports. These appreciations tend to align with their pre-disposed, all-encompassing liberal worldview: All people are basically good, and want the same things. It is only a matter of dealing with the few 'bad apples' amongst them. To the minimalists, the threat itself is suspect, often the product of the maximalist's overactive imagination, or, more menacingly, a total fabrication contrived by the maximalists in order to achieve more power. For the minimalists, the less we do the better.

The Maximalists

How do the maximalists perceive the threat of Islamic terror? Unlike their ideological opponents, the maximalists base their appreciation of the Muslim world threat on primary sources: the Koran, the Hadiths and the Sura; the writings of the terrorists and their mentors themselves; the clearly-stated objectives of the various Islamist terror organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbullah, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. The maximalists believe that the problem begins and ends with Islam itself; that the lure of victimization is bringing more and more Muslims to answer the call for Jihad. The maximalists believe that Muslim aggression against the Infidel, rather than being a logical reaction to some recent Western outrage, is an historical core precept of Islam. By its very nature, the free and democratic West is, was, and always will be the sworn enemy of Islam. This latest incarnation of Muslim holy war against the West is a continuation of this age-old war of pre-ordained conquest. Here is a relatively concise example of the maximalist's view of our Islamic enemies:

Ideology and Goals
The principal stated aims of al-Qaeda are to drive Americans and American influence out of all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia; destroy Israel; and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East. Bin Laden has also said that he wishes to unite all Muslims and establish, by force if necessary, an Islamic nation adhering to the rule of the first Caliphs.

According to bin Laden's 1998 fatwa (religious decree), it is the duty of Muslims around the world to wage holy war on the U.S., American citizens, and Jews. Muslims who do not heed this call are declared apostates (people who have forsaken their faith).
Al-Qaeda's ideology, often referred to as "jihadism," is marked by a willingness to kill "apostate" —and Shiite—Muslims and an emphasis on jihad. Although "jihadism" is at odds with nearly all Islamic religious thought, it has its roots in the work of two modern Sunni Islamic thinkers: Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb.

Al-Wahhab was an 18th-century reformer who claimed that Islam had been corrupted a generation or so after the death of Mohammed. He denounced any theology or customs developed after that as non-Islamic, including more than 1,000 years of religious scholarship. He and his supporters took over what is now Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism remains the dominant school of religious thought.

Sayyid Qutb, a radical Egyptian scholar of the mid-20th century, declared Western civilization the enemy of Islam, denounced leaders of Muslim nations for not following Islam closely enough, and taught that jihad should be undertaken not just to defend Islam, but to purify it.

Here is more from the eminent Brigitte Gabriel.

During this first month of the New Year 2009, we have seen some stunning
developments that, considered together, should leave absolutely no doubt about the rising radical Islamic threat on our doorsteps in America.
I have been warning Americans since 2002 about this threat, and that the threat is not just confined to terrorism. This is not a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic, one of many in the arsenal of radical Islamists.
I have been declaring, to anyone who would listen, that Islamists are well on their way to subverting and transforming Europe, and they are riding that wave here to America.

I have told my personal story, of how Islamists, step by step, took over my country of Lebanon. How they used our freedoms and commitment to tolerance and multiculturalism against us to further their ultimate ends. And how they are using the same strategies and tactics against us in the West. In just the past three weeks we have seen:. A violent Islamic protest in Britain, where an angry mob shouting "Allahu Akbar" chased - yes, chased - dozens of British policemen for blocks. You must see this video to believe it! (Please be warned - there is offensive language and profanity). Click here<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97hyDRjdXCE> to see this shocking video.

Pro-Hamas, anti-Israel Muslims conducting demonstrations here in America, shouting praises to Hitler for what he did to the Jews, yelling "go back to the ovens," and at times physically attacking counter-protestors. The Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordering the prosecution of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders because he has made statements
deemed "insulting" and harmful to "the religious esteem" of Muslims. Austrian parliamentarian Susanne Winter convicted of "incitement," <http://www.investigativeproject.org/ext/2255> because of public statements she has made, including the claim that the prophet Mohammed was a pedophile.

Muslim protest marches in Italy that ended with the protestors, in an obvious act of intimidation, conducting mass prayer vigils directly in front of Catholic places of worship.. The release of an official U.S. government report<http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/01/23/top_stories/doc49781a64e0d2b381984861.txt> stating that Hezbollah is forming terrorist cells here in the U.S.that could
become operational.

The UN continuing to move ahead with the "Durban II" conference and its document that is little more than an anti-Israel rant that calls for suppressing public "defamation" of religion - notably Islam. This has
run parallel to an effort by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to get the UN Human Rights Commission to pass a resolution condemning public"defamation" of Islam.

My friends, the handwriting is clearly on the wall. Radical Islam is on the march, and it is growing stronger and bolder with every passing day. What elected official in Europe or the UK will now have the courage to speak out against this threat? Certainly the actions against parliamentarians Wilders and Winter will ultimately have a chilling effect on American elected officials as well. How many more "no-go zones," Muslim enclaves here non-Muslims and even police officers fear to go, will appear in Europe? We're already seeing such enclaves develop here in America right now. There's a reason why Dearborn, Michigan, is frequently referred to as "Dearbornistan."

What will happen in America when 50,000 ranting, chanting Islamist
demonstrators attempt to aggressively back down and chase police officers trying to maintain order? Will the police use the force necessary? If they do, we can expect howls from groups like CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations).
How will government officials respond? And if the police back down and run, as they recently did in Britain, what message is being sent to radical Islamists?
With the recent announcements by the Obama administration regarding ending the use of certain coercive interrogation practices, will this administration have the courage and use the tools necessary to protect us from Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda terrorist cells in our midst?It is becoming crystal clear that 2009 is going to be a critical year in our effort to roll back the rising tide of Islamofascism.

Obviously, Brigitte Gabriel is a maximalist.

While, as we have seen, for the minimalists, less is better, the maximalists see the present GWOT in a much larger frame of reference. The combat in which we are presently engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, is perceived to be just battles in this monumental Clash of Civilizations, this existential war of barbarism against civilization. The repercussions of this great clash are truly global. Our enemies, and our allies alike, are watching this great contest unfold and shaping their future foreign policy on how they perceive our strengths and weaknesses. It is no accident, that by our wavering on our military commitment in Iraq, we are showing these watchers our weaknesses, our adolescent impatience, and our lack of will, and consequently the Russians, the Chinese, and even the puny potentates of the world, like Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Ill are beginning to rattle their sabers. Thus, we maximalists view this GWOT as an immense struggle with huge stakes involved. In our view, this great struggle has just begun, and our collective future will be formed by the efficacy of our response.

A few final thoughts.

Unfortunately, the line between the maximalists' worldview and that of the minimalists is often blurred and indistinct. It cannot be neatly delineated by party affiliation. There are maximalists and minimalists on both sides of the aisle. Immediately following 9/11, President Bush himself described Islam as a "religion of peace", hijacked by a few fanatics -- a perfect expression of minimalism. Thus, even this brave president who brought the GWOT to the terrorists ( and paid a huge political price for doing so) has, by his often inscrutable statements, helped to muddy the waters, and drain our collective will to fight.

Is it any wonder then that the American public is so torn apart and confused? When our own leaders have so often shown an astonishing ignorance of the true nature of our enemies, how can we expect more from a grossly-misinformed, or purposely-manipulated public?

Finally, however, there is such a thing as personal responsibility. It is no longer feasible to claim ignorance; there is just too much information out there. It is no longer a valid excuse to say that you are too busy to study the issues involved. It is no longer morally conscionable to walk the fence between these two diametrically opposed views of our world. We must understand the differences between the two and we must choose. Our future will be determined by which path we take.

Ominously, by our choice this past November, we have, it seems, embraced the dangerous delusions of the minimalists. Is it too late to change course? Is it too late for the Western World?

God only knows - rg

The Handwriting on the Wall
By Brigitte Gabriel
Courtesy of Naomi Ragen

Comment to this article transposted from StopThe ACLU:
AirborneVet on January 29th, 2009 6:16 pm
As a person with a degree in Middle East Studies, and over 10 years experience teaching and dealing with this subject and with Islam, I very much enjoyed your assessment here concerning minimalists and maximalists. It fits the GWOT concept very well. Only in the end, will we find out which approach was best. Personally, I agree with the Maximalist point of view.

For more see:
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/al-qaeda-terrorism.html
And this latest from Iran

And so it begins...

2009-01-31T13:10:00.000-08:00

From ABC News: Obama Moves toward Shuttering Gitmo

Last night, just hours after he took the oath of office, Obama ordered Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to direct the chief prosecutor of the Office of Military Commissions to seek a continuance of 120 days for any case that has been referred to the office of military commissions and to cease referring any new cases for prosecution.

This morning, military judges hearing the cases of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, and his co-conspirators, as well as a different judge hearing the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, granted the prosecution's motion. According to the motion filed by the prosecutors, the continuance was requested "in order to provide the administration sufficient time to conduct a review of detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to evaluate the cases of detainees not approved for release or transfer to determine whether prosecution may be warranted for any offenses those detainees may have committed, and to determine which forum best suits any future prosecution."

Is it even possible to grasp the enormity of these fateful decisions? to understand the dire implications for our future? Let's just focus our attention for a moment on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Just who is he and how important is he in our attempts to prosecute this Global War on Terror?

According to the 9/11 Commission Report he was "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks". He is also thought to have had, or has confessed to, a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, including the World Trade Center 1993 bombings, the Operation Bojinka
plot, an aborted 2002 attack on Los Angeles' U.S. Bank Tower, the Bali nightclub bombings, the failed bombing of American Airlines Flight 63, the Millennium Plot, and the murder of Daniel Pearl.

Think you already know all about Sheikh Khalid's terrorist activities? You might just be surprised. Here is what he has confessed to (so far):

The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City
A failed "shoe bomber" operation
The October 2002 attack in Kuwait
The nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia
A plan for a "second wave" of attacks on major U.S. landmarks to be set in the spring or summer of 2002 after the 9/11 attacks, which includes more hijackings of commercial airlines and having them flown into various buildings in the U.S. including the Library Tower in Los Angeles , the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Columbia Center in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York
Plots to attack oil tankers and U.S. naval ships in
the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and in Singapore
A plan to blow up the Panama Canal
Plans to assassinate Jimmy Carter [Yes, that's right, even Jimmy Carter]
A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York City
A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago with burning fuel trucks
Plans to "destroy" Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London
A planned attack on "many" nightclubs in Thailand
A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets
A plan to destroy buildings in Eilat, Israel
Plans to destroy U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan in 2002.
Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia
Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok Sending several "mujahideen" into Israel to survey "strategic targets" with the intention of attacking them
The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya
The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport in Kenya Plans to attack U.S. targets in South Korea
Providing financial support for a plan to attack U.S., British and Jewish targets in Turkey
Surveillance of U.S. nuclear power plants in order to attack them
A plot to attack NATO's headquarters in Europe
Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the "Bojinka Operation") tobomb 12 American passenger jets
The planned assassination attempt against then-U.S. President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines. [Sorry Bill, no pass for Democrats]
"Shared responsibility" for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II
Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf
An attempt to attack a U.S. oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, "owned by the Jewish former [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger"
The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl

Of course, not everyone is pleased with the circumstances of poor Khalid's incarceration.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and US military defense lawyers have criticised the military commissions for lacking necessary rights for a fair trial. Critics generally argue for a trial either in a civilian federal court as a common criminal suspect, or by court martial as a prisoner under the Geneva Conventions.

And so it begins... Our beloved new leader has spoken, and the good Khalid will find his way into that labyrinth of the American criminal justice system. And if our new president and his followers have their way, he will be tried in a NYC courtroom, with all, or almost all, of the benefits of an American citizen. High-profile trial lawyers will trip all over themselves to represent him. O. J. Simpson look out, your days of enjoying the dubious distinction of having the most watched criminal trial in the twentieth century are about to be eclipsed. Of course, the old media will be thrilled. I can almost hear Nancy Grace and Geraldo Rivera licking their chops in anticipation.

Is this how it's going to be? Is this how it will all end? Have we just voted ourselves into the dustbin of history? If the Sword of Justice does not fall upon this monster's head, is there any hope, any hope at all for a just and righteous world? Have we just bartered away justice for the appearance of justice? Have we sold our precious souls to please a jaded world? - rg

For more on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed see: href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/khalid_shaikh_mohammed.htm">http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/khalid_shaikh_mohammed.htm

Who is a Patriot?

2009-01-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

Originally Posted 9/22/08

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", said Samuel Johnson to Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Boswell and the world took note and remembered. Yet those who most often and most lovingly remind us of this famous aphorism are almost invariably those of a particular breed of skeptic who consider all national loyalties of any kind to be automatically suspect. However they seldom if ever repeat the second part of that renowned quotation, and by this slippery sin of omission they completely distort the true intent of the original phrase.
"But let it be considered," Mr. Boswell continues, "that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."

Boswell Life of Samuel Johnson

How then are we to determine what is or is not a "real and generous love of our country", and what is merely "pretended patriotism" and just a "cloak of self-interest."? Who then is a patriot? And who is not? Who is our true friend? And who is our true foe?

The people whom we are fighting against are often some of the nicest people in the world. But they are nonetheless wrong. Very wrong. And they do hurt us. And they don’t even see it. These people, often our friends and relatives and neighbors, often suffer from the worst sort of hubris. The pride of sanctified opinion. The firm belief that their opinions, no matter how grossly uninformed or ill-founded have value just because they are their opinions. They see themselves as superior patriots, honorable but objective physicians who are willing to tell their patient the truth about their serious condition, no matter how distasteful it may be. Telling their patients the awful truth has in point of fact become their sacred role, their primary function. Only in this way do they have a chance of saving their suffering charges. And if the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, then so be it. It must be done. It is to be seen as a painful but necessary catharsis.

However, just beneath the surface of this high-minded rhetoric, one can smell that familiar and unmistakable odor of unbounded pride and self-importance. Above all else, our dubiously sincere critics wish to appear profound and well-informed. The concept of actually becoming profound and well-informed through hard work and diligent study is evidently beyond the scope of their apprehension. They remain utterly content and unmoved by the force of reality. They have learned all that they need to know. And that is all that they need to learn.

How often have we seen some well thought-out essay, an obvious product of a great expenditure of effort and research, casually dismissed out of hand by a one sentence insult, or buy some oh-so-clever quip by one of these self-appointed Guardians of Truth. Yet, remarkably, and invariably, these very same people will without the slightest hesitation describe themselves unabashedly as patriots, true patriots who love their country and only wish to help her through her absolutely essential catharsis. In short, they say, the truth hurts. And their truth is of course the only unquestioned version.

God save us from these 'true patriots'. With patriots like these who needs enemies? If these are, as I propose, our false patriots, who then are our true patriots? What after all is said and done, is a true patriot?

First and foremost a patriot is loyal. He has made an oath and he intends to keep it. A patriot is steadfast, he does not waver in the ever-changing winds of opinion. A patriot loves his country and is supportive of her. He does not look for ways to undermine the moral integrity of his country during a time of her utmost peril, during a time of war.

A patriot’s primary concern is in defending his country against any and all assaults upon her character, whether they come from enemies within or from enemies abroad. A patriot does not exercise his right to free speech in order to slander his own home and nation. He does not hold the delusional conceit that by publicly admonishing his country for her purported past and present blunders and atrocities he is thereby somehow helping her. He will not expend his energies seeking to find some new flaws in the character of his country, but rather does whatever he can do to defend her from the attacks of those who would happily bring her down. A patriot is not ashamed to be a trustworthy and loyal champion of his country. Rather, he is her proud protector and her shield. A patriot is unconcerned that his patriotism may be called simplistic and shallow by those false patriots. A patriot who is willing to sacrifice his very life for his honest love of country is not that easily cowed by these petty and effete naysayers.

A patriot does not mindlessly parrot the borrowed opinions of others merely based upon their current popularity. He is totally unconcerned about whether his patriotism is or is not in fashion this year. A patriot does his own independent research and thinks before he speaks. He will not allow his careless words to be used by his country's enemies as weapons to wound her. Rather, a patriot will use his well-chosen words and his deeds to lift his country up even higher.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, patriots are deeply aware of their value to their community and their country. Patriots love life and they love their families, but are nonetheless willing to sacrifice themselves for their community and their country, not with that blind unthinking obedience of a totalitarian slave or a religious fanatic, but with an open-hearted generosity and love. With that 'real and generous love of country' of which our good Mister Boswell spoke so long ago.

Another Shameful Victory of the Universal Gutless Left

2009-01-31T13:05:00.001-08:00

From CBC News

Amsterdam's Court of Appeal has ordered the prosecution of outspoken Dutch politician Geert Wilders for hate-speech, related to his anti-Islamic film, Fitna.

In a decision posted on Wednesday, the court called on public prosecutors to begin a case against the right-wing, anti-immigration politician over statements he made in interviews, in editorials and in his 15-minute film, released last March on the internet.

The court singled out Wilders for insulting comments likening elements of the Muslim faith to Nazism and calling the Qur'an "a fascist book."

"The court considers this so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders," a summary of the court's decision said.

Commenting to Dutch media, Wilders called it a "black day for myself and for freedom of speech."

Wilders' short film, which drew widespread condemnation and protests in Muslim countries, intersperses violent, graphic imagery — including from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the beheading of a Caucasian man – with quotations from the Qur'an, Islam's holy book.

It ends with text saying Islam "seeks to destroy our Western civilization" and a caricature of Muhammad, his head drawn in the shape of a bomb that explodes into a crack of thunder and lightning.

The title, Fitna, refers to a Qur'anic term for "strife."

Wednesday's decision overturns the one made by the Dutch public prosecutor's office last year. After a six-month investigation, the office had decided not to pursue a case against Wilders, saying his remarks did not amount to a punishable offence.

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

This from earlier Radarsite articles:

Here it was: Fitna

1/21/09: You can still see it here: http://www.themoviefitna.com/

http://www.unitedamericancommittee.org/ This site was taken down under threats by Islam.

Special thanks to Ben and Dean for this heads up.

The new url for Fitna. Thanks to Daily Motionhttp://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4vadl_fitna-the-movie-dutch-official-rele_news

There will be follow up articles from Radarsite and from Other Sites on the Line beginning immediately. rg

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

I'm overcome with emotion. How can I possibly put it all into words? All this outrage and anger and pent-up hatred -- and yes, it is hatred, hatred of Islam -- that's been building up in me over these past months and years? How can I possibly write some thoughtful analysis of this devastating blood-soaked film? I shouldn't even be writing about it now; I'm still too close to the fire. But I must write about it. We all must write about it and talk about it and vote about it.

A heroic man has put himself in lifelong jeopardy in order to bring us this small precious gift of white-hot fire. And now it's up to us. We can do nothing -- as we've been doing all these shameful years -- and this precious flame will slowly fade away and die. Or we can use it to ignite a cataclysmic firestorm of rebellion. This, then, is his gift to us, what he sacrificed himself to bring us, the one thing we've been unable to discover within our over civilized souls, yet the one thing that's absolutely essential to our survival. The fire, the passion --the WILL TO SURVIVE.

Absent this essential element we are rendered impotent. All of our vast wealth, all of that accumulated knowledge and scientific experience, that cutting-edge weaponry, all that goes into making us a superior civilization is utterly useless to us now without this one crucial ingredient: the WILL TO SURVIVE.

The WILL TO SURVIVE must now take absolute precedence over all other considerations and rationalizations and legalistic abstractions. It's too late for all that now. The WILL TO SURVIVE must now be predominant and constant and unassailable. The only alternative for us now is death. Death.

This, then, has been our Achilles Heel, our congenital flaw. The raw unquestioned power of the Will is determinate. And the enemy knows this; they've found our weakness and have exploited it mercilessly. And we, God help us, have let them -- are still letting them.

Geert Wilders has had the courage to unmask the face of the enemy. Now, do we have the WILL TO SURVIVE?

Well, do we have the will to survive? It certainly doesn't seem like it from here. - rg

---------------------------------------
More here

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/blogentries/index.html?bbPostId=Cz8neME9DYOr5Cz34JXBtDpWXHCzE6XhxpbxlLmCz58nMNuDlhbF

Mahdi, Mahdi, who's got the Mahdi?

2009-01-31T13:03:00.001-08:00

In a speech on November 16th, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of his belief in the return of the Twelfth Imam. One of the differences between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam is that the latter, who dominate Iran and form the majority in Iraq, believe that Allah shielded or hid Muhammad al-Mahdi as the Twelfth Imam until the end of time. Shi’ites expect the Twelfth Imam, which Jews and Christians would recognize as a messianic figure, to return to save the world when it had descended into chaos.

This then is the nature of the enemy we face. This is the basis of their belief system. The inevitable and apocalyptic Return of the Mahdi. This is the mindset of the world class leader whom our new liberal government expects to sit down and negotiate with. A soon-to-be nuclear armed nation waiting for the end of time and the promised reappearance of the Mahdi.
It is, however, important to remember that there have been several such divinely-inspired Mahdis throughout the violent history of Islam. Here are some of them.

Eighth century
Salih ibn Tarif
Ninth century
Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali
Tenth century
Said ibn Husayn
Twelfth century
Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tumart
Fifteenth century
Syed Muhammad Jaunpuri
Nineteenth century
1 Siyyid 'Alí-Muhammad (the Báb)
2 Muhammad Ahmad *
3 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Twentieth century
1 Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan
2 Juhayman ibn-Muhammad ibn-Sayf al-Otaibi

Till now, the most famous of these occulutions was perhaps Muhammad Ahmad, the "Khartoum Mahdi".

Muhammad Ahmad ibn (August 12, 1844 – June 22, 1885) was a religious leader, in Sudan, who proclaimed himself the Mahdi — the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will appear at end times. Under his religious authority the divided clans...into an alliance dedicated [surprise, surprise] to establishing an "Islamic" state as the first step in a universal Islamic state. In 1881, he declared a jihad against the British-backed Egyptian authority in Sudan. Ahmad raised an army and led a successful religious war to topple the Egyptian occupation of Sudan. His most successful and final battle was the siege of Khartoum in Sudan, an effort to totally obliterate Egyptian (and Sudanese) resistance. The only thing that stood in his way was the legendary British General Charles "Chinese" Gordon.

In 1873, General Charles Gordon had been appointed Governor of the Equatorial Provinces of Sudan. For the next three years, General Gordon fought against a native chieftain of Darfur, Zobeir, who had erected, on the basis of slave-traffic, a dangerous military power. Zobeir's organisation was eventually dismantled. Although unsuccessful at total pacification, Gordon was successful in limiting the power of the slave traders. Thus, he was made Governor-General of the Sudan in 1877. Soon after he arrived at his new post he started to end the slave trade, which at that point dominated the economy and was controlled by the tiny minority of Arabs. Before his arrival some 7 out of 8 blacks in the Sudan were enslaved by the tiny minority of Arabs; the native Africans formed well over 80% of the overall population. Gordon's policies were effective, but the effects on the economy were disastrous, and soon the Arab Social Ascendancy came to see this not a liberation from slavery, but a modern-day European Christian crusade and a threat to Muslim and Arab social dominance.

The Siege of Khartoum lasted from March 12, 1884 to January 26, 1885. Khartoum was besieged by the Mahdists and defended by a garrison of 7,000 Egyptian and loyal Sudanese troops. After a ten-month siege, the Mahdists finally broke into the city and the entire garrison was slaughtered.

What lessons can we learn from all this? What insight into our present circumstances can this look back in time afford us? Can we perhaps begin to understand the real nature of this so-called War on Terror we are presently engaged in?

What was the single biggest grievance that the Arab world had against the West in the Nineteenth Century? The West -- in the person of General Charles "Chinese" Gordon -- had the temerity, the arrogance, to interfere with, and eventually bring to an end, the lucrative slave trade in Sudanese blacks which had been the very foundation of their economy. This Christian Crusade against slavery was the unforgivable affront against the Arab world, the spark that lit the Jihadist flame.

Thus, long before the hegemony of oil, long before the birth of George W. Bush, long before the dark machinations of Dick Cheney's fearsome Blackwater crusaders, the stage was set for battle. The inevitable clash between the dark, backward-looking vision of Islam and the enlightened West began with the birth of the Prophet. This great battle is indeed a classic Clash of Civilizations, civilizations which are diametrically opposed to one another, which cannot, by their very nature, co-exist in peace. All of the calls from our newly-sanctified left for love not hate, all of the diplomatic missions, all of the ecumenical conferences in the world will not ameliorate the danger of the crisis we face. Today, just as it was in 1881, Islam is "dedicated to establishing an "Islamic" state as the first step in a universal Islamic state." To refuse to accept this historical truth, to attempt to avoid the moral implications of these fundamental and unchanging Islamic precepts, to somehow justify our political or military inaction by convincing ourselves that we are the cause of this monumental schism, that it is we who have to change, is to completely misunderstand the significance of this existential threat.

Today, January 20, 2009, the world is cheering, it is cheering because those who embrace this disastrous geopolitical misconception have legally assumed the reins of power. Where will their fatally flawed delusions take us? Will we be able to survive their willful ignorance?

God bless America. - rg

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Chemo Thoughts: The End of My World?

2009-01-31T12:58:00.001-08:00

Earlier today a friend emailed me to ask how I was doing. I assumed they were referring to my ongoing battle with leukemia. I answered that I was doing fine. I had determined early on when I got that first lethal prognosis that I was not going to use the pages of Radarsite for a continual updating on the morbid details of my chemotherapy. So I answered that I was doing fine. But, I wonder, how am I really doing? Am I really doing fine?

Nothing concentrates the mind like a death sentence. Especially one that is so close at hand and almost certain. Priorities are immediately questioned and reshuffled. What seemed of great import yesterday may have lost much or all of its weight today. The love and closeness of family and friends becomes paramount; whereas the opinions of strangers become less and less relevant. The often frenetic muddle of everyday life is quickly subsumed into the greater if quieter battle for life itself. There's only enough space left in your life for those things of real value, or perhaps for those values which are real. There's just not enough time left for empty rhetoric or endless gentlemanly debate. In whatever time is left you must embrace your family and your values and hold them dear.

The whole purpose of developing Radarsite was to speak up for America. To come to her defense. To answer her enemies and her critics with truth. To fight for the truth in the face of the relentless barrage of propaganda and lies. In short, a place to express my love and my respect for America and for American values. This mission has never wavered. The wonderful contributors whose fine work now fills these pages all share this love and respect for our great nation.

And now? Oh, I still love this beautiful country of ours, this wonderful meritocracy we call home. But my love is tinged with anxiety and fear. Like the love for a child who has gone astray, who has ignored all of our good advice and chosen an ignoble path to self-destruction. We can only watch helplessly as they slip further and further from our embrace and deeper and deeper into the black pit.

How do I feel? my friend asks. Here's how I really feel. From those very first days I have accepted my personal prognosis completely and without complaint. I am grateful for the endlessly fascinating life I have been allowed to live. But I have not yet accepted the dire fate that awaits my beloved country. I am filled with shame and disbelief at what we have become, what we are becoming, what we are giving up, what we have forgotten. My usually dependable inherent optimism has been all but eroded by the preposterous events of these last few years. That America I have so long loved and respected has been turned upside down. Those values that separated us from the rest of the world have either been ingloriously degraded or completely abandoned. We no longer know who we are or what we stand for. We allow others to define us, we allow our sworn enemies -- both within and without -- to determine our national agendas. We are in the fateful process of completely losing our national identity. And according to our recent elections, this makes half of our population happy. Half of our population considers our formerly-precious American identity to be the problem. America is what's wrong with this world. To fix the world we must therefore change what it means to be an American. Change we can believe in.

We are presently besieged by savage enemies. Islamists, Marxists, Anarchists, cruel dictators and criminal tyrants. We are besieged by alien cults of death who nurse apocalyptic visions of destruction. Everything that we hold dear is under attack and threatened. But the most dangerous and shameless enemy of all lives right here amongst us. Our very own treacherous patriots, who rush to give the keys to the kingdom to the barbarians at our gates. The idiots, the fools, the delusional liberals, and those elitist amoral progressives who honestly believe that by utterly destroying the fabric of this great nation they will somehow save it. They have traded our pride for guilt and our strength for safety. And I despise them for it. I despise them more than I despise our sworn enemies, because our sworn enemies do not disguise their motives under the cloak of patriotism.

And what of our innocent children? Our beloved grandchildren? What godless world have we bequeathed to them? What is our message to these innocents? There is no right or wrong. Everything is relative. All peoples and all belief systems are morally equal. There is no such thing as good or evil, just different points of view. War is morally wrong, no matter what its purpose. To defend yourself with violence is as unjustifiable as to attack one with violence.

How do I feel? I have been told that my life is coming to an end. So be it. I can deal with that. But can I deal with the prospect of my beloved country coming to an end? Is my beloved country eagerly embracing its own demise? Will our new America truly be willing to fight for its survival in this savage world? Or, as it seems to me now, have we chosen the ignoble road of appeasement and dishonor? Is there still hope for us?

Someone out there please tell me that I am wrong, that my pessimism is premature or unfounded, that my deductions are somehow flawed. Someone please tell me that I can leave this world in peace and not in this awful despair for our future. - rg

We Are Losing the Global War on Terror

2009-01-31T12:53:00.001-08:00

by Roger W. Gardner

What is the Global War on Terror?
The Global War on Terror. Why does the very name we have chosen for this monumental global conflict contain the seeds of our coming failure? The answer is simple. The name itself is prima facie evidence of our inability, or our adamant refusal, to face the hard truth about the real nature of this war. It is yet another example of our willful ignorance and our moral cowardice. Who are we fighting? Who are our enemies? Are we fighting some mysterious group of anonymous terrorists? Who has declared war against us, against the entire Judeo/Christian West? And finally, if we are afraid to even mention the name of our sworn enemy, how on earth can we ever expect to win this bloody war?

The unnamed enemy is Islam. Not some small fanatical group of Islamists, not some zealous band of religious extremists, but just plain, old-fashioned Islam. Islam has unequivocally declared war on the infidels. And we have unequivocally decided to deny the existence of this declaration. By conveniently defining this to be some amorphous "War on Terror", we have deluded ourselves into thinking that it is something altogether different, something far less dangerous and pervasive than it really is. We have denied the existence of the monster who threatens us, and therefore we firmly believe that the monster ceases to exist.

Am I the first to remark on this cowardly game of semantics? Of course not. But despite all these prescient admonitions and warnings, has anything actually changed? Have we become more, or less, willing to honestly confront our enemies? To honestly name the name, Islam, bloody Islam?

On the contrary. As time has passed we have become ever more entrenched in our shameful state of denial. From the President on down we have steadfastly refused to name our adversaries for fear of upsetting them. Consequently, our adversaries grow stronger every day and they mock our weakness and our indecision. Now, ironically, for fear of making waves, we are facing a catastrophic Islamic tsunami.

Where is the War on Terror?
Where is the center of this so-called War on Terror? Iraq? Afghanistan? The entire Middle East? A legitimate case can be made that the center of the War on Terror today is in Gaza. Hamas, the semi-hidden face of Islam, is the personification of the real enemy. The rockets that fall daily on Sderot are the chosen weapons of this war. And how have we in the West chosen to support this War on Terror? We have shamefully blamed the victims. We have publicly admonished the Israelis for fighting this proxy War on Terror for us. We have condemned their efforts in the sanctimonious halls of the EU and the UN. We have passed innumerable resolutions naming the Israelis themselves as the real threat to peace. Yes, if ever there was a perfect paradigm for this War on Terror it must be in Gaza. And we have abandoned our only true ally in this entire blood-soaked region and taken the side of the enemy.

Do we really hate the Jews that much? Is the world's eternal historical antisemitism so pervasive, so potent, that we would rather see Hamas and Hezbollah win? Do we secretly desire to see Israel "wiped off the map"? Do we hate the Jews so much that we would prefer to see Ahmadinejad actually get the bomb? Is our Western Civilization really that crazy? Is there some other logical explanation for our pathetic behavior?

The center of the War on Terror
Islam is the unnamed enemy we have refused to engage. Instead, we seek conciliation and accommodation. We offer compromise and denial. Anything to avoid confrontation. We will go to any lengths to avoid naming Islam as the enemy. This, then, is the true center of our War on Terror. Right here, in the heart and soul of our inglorious Western World. This is our Ground Zero. This is where the great battle has already been fought and lost. Here, in our prestigious halls of government and our great courts of justice, here in our liberal ivy-league universities and our self-congratulatory myopic media. Here, in our recent inexplicable election, an election wherein 49% of the electorate poled firmly believed that our most threatening problem was the economy (stupid), and an incredible 9% believed that it might actually be the threat of terrorism.

The question is no longer whether or not we have the will to prosecute this War on Terror, this War against Islam; we have already proven to our undying shame that we do not have the necessary will. Our only major concern now in this War on Terror has been how to get our troops back home. Exhibiting an adolescent impatience, we don't want to hear about the cost of our withdrawal. We don't want to hear about the consequences of our cowardice. We don't want to hear what the enemy thinks about all this. We just want them home.

Have we truly become a generation of cowards? Do we really fear war more than we fear subjugation? Have the leftists in our midst really won? Have they finally succeeded in producing a generation of self-loathing anti-patriots, America-bashers, who find more in common with our enemies than with their own nation?

Unfortunately, oh, so unfortunately, thus far, all of our actions and inactions, culminating in the moral travesty of our recent elections, seem to say, Yes. - rg
-------------------------------------------------
A note from Radarsite: It seems that I am not alone in my assessment of Islam. In a poll on Radarsite's sidebar titled "Is Islam itself the problem?", 83% of the respondents (414 of 498) answered "Yes." - rg

The Meaning of the Shoes

2009-01-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

From AOL News
BAGHDAD (Dec. 15) - Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, as Arabs across many parts of the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president. [...]

Journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi, who was kidnapped by militants last year, was being held by Iraqi security Monday and interrogated about whether anybody paid him to throw his shoes at Bush during a press conference the previous day in Baghdad, said an Iraqi official. [...]

Showing the sole of your shoe to someone in the Arab world is a sign of extreme disrespect, and throwing your shoes is even worse.

Newspapers across the Arab world on Monday printed front-page photos of Bush ducking the flying shoes, and satellite TV stations repeatedly aired the incident, which provided fodder for jokes and was hailed by the president's many critics in the region.
-----------------------------------------------------------
A note from Radarsite: We all understand now the significance of this particular insult in the Arab world -- right? But do we really? Somehow I tend to doubt it. The true significance of this attack on President Bush and symbolically on the United States, and its enthusiastic reception in both the Arab world and in our own liberal media has not really been addressed. One part of this story is of course the breathless eagerness with which our own biased leftist MSM quickly grasps onto any story that will support their long-held conviction that the Iraq war was a foolish criminal endeavor, perpetrated on the American people by a clueless ignorant cowboy -- "the unpopular U.S. president".

But I contend that this incident provides us with an even more important lesson. One which we should have learned by now but have not. It is simply this: Why should this act of hatred and resentment come as a surprise to us? Haven't we accepted the fact yet that 'blood is thicker than water'; or in this case, that the Arab world's adherence to Islam and to Sharia law supersedes any temporary arrangements of convenience made with infidel governments. Treaties made with Arab (or any Muslim) states are in reality no more than cynical measures of expediency. Realpolitik.

Here is the cold hard truth: Islam is, was, and always will be the sworn enemy of Western civilization in general, and of the United States of America in particular. Any thoughts that we can peacefully coexist without risking subsequent betrayal are foolhardy and delusional. Every time we think we have made inroads into the Muslim world we should be automatically circumspect and on guard. For when push comes to shove, all of those minor political or regional differences between Arab/Muslim states will be quickly set aside when confronted with the common enemy of the infidel West. Until the very roots of Islam are torn out of this culture we will never succeed in establishing any meaningful and lasting peace in this region.

The Arab world has lionized the shoe-tosser not just because he confronted and insulted an "unpopular American president", but because he heroically challenged the power and the hegemony of the Infidel West. To not understand the depth of this animosity is to not understand the profound meaning of this monumental global confrontation we are experiencing.

Does this mean that we should just give up on our efforts to reform and democratize the Middle East? Of course not. But we cannot be naive or overly optimistic. We must constantly bear in mind the immutability of the message of the Koran. During the Cold War we developed the concept of 'Trust but verify'. This attitude is even more relevant today when confronted with militant Islam.

Read more:
http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-most-dangerous-enemy-post-mumbai.html

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/11/golden-key-those-illusive-moderate.html

From Radarsite: A Christmas Message to all Retailers

2009-01-31T12:46:00.001-08:00

A message from Radarsite: This is a simple message to all of you who plan on making money on us this CHRISTMAS Season, whether you are multi-million dollar automobile manufacturers or small time candy makers. If out of either misguided conviction or simple cowardice you continue to ignore or obfuscate the foundational Christian significance of our great American tradition of Christmas do not expect our business. If you honestly believe that you can skirt around this (now-thorny) issue by using code words for Christmas, such as 'this holiday season', or get away with saying 'Season's Greetings!' in place of 'Merry Christmas!' you may indeed protect yourself from lawsuits from the ACLU, etc., but you will not get our business. You can't have it both ways anymore. You cannot do away with Christmas and at the same time expect to make money on it.

We will not allow some small militant minority to take away all of our great and significant American traditions, not without a fight. We are getting ready for the battle once again this year, and you will not get away with this monumental theft unnoticed.

This year, some of you, such as Wal-Mart, have already made their decisions to honor this special day by calling it what it is: 'Christmas'. These are the retailers we will reward. Others, Best Buy, Ace Hardware, the major American auto manufacturers, etc. are already asking us to buy their products or shop at their stores for the 'holidays'. Why on earth should anyone buy a new Lincoln for their lover for some unnamed 'holiday'? Which holiday are we talking about here, Columbus Day? Groundhog Day?

This is (still) a free country and you can make whatever decision you want. However, know this, some 80% of America is Christian -- and most American Jews have long ago come to acknowledge this fact and accept Christmas in the spirit of good will, whether or not they actually celebrate it -- and if you choose to ignore this majority of Americans and for selfish reasons decide to throw in your lot with that small vocal minority who are determined to forever alter the character of this great nation then you will suffer the moral and financial consequences.

This Christmas Season will be different than the previous ones. This time, we are wide awake and we are watching you. As I write this there are many sites coming back online who are devoted to this single cause, and they are growing every day. You have grown accustomed to having it both ways, but not this year. If you cannot find the courage to openly honor this very special day, if you cannot find the decency or the will to even utter the words "Merry
Christmas!" you will not get our money. The decision is yours. - rg

A postscript: Well, the very first comment I received to this article was negative. A defense of the denigration of Christmas on the grounds that it has become nothing but a commercial enterprise. If this is what the commenter thinks of Christmas, if this is all that Christmas really means to them, then to me this just reveals the paucity of their soul and I feel sorry for them. The commercialization of Christmas has been a contentious topic of conversation since I received my first boxed set of Gene Autrey six-shooters in 1945. But to use this as an excuse to do away with this great Christian celebration of Christ and joy and giving is inexcusable. Christmas means different things to different people, but to a majority of us Americans it means a great deal, and it always has. It's a very special time for special feelings and special memories. For me, it is simply irreplaceable. And to smother it or completely alter its meaning for the sake of appeasing some fanatical permanently disgruntled minority is totally unacceptable, and we just won't let this happen.
You've been messing around now with our deeply-held convictions of the sacredness of human life and the nobility of traditional marriage, you've attempted to dishonor our fundamental patriotism and attempted to rewrite our honorable national history. You have been zealously teaching our own children to hate us, and removing God from every aspect of our culture. And now you want to take away our Christmas. Well you're not going to do it. And if you write in comments here in defense of this effort to expunge everything that is good and decent and clean from our American heritage I will simply delete you and smile while I'm doing it. - rg.

Jubilation on the Ship of Fools

2009-01-31T12:42:00.000-08:00

America, America, what have you done?
A confederacy of dunces and traitors has delivered us unto our enemies. They have dealt this great nation of ours a deadly blow from which we may never recover, and they rejoice over the enormity of the wound. Already the voices of reconciliation and compromise are being raised. We must all come together now so that we can move forward, they say. But move forward to what? To where? What unforeseen furies have you unwittingly unleashed? What cherished American principles and traditions have you willfully abandoned for this nebulous promise of change offered by this charismatic but shadowy charlatan? In one sweeping gesture you have managed to undermine the glorious uniquely American meritocracy and have validated the role of victimization. In one vote you have rewarded our enemies and marginalized our patriots.

To even begin to comprehend the damage you have done just consider for a moment who is pleased by the results of this election.

Abu Yahya al-Libi, Al Qaeda's chief theological enforcer and a top recruiter.

Moamar Kadafi

A new kind of patriot

Hugo Chavez

Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam

Jane Fonda

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Rev. "God Damn America" Wright

Kim Jong Ill

Empowered youth

Empowered Kenyan relatives and heirs

The list of course could go on and on.

It is I think fitting that the first gloating leftist response Radarsite received this morning was from the infamous but woefully inconsequential Raoul, who again quite fittingly, is neither male nor American. Normally Raoul would be automatically deleted, but not today. Today I want her message to be read by all those who may still have doubts about the despicable nature of our enemies. As you can see it is addressed to both me and to my good friend and colleague Snooper personally. She believes, quite rightly, that we are her most determined enemies.

I'm sending this via email because it's obvious that most of you conduct your love chats here instead of out in the open where the light shines. The election is over (thank God!) and our citizens have spoken in volumes by the way they voted. Your time is now over - after 28 years or more if we count the destruction Reagan did to our middle class.

The god with a small 'g' that you pretend to follow doesn't exist. The real God never had any interest in politics or countries or bestowing special blessings to any one country as most of you, especially Roger, believe. John 3:16 begins by saying 'for God so loved the WORLD'. That's the entire world and not just the white anglo saxon part of it in America.

You people are an embodiment of pure evil. I know this probably shocks you just like the Nazis were surprised at the hatred expressed towards their deeds but I can't say it any other way. God, country, and flag have always been the ingredients of despots living in fear and hate. You feed off of hate. You require hate in order to justify your own pitiful lives. Your blogs speak for themselves along with everything you've written concerning President-Elect Obama, Muslims, victims of our torture techniques, the illegal invasion of Iraq, victims of the Katrina flood, et. al.

I grew up around evil so I believe I can speak on a little bit of authority regarding how true evil works. It hides behind religiousity, patriotism, individualism without any social programs, hatred of anyone who is different, and a host of other facades. Evil will always have a crusade or burning issue to raise in order to hide from reality and the real issues that face mankind. You people fit the definition of 'evil' perfectly.

Well, your time is over so I think it's only proper for you to slink back into your caves or wherever else you dwell. Rational Americans like me do, however, owe you a debt of thanks. You've taught us a very valuable lesson. The lesson is that right wing religionists will NEVER take over this country again! You've been exposed for what you really represent - a parasitic host. To put it more bluntly, you're a boil on the ass of history. And, the American electorate has lanced that boil!

I can now say unabashedly, God bless America! This country will NEVER be the same again and I say thank God! Now that the racial divide has been breached with Barack Obama's election, some day the gender divide or perhaps the sexual orientation divide or any other man made divide will finally be eliminated.

One last thing - concerning your blogs. I think it would be a good idea if you closed your blogs down since you'll have nothing to write about any more. If you decide to keep them active I have to tell you that I, and others, will be monitoring your blogs. Any threats or seditious comments will be turned over to the proper authorities. This shouldn't surprise you because you ought to know by now that when Mark Harvey threatened to 'slit the throat' of any war protestor he met in Washington during his trip there, I turned the comments along with the blog site over to the FBI who checked it out.

But, it's up to you. This will be my last direct comment to you. I have to admit that every time I've ever encountered anything you've written I've gotten the urge to take a scalding shower. You are the most vile group of people I've ever known. I think that deep down inside you 're aware of this sad fact. We, on the Left, have been vindicated. America will finally heed the real teachings of Christ who said we should feed the hungry and take care of the poor.

graciously yours,
raoul

But then the very next email I received was this one from Anonymous:

Today is a SAD SAD day. Birth of America: July 4, 1776....Death of America: November 4, 2008. Roger and to all his contributors and readers. I'm sure we're all sitting in disbelief, shock and concerned. Knowing none of use would imagine this day coming true. All our intentions were sincere and true, due to the fact that we believe in America and love her even more so.

This writer likes to see it as a huge draw back and we lost a battle. And sure many more battles will be lost. As we see the president elect make some awful decisions for our great nation. But, in the end, I sincerely believe we will win the war. There is no way Obama or a democrat will gain the seat of the presidency in 2012. Too many mistakes will be made between now and then. Mistakes I hope our country will be able to endure, is the big question. Later on down the road. People will realize that making Obama the president was a huge mistake. Just hope this error of judgement doesn't cost us too much.

Obama's acceptance speech he began to tone done his rhetoric in what he was going to attempt to accomplish while being the president. Since, Obama is aware that he can't possibly achieve these objectives within the first year, known the less the first 100 days of his office. The good behind this is people have short memories. And will begin to wonder why Obama isn't doing what he said he would do. And that this supposed "change" isn't coming or not for the enbetterment of the American people. And this my friends will be the beginning of the end for Obama and the democrats. When the next elections come along people will look to different candidates.

McCain, I believe could've won this election. If he just used the ammunition available to him. McCain should have reneged on receiving campaign funds from the public only...just like Obama did at the beginning of his campaign. So the playing field (of donations/money) would have been level. As well as, McCain should have discussed many topics he considered off the list. Or his advisers informed him not to use certain things.

I guess it's a should, could, would situation presented here. Nonetheless, there are times in an individuals life and a countries history that we must take a few steps backwards. In order to take huge leaps forward in the not too distant future. And that is what we're going to contend with hopeful. Best of luck to everyone. And I say we continue to monitor Obama's Administration and get the word out to people in what he's doing. We can never start too early for 2012.

Roger, thank you so much for informing the public. All I can say is you did a outstanding job. And it's a pleasure and honor to know your a true American. Who actually cares what's happening to America. We will all learn from this and wait patiently to fix this very wrong that occurred. God bless you Roger and everyone else. We will have our work cut out for ourselves over the next four years. As for me, I am not giving up and never will. I will just have to be patient and wait this horrific ordeal out.

So there you have it. The cons and the pros. But there is one last message I received this morning, perhaps the most surprising and heartening message of them all. This morning, November 5, 2008, the first morning of the Obama victory, the Chicago Sun Times decided to publish one of Radarsite's most recent anti-Obama articles, The Embarrassment of Victory, the 50th Radarsite article published there since we were officially launched in December 2007. This from the very heart of the beast, his own hometown, that delirious town which has not yet recovered from last night's wild victory celebrations. So it seems we still have an audience.

So I'm sorry Raoul, but we're not closing shop at Radarsite. And once again you will be happily and automatically deleted. Far from retreating, we have just begun to fight. - rg

Note: Hieronymus Bosch’s Ship of Fools [shown above] (1450 – 1516). Although it is all but invisible in this small reproduction, there is a Muslim crescent painted on the Ship of Fools' banner. You can view a larger image here. -rg

Referenced by CNN.com: 5 Nov 08

This article posted on Craigs List: 6 Nov 08

Dear Gayle Williams --

2009-01-31T12:18:00.001-08:00

Kabul, Afghanistan
Gayle Williams, 34, who had dual British and South African nationality, was shot dead on Monday by gunmen on a motorbike in Kabul.

Taliban Kill Christian Aid Worker In Kabul Because She Was Teaching Christianity
Cross posted from Holger Awakens
Monday, October 20, 2008

If you had any doubts about the true intent of the Taliban in Afghanistan, this story should set you right. A Christian aid worker, a woman of British and South African dual nationality was gunned down today in cold blood in Kabul. She was walking to work. Her work was helping handicapped Afghan civilians. And just WHY did she die? Look at the reason from the article at Breitbart:
A spokesman for the militants said the Taliban ordered her killed because she was accused of proselytizing."This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan," Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press. "Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman."

She was killed because she was Christian and being Christian doesn't fit the violent ideology of islam. And perhaps a few of you, maybe more, maybe a dozen, will start to agree with me that islam is NOT A RELIGION. This is a blood thirsty political ideology that gets its way via terror, murder and violence.Here's more details from the article:

Taliban assailants on a motorbike gunned down a Christian aid worker in Kabul on Monday and the militants said she was killed for spreading her religion—a rare targeted killing of a Westerner in the nation's capital.Gayle Williams, a 34-year-old dual British-South African national who helped handicapped Afghans, was shot to death as she was walking to work about 8 a.m., said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. Britain's secretary of state for international development called the killing a "callous and cowardly act" and said Williams was in Afghanistan to help ease poverty."To present her killing as a religious act is as despicable as it is absurd—it was cold blooded murder," Douglas Alexander said in a statement.To put it mildly, I am outraged over this. And quite frankly, I can't seem to type anything more than just kill every last single one of these Taliban bastards. Wipe them off the face of the earth.

Taliban gunmen kill Christian aid worker in Kabul, Afghanistan (AP) - Taliban assailants on a motorbike gunned down a Christian aid worker in Kabul on Monday and the militants said she was killed for spreading her religion—a rare targeted killing of a Westerner in the nation's capital.Gayle Williams, a 34-year-old dual British-South African national who helped handicapped Afghans, was shot to death as she was walking to work about 8 a.m., said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. A spokesman for the militants said the Taliban ordered her killed because she was accused of proselytizing."This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan," Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press. "Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman."Britain's secretary of state for international development called the killing a "callous and cowardly act" and said Williams was in Afghanistan to help ease poverty."To present her killing as a religious act is as despicable as it is absurd—it was cold blooded murder," Douglas Alexander said in a statement.A spokeswoman for the aid group, SERVE—Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises—said it is a Christian organization but denied it was involved in proselytizing."It's not the case that they preach, not at all," said the spokeswoman, Rina van der Ende. "They are here to do NGO (aid) work."Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic nation. Proselytizing is prohibited by law, and other Christian missionaries or charities have faced severe hostility. Last year, 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan. Two were killed and the rest were eventually released.According to its Web site, SERVE is a Christian charity registered in Britain and has been working with Afghan refugees since 1980 in Pakistan."SERVE Afghanistan's purpose is to express God's love and bring hope by serving the people of Afghanistan, especially the needy, as we seek to address personal, social and environmental needs," the site says. A member of Afghanistan's highest religious council said Monday that rumors have spread over the last two years that Westerners have been preaching Christianity to Afghans."We have heard rumors that houses have been rented to preach Christianity in Kabul and some provinces, but we have no evidence that this is taking place," said council member Jebra Ali. The council previously has made a formal complaint to President Hamid Karzai that Westerners are trying to spread Christianity in Afghanistan.

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

Dear Gayle Williams --
I know you cannot read this letter now, but I am writing to you as though you can, as though you are still here somehow, and because for some reason you are still here with me. I have written two articles about you now. Articles about how you were killed and why. Especially the why. The why is what this is all about, isn't it? The why is why you died, why they killed you. The why is what's important, yet so impossible to comprehend.

I have tried in these two articles to express some of the anger, the outrage and the disbelief that so many of us feel, but it's impossible. There aren't the right words. I couldn't write this if I thought too hard about your grieving parents right now. I'd feel foolish and intrusive, because I've never even met you. But for some reason I realize now that those two articles just weren't enough. I don't know what would ever be enough, but that wasn't it. You deserve more. Your death deserves more. And I'll try very hard to say what's in my heart at this moment.

"She was a person who always loved the Afghans and was dedicated to serving those who are disabled...Needless to say, we are all in shock."

"...one of the inspiring people of the world who truly put others before herself."

"She was killed violently while caring for the most forgotten people in the world; the poor and the disabled," the statement said. "She herself would not regret taking the risk of working in Afghanistan. She was where she wanted to be -- holding out a helping hand to those in need."

This is what they're saying about you now, Gayle Williams. Now that you're gone. How ironic that you who lived your life so unobtrusively, so quietly and humbly are now famous in your death. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people all over the world now know your name and have looked at your face in that picture.

We are in a great war of shadows. Our enemies are illusive and indistinct. Only occasionally -- such as at times like this -- do we see them clearly. They have deftly hidden themselves beneath innumerable veils of half-truths, clever rationalizations and devious obfuscations. Our enemies have sought and gained sanctuary in the sacred temples of religion. Thus, to many, they remain inviolate and unassailable. Our enemy is great but amorphous, a master of disguise. Their greatest disguise is complete invisibility. This is the nature of our war of shadows.

Only half of us can actually see them. They have successfully convinced the others that they don't exist, that they are merely fictional villains, hypothetical constructs of our overwrought imaginations. This is who we are fighting -- or almost fighting. We're not sure yet. We're besieged with doubts and mired in confusion. Is our enemy Islam? Or just some small fanatical core of pitiless brutes who have perverted the great message?

We've been taught to be tolerant of others, to be especially tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. To attack someone because of their religious beliefs goes against everything that we hold sacred. And our ruthless adversaries have used this innate civility to their infinite advantage, haven't they? Coming from the very highest authorities in our own government we have been admonished to not hold the entire religion of Islam accountable for the brutal actions of a few. We have been advised by our experts that Islam is a religion of peace, a great religion which has been hijacked by a few crazy fanatics.

But then there is you, Gayle Williams. And you are immense now. You are a scathing indictment that cannot be answered. You are the truth. Inarguable, unassailable truth. The men who took your life were not fanatics, they were the personification of the purest and most uncorrupted form of Islam. They were most closely following the Prophet's commandments. They are Islam with all the veils removed. Your killers were not perverting the message, they were delivering it.

One of the reasons why we have been so shamefully ineffective in this great war of shadows is our inability to comprehend the enormity of this truth. That one of the world's major religions could be the source of the world's most menacing evils. It is too much to grasp. We seek solace in our delusions. We use metaphors and euphemisms to almost but not quite describe our enemies. We comfort ourselves with the unsustainable hypothesis that most Muslims are good. That Islam itself is not the problem.

But then there is you, Gayle Williams. And you are immense now. How can our homegrown Islamist apologists and multiculturalists answer your scathing indictment. Did you, by ministering to the poor and disabled in Afghanistan bring it on yourself, as we purportedly brought the events of 9/11 on ourselves? How will they argue for your culpability in this crime as they did ours? The very thought of this is sickening to me.

If the purest of all forms of Islam could call for your death, you who have done nothing but give of yourself in your kind quiet way, then who among us is safe? Who among us can argue for tolerance and understanding of the bestial religion that murdered you? Who among us can still not see beneath those veils, even after you have pulled them away.

These are the best words I can come up with, Gayle Williams. This is the best I can do. I wish I could do more. I wish we all could do more. - rg

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/taliban-kill-christian-aid-worker-in.html

http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/reclaiming-power-of-hate-revisted.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/21/afghanistan.violence.aid.groups/?iref=mpstoryview
-----------------------------------------------
Dear Gayle Williams: A Wonderful Update

A note from Radarsite: When I first contemplated writing my Dear Gayle Williams piece two thoughts went through my mind. One was that if Gayle herself were actually here she would most likely completely disagree with my interpretation of this tragedy and my characterization of Islam. Her decision to do what she did where she chose to do it would it seems to me bear this thought out. I doubt if she would have agreed with my assessment that Islam itself is the enemy.
The second reservation I had in going ahead with this article was the possibility -- no, the probability -- that someone would write in to accuse me of using this innocent woman's death as a cynical attempt to either promote Radarsite or to promote our intolerant, hate-filled, right-wing, anti-Islam agenda. These thoughts crossed my mind. But then what would be the alternative? To not write this article at all? To write this article as a somber lament for a fine woman, but somehow avoid the discussion of her killers agenda ? To qualify or tone down my treatment Islam?

When I first received the email this morning with this important comment to my article which was cross posted at Stop The ACLU I was thrilled and immediately decided to use these enlightening and poignant personal remembrances as a whole new article, a welcome update to my original letter.

Then I got to those last few paragraphs. "A selfless soul who didn’t deserve to be used as a cheap PR move that does nothing for anyone today." So, just as I had predicted, it had happened. And the accusation didn't come from some anonymous leftist commenter who had never known her, but rather from someone who knew her all her life and loved her.

However, as I read on, as I read the title of the book Mr. de Lange was writing, “Faithmentalism”, another reality began to take shape and was confirmed by this final paragraph: "What angers me most is that Islam does not preach killing, only fundamentalists interpret this for their own selfishness!
Beliefs & Doctrine of Christianity & Islamview of the other religion
• Islam is respected as a fellow monotheistic religion, but Muhammad is not seen as a true prophet
• Christians are respected as 'People of the Book,' but they have mistaken beliefs and only partial revelation
We miss you and we will never forget your smile!
Love Ed and family!"

This of course presented me with a moral dilemma. Up until those last few sentences this was a wonderful and touching personal tribute to Gayle "Tree" Williams. But those few final words turned everything upside down. It had suddenly become an indictment, not only of me for writing my letter in the first place, but an indictment of the conclusions I had reached. My first impulse was to forget about posting these comments as a new article altogether -- why post an update that undermines the whole purpose of the original article and questions my personal integrity? Why not just leave well enough alone? No one would even read these comments unless they went on STACLU.
Or, I thought, I could post the whole comment and just leave off those last few sentences. After all, I considered, wasn't the writer using the tragedy of Gayle Williams death to put forward his own agenda just as he was criticizing me for doing?

Those of you who have been following Radarsite for any period of time know how much I value honesty, especially self-honesty. I firmly believe that that inability to be honest with one's self is what is behind almost all of the major problems of this world.

There could only be one answer. These personal remembrances are so touching, so valuable, and so essential to beginning to understand who Gayle Williams was that there was no way I could justify not posting them or arbitrarily censoring them because the author disagrees with my conclusions.

So here they are in their entirety. Thank you Edwin de Lange for taking the time to write in to STACLU and share these wonderful personal memories of Gayle "Tree" Williams. - rg

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

Comment: Gayle “tree” Williams

A photograph flashes in my mind when I think of Gayle and 7 cousins sitting around a picnic table on the banks of the Kariba Lake ranging in height and age all discussing how many fish we each planned to catch and the art of threading a mud worm onto a hook, as parents busied themselves with making sure sunscreen and hats where all on, no-one thought that one day we would all be on different corners of the world.

As we all grew up Gayle’s Mom always spoilt me as the son she never had. It was Gayle that started horse riding at a young age in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and got me hooked on what was to become my passion and later become my service back to society by training policemen to ride. I always remember that first ride. Gayle got a pony called Bronwynn (a grey Shetland) that loved ducking under fences and leaving her jockey behind. Gayle used to hate getting this pony but she hung in and mastered the ability of ducking. How many afternoons did we get yelled at as my mad passion for horses and show jumping had all the children skipping around the garden jumping the flowers as if we where horses! At this time memories like Gayle Tamsyn (her middle name) Williams begin to flash back when she now did not like her middle name anymore and wanted to be called Gayle “tree” Williams. No matter how much her mom told her Tamsyn was a wonderful name “tree” seemed to stick!

Years later after immigrating to the UK, Gayle, Karen (her sister) and her mom came back to live with us in South Africa. I clearly remember this tall skinny athletic girl running me backwards and forwards across a tennis court with the ability to hit any ball from any man. For pocket money she came to work for my as a bar lady in the hotel night club and always had that smile that was Gayle. She was very into aerobics and went onto study in the field of sports and bio kinetics and was always competitive, latter getting into mountain biking. Years later she returned to the UK and went off to the East again (Pakistan and Afghanistan) to do charity work. There was trouble and she managed to get out safely after a long hike through the mountains and across borders with women and children in tow! I am glad her fitness paid off.

I remember after I had returned from 4 years in Africa as an expat, having escaped some close calls in different dark corners of the continent, how we had a heated debate about the existence of God and if he had turned his back on some areas. I said, “God had got fat and lazy and couldn’t see over his tummy the continents of Africa and Asia that feel into shadow under him and so ignored those areas!” – always looking for an argument, Gayle was not swayed and never took the bait, she never deemed to judge you or convert you, so claims of proselytisation are nonsense! She simply held her ground and was humble in her beliefs.

A little over 2 and bit years ago I was flying around the world on business and bumped into Gayle & her Mom in London and heard she had decided her true calling was to go back to Afghanistan and help the disabled via a charity organisation. When you speak too many of the family they will all tell you we thought she was much bigger then any of us. Often people look to the easy route with offers of – do something locally – do something in your own back yard – build a career and give a donation if you want to do some good - why go all that way when it’s not safe?

Gayle was due to return home for Christmas and I was eager to debate the book I had written about “Faithmentalism” and the holes in the catholic and Islam thinking around marketing and their use of media when it benefits them. It would have been a debate of note!Gayle sense of adventure and calling to help out a group of people whom she held no malice and no judgement of their religious choices or lifestyle but simply to offer her time, her love and her skill was the greater force in her life. A selfless soul who didn’t deserve to be used as a cheap PR move that does nothing for anyone today. I truly hope that Gayle will find peace wherever that may be and that she will not be forgotten when the press dies down. What angers me most is that Islam does not preach killing, only fundamentalists interpret this for their own selfishness!

Beliefs & Doctrine of Christianity & Islamview of the other religion
• Islam is respected as a fellow monotheistic religion, but Muhammad is not seen as a true prophet
• Christians are respected as "People of the Book," but they have mistaken beliefs and only partial revelation

We miss you and we will never forget your smile!
Love Ed and family!

Published in the Chicago Post Tribune 27 Oct 08
http://www.post-trib.com/news/blogentries/index.html?bbPostId=Cz8neME9DYOr5Cz34JXBtDpWXHB1rf7XeB7eJsB595u7HQ28Su

October in New England: Conflicting Signs, Competeing Realities

2009-01-31T12:14:00.000-08:00

This town where I live, this quintessential small New England village is beautiful in the Fall. Sometimes I forget how beautiful. Yesterday was a crisp clean October afternoon. It was Saturday and I was driving through town to get my groceries for the weekend. I was away from my computer and out into the real world. Comforted by the surprise of the cool fresh air and the reassuring solidity of this unchanging historical reality which surrounds me. Clean white wood frame houses, tall slender church steeples rising up into a cloudless blue sky. And then there are the people, some of them my friends, up on ladders, painting their houses, in their yards raking leaves or playing with the kids. I wave at some of them as I pass and they wave back. Joggers jogging, lost in their zone. Young lovely mothers pushing baby carriages, thinking about the future.

I forgot how beautiful it all is. How beautiful and powerful and overwhelming this particular reality can be. I'm on my way to the store and I'm driving through this great undeniable reality, and I am comforted by its immutability.

There is of course another reality, an alternative reality, a competing reality, that not-so-reassuring reality I left behind me on my computer. And it seems so far behind me now, so foreign to this glorious day, so infinitely removed from this crisp bright Saturday afternoon. I comfort myself with the thought that that other reality I left behind me is nothing more than a virtual reality, an insubstantial two-dimensional reality, that exists only on my computer screen or in my overwrought imagination. It's not a real reality like the one I'm out in now. It has not the same weight nor credibility of this sumptuous October afternoon in New England. I am temporarily comforted by this thought. I think about those dark, looming existential threats that I left back home on that now-darkened computer screen, and they seem as inconsequential and amorphous as children's fantasies, as foolish and spooky as Halloween ghosts. What power do they have here? I ask myself. What have these hypothetical specters of creeping sharia and pending Socialistic doom to do with this real tangible world I see around me now? Do these people who I pass on my way to the store look frightened or vulnerable? If I stopped and asked one of them if they were living in fear of al Qaeda right now, what would they answer? If I stopped and asked that man who is raking leaves in his front yard if he's worried about America losing its national sovereignty or the encroachment os Islam into our Judeo/Christian culture, what would he say? These are the normal people living in their normal world. That alternative reality is as absurd and out-of-place here as a Transylvanian vampire.

I take in a deep breath of New England air and smile. I feel better now. I'm back in the real reality. It's a beautiful day and I'm on my way to the store to get groceries for the weekend and I'm happy and healthy and I'm not in any pain, and that other reality is as faraway and impotent as some old movie I saw long ago. To waste my life worrying about the threats from that other reality is as foolhardy as wasting my life worrying about being abducted by UFOs.

But then I start seeing the signs. Just one or two at first. Then more and more of them, until they seem to be everywhere. They are the signs of Obama. And they are from that other reality I thought I had left behind but hadn't. And my Saturday afternoon is suddenly not so pleasant anymore, not quite so invulnerable as it was just a minute ago. I had asked myself, How could all this that I see out my window, how could all this great American reality actually change? And the answer is in the signs. How many people in how many different worlds looked around them in history and asked these same great questions? How could all this change? It is incomprehensible.

Then I see another little sign, tacked up on a telephone pole. An innocuous little sign, weather beaten and torn at the edges -- it's been up there for quite a while now. "No room in this town for hate" it reads. And I shudder to myself. This is the sign that advertises our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses. This is what makes this beautiful little town of mine so friendly and pleasant and so blind to the steady encroachment of that other less friendly reality. We have no room here for hate. And without hate we are vulnerable to those who hate us. We are, this sign proclaims, a community determined to be tolerant and just. We are fair-minded and trusting. We don't just welcome the Other into our midst, we eagerly embrace them. And if you are different than us, we say, if your culture is different than ours, and if your values are different from ours, no matter, we will embrace you just the same. Our survival is secondary to our tolerance.

It occurs to me that these different signs are all coming from the same places, these Obama signs and these 'no hate' signs. They were put up by the same people. They are making the same statement and they are proud of their statement. They want the world to know that we care, that we recognize our culpability in the evils that have beset mankind and this great green planet of ours, and we are going to make amends. We are going to change. You just wait and see.

These are the competing realities that are fighting for the dominance of my soul on this beautiful Saturday afternoon. I am in the world of the reality of the normal people for a little while, and sometimes I feel so out of place, my bleak alarmist pessimism seems as fantastic and incongruous here in this bright sunlight as that misplaced Transylvanian vampire. If only I could stay in this reality forever...

Resignation, Accomodation, Capitulation

2009-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

When the German Army mounted its Western Offensive in 1940, it had 2.5 million men and 2,500 tanks. Whereas the French Army had the ability to mobilize 5 million men, the German army supported by motorized infantry units and aircraft easily secured victory.

Germany's subjugation of France took just six weeks, and on June 14, 1940 German troops marched into Paris. The shocking and ignoble surrender was made official when the French formally signed the infamous Second Compiegne Armistice on June 22, 1940. Under the terms of the armistice the Germans were to continue to occupy Northern France, while the southern unoccupied third of France was ostensibly left free to be governed by the French. A collaborationist Government was formed under the aged WWI War hero, Marshal Phillipe Petain, and its new capitol was to be in the small town of Vichy, in central France, a name forever to be associated with her dishonor.

Pétain and the Vichy regime willfully collaborated with the German occupation to a high degree. The French police and the state Milice (militia) organized raids to capture Jews and others considered "undesirables" by the Germans in both the northern and southern zones.

How could this have happened? How could a once strong, proud nation, a nation with a long and glorious military tradition, a nation with one of the most powerful armies in the world, totally cave in and capitulate in a matter of mere weeks?
In 1940 the world had witnessed the tragic results when an entire nation lost its nerve and resigned itself to failure. Dumbfounded, we watched a much larger army defeated by a much smaller army with a much larger will to win. Resignation, accommodation, capitulation. One inevitably following the other, until that final, unequivocal and inescapable humiliation.

Sorry France, we tried. Sorry Poland, we tried. Sorry Czechoslovakia, we tried. Sorry all you poor doomed Jews, we tried.

On September 23, 2008, a defiant Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Ever the showman, obviously enjoying the world's undivided attention, and obviously undeterred by those virtually toothless sanctions, the Evil Dwarf spewed out his usual defiant harangue of unrelenting hate and vicious lies. Iran, he promised, or warned, would continue on her steady course to fulfill her sacred destiny, whether we in the West liked it or not. Iran would neither be intimidated nor deterred by the machinations of the imperialistic Zionist powers.

The invincible righteous armies of God and Iran are fully prepared for this coming battle, this glorious Armageddon, and no amount of futile Western sanctions or threats would interfere with their noble mission.

Later that evening, on Fox News Live, in one of the most disturbing and disheartening summations I have ever had the misfortune to experience, the events of this fateful day were summed up by famed political commentator, Charles Krauthammer. It was to be, he proclaimed, complete and utter resignation. Unqualified, humiliating resignation. All the useless diplomatic initiatives had failed, the sanctions had had little or no effect. Neither the meaningless condemnations of the meaningless United Nations nor the pitiful attempts of an impotent IAEA to somehow monitor or discourage the steady escalation of the Iranian's nuclear program would have any effect. The present administration would not attack Iran. And most likely, he continued, no new administration would sanction such an attack, either. Israel probably doesn't possess the necessary military wherewithal to pull off a successful attack on Iran and avoid the certain devastating consequences.

So Iran would get the bomb. And what will be will be. Sorry world, we tried.

So that's it? That's all there is? Sorry world. Sorry poor little Israel. Sorry all you hapless future generations of Americans. Sorry, but we tried.

At seven o'clock I turned off the TV and tried not to think about the future.

Update: From Naomi Ragen "In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew thedangers and the issues.. It is different today. We don't know who we are. Wedon't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of theenemy." Bernard Lewis

Black America: The Great Choice

2009-01-31T11:55:00.001-08:00

Malcolm Little: 22843

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–6) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.
In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an African American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. His detractors accused him of preaching race hatred and violence. He has been described as one of the most influential African Americans of the 20th century.
Between 1953 and 1965, while most black leaders worked in the civil rights movement to integrate black people into mainstream American life, Malcolm X preached independence. He maintained that Western culture, and the Judeo-Christian religious traditions on which it is based, was inherently racist. Constantly ridiculing mainstream civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X declared that nonviolence was the "philosophy of the fool".

In 1976, Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based loosely on his family's history, starting with the story of Kunta Kinte, kidnapped in Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and Haley's work on the novel involved ten years of research, intercontinental travel and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and which is still in existence, and listened to a tribal historian tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to America. Genealogists have since disputed Haley's research and conclusions and Haley made an out-of-court settlement with Harold Courlander, who had sued him for plagiarism.
Roots garnered phenomenal audiences. On average, 80 million people watched each of the last seven episodes. 100 million viewers, almost half the country, saw the final episode, which still claims one of the highest Nielsen ratings ever recorded, a 51.1 with a 71 share. A stunning 85% of all television homes saw all or part of the mini-series. Roots also enjoyed unusual social acclaim for a television show. Vernon Jordan, former president of the Urban League, called it "the single most spectacular educational experience in race relations in America." Over 250 colleges and universities planned courses on the saga, and during the broadcast, over 30 cities declared "Roots" weeks. Roots was eventually published in 37 languages and Haley won a Special Award for it in 1977 from the Pulitzer Board. Roots was also made into a popular television miniseries that year. The film reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers when it was serialized on television. In 1979, ABC aired the sequel miniseries Roots: The Next Generations, which continued the story of Kunta Kinte's descendants.
Some voiced concern, however; especially at the time of the television series that racial tension in America would be aggravated by Roots. While Time did report several incidents of racial violence following the telecast, it commented that most observers thought that in the long term, Roots would improve race relations, particularly because of the televised versions profound impact on whites. A broad consensus seemed to be emerging that Roots would spur black identity, and hence black pride, and eventually pay important dividends. Some black leaders viewed Roots as the most important civil rights event since the 1965 march on Selma, according to Time. Vernon Jordan, executive director of the National Urban League, called it the single most spectacular educational experience in race relations in America.

There may come a time in the life of an individual, or in the life of an entire people when they are offered a great choice. Fundamentally, this choice may be relatively simple: either to honestly accept responsibility for their own lives and their own actions, and seek to improve their lives through hard work and disciplined endeavor; or to make a different (and often the easier choice), one which avoids responsibility for their own lives and their own actions and seeks to improve their lives through viewing themselves as victims, victims of an evil and omnipotent oppressor, the prima facie cause of their suffering.
The alcoholic who accepts responsibility for his problems has a chance of conquering those problems and moving ahead with his life. The alcoholic who continues to blame others for his plight will most likely never recover.

In 1933, the people of Germany were faced with a similar choice. Unfortunately for Germany and the world, they made the wrong choice, they avoided accepting personal responsibility for their own lives and their own actions and chose instead the false comfort of victimhood. How many times has this wounded old world of ours been torn asunder by the self-righteous destruction of these 'belligerent victims'? Has this disingenuous concept of victimhood ever actually achieved anything of lasting value? How many great works have been accomplished by self-perceived victims? When, if ever, has the steady diet of hatred and revenge ever produced a successful people?

Yet, the cynical preachers of victimhood prosper and win new converts daily. And sometimes they succeed in drowning out the voices of the preachers of honesty and wisdom. Dr. Martin Luther King had offered his people a great choice, a choice to embrace his glowing vision, his great and famous dream of hope and fulfillment. And people, people of all colors rallied to his shining dream.
On April 4, 1968 the dream was shot. For some, the vision had been blurred forever. For some, Martin Luther King's death was prima facie evidence of the eternal victimhood of the American blacks.

There was of course another vision out there. Another voice to be heard. A different kind of voice. The fiery voice of a preacher of hate and revenge. The hate-filled voice of the belligerent victim. In response to Reverend King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, Malcolm X quipped, "While King was having a dream, the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare."
Thus the plight of the black man in America was not to be seen as the result of their personal actions, or lack of actions, but rather as the result of the criminal subjugation of one people by another, of one race by another. The machinations of the evil and omnipotent oppressor: the ruthless white man.

All great movements need a great myth to rally round and to embody and glorify their mission. For the Third Reich, it was to be that great monumental vision of Aryan supremacy embodied in the soaring ecstatic extremes of Wagnerian drama or in Leni Riefenstahl's glorious propaganda. The great, utterly nonsensical myth of the God-given destiny of the Nordic hero. And of course all myths must have their protagonists, their villains and their monsters, and the convenient monsters of Hitler's grand vision would of course be played by the Eternal Jew, those deadly and conniving Shylocks who had stabbed the noble Aryan warriors in the back in 1918.

The historically undeniable fact that it had been their own magnificent generals, the Hindenburg's and the Ludendorfs, who had pleaded passionately to the Wiemar Government to call an end to the war -- at any price, because the awful alternative would have most assuredly meant the complete and utter destruction of the exhausted and outflanked German Army, and the subsequent invasion and devastation of the homeland, was systematically rewritten and replaced with the new Nordic myth of the monstrous treachery of the weak-kneed Wiemar Government and the underhanded Jews, and thus the inevitable victimhood of the once great German volk.

With the publication of Alex Haley's "Roots" in 1976, and then especially with the remarkably successful television series that followed in it's wake, those American blacks who had chosen the road of victimhood found their own great myth. "Some voiced concern, however; especially at the time of the television series that racial tension in America would be aggravated by Roots." Everything that Malcom X and others had been preaching had seemingly been substantiated, even sanctioned by the highest echelons of the white oppressors themselves. Their great oppression had indeed been vetted and validated, validated as only Hollywood could validate an idea, magnificently, convincingly and dramatically. A monumental myth that Richard Wagner himself would have enthusiastically acclaimed.

The surprisingly successful Civil Rights movements of the Sixties and the subsequent legislative responses incontestably advanced the cause of racial equality more in two or three years than had been achieved in the previous two or three centuries. Those great barred doors had been opened and the road to hope and promise beckoned. Affirmative action promised to level the playing field, and for the most part it actually did. Blacks became more and more integrated into the white world and became more and more 'upwardly mobile'. There were practically no fields of endeavor that were out of their reach. Blacks were entering colleges and universities in record numbers, were entering prestigious previously all-white law firms and major corporations. Television, sports, entertainment, law enforcement, politics, and the military -- there was virtually no occupation precluded from talented and enterprising black aspirants. The good doctor's dream seemed at last to be becoming a reality. The battles, if not all won, were progressing well and the future beckoned.

But that other, darker myth would simply not die. It's message was still too beguiling. It's fiery preachers still to charismatic and inspiring. The baton of hate and revenge had been passed to a new generation of pied pipers, the Sharptons and the Jesse Jacksons, who had never given up on their dark vision of the nightmare. The empty promises of endless victimhood and a total release from the weight of personal responsibility. The hope now was the hope for reparations, all kinds of reparations, social, political, financial. All predicated on the general acceptance of the great myth, not just the acceptance by its purported victims, but by the guilty oppressors themselves .

This, then, was, is, the great choice confronted by a whole new generation of black Americans. Would they accept the vision of the good doctor's golden dream, or embrace the dark nightmare of Malcolm X and the powerful enabling myth of 'Roots'? Would they walk through the open doors of the American Dream, or pull away and form their own separatist group of angry young men? Not angry young Americans anymore, but angry young African-Americans, unwilling or unable to give up the power of their hatred, even at the expense of their hope.

I have little pity for you. There have just been too many other stories in this unfair world of ours, stories of true victims, who have quietly and courageously overcome even greater odds and succeeded in creating a fulfilling life. You who choose to remain fixated on your anger and on your pain will never succeed in bettering your lot, you will only succeed in wreaking more havoc on a already weary world, and crushing the nascent spirit of your innocent children.

In a matter of weeks now we will be facing an important, no, a crucial American election, which will most likely chart the course of this great nation well into the unforeseeable future. The sides have been clearly drawn, the issues are irreconcilable. Once again, we are being offered a great choice, the dream or the nightmare, victimhood or honor, pride or humiliation. Senator Obama's dream is an ignoble appeal to your sense of victimhood, a vision of darkness and disillusionment. The virtual embrace of defeat and hopelessness. It is that same old myth of the perpetual victim and the perpetual oppressor. Those who choose this path will not only weaken their own chances for happiness and self-respect, they will ultimately weaken and further divide this great nation of ours at a time of its utmost peril. For now more than ever we must all come together and all be Americans. Because, once again, this great old wounded world of ours, and this miraculous experiment which is the United States of America is facing the onslaught of a new and fearsome legion of 'belligerent victims'. Victims blindly obsessed by their own great myth, the great savage myth of Islam. And we, the infidels, the American infidels, the black American infidels and the white American infidels are the monsters of their self-righteous myth whom they seek to destroy.

In short, we are in a war for our very lives and there is no more time left for individual self-pity. No more efforts to be wasted on looking for differences between us, which can only weaken us and make us more vulnerable to our ruthless enemies. We are all Americans, you and I, not African-Americans or Mexican-Americans, but just plain Americans, all together, facing a brutal and determined enemy, who could care less about our intramural distinctions or our racial identity crises.

This, then, is our last great choice. Will we get it right this time?

Apocalypse Now: The River of Lies

2009-01-31T11:51:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on seeing Apocalypse Now again:

It's 1979 and a young Martin Sheen is taking us up that fateful river again. He is our wise and somber Virgil, our guide, narrator, the ORM (Only Rational Man), leading us up that labyrinthine river of death and insanity which is our Vietnam War. That great river of no return, that winding thread of dark infuriating lies that will take us further and further into the Heart of Darkness, into our great national shame, guilt and self-loathing. This was the real secret mission of that clandestine journey. And they almost succeeded.

It's the summer of 2008 and I'm taking that trip with him once again and I wonder at the enormity my previous innocence and gullibility. I am overcome by the tragedy of it all. Not just by the horrors of this bloody and inconclusive war, but overcome by what they, the narrators, have done to us all. Our trusted and revered guides have all but ruined us with the binding threads of their dark unscrupulous lies. Up the river we follow them into that great cynical myth, slaughtering myriad innocent women and children, laying waste to the fertile land, sacrificing a small courageous people in the fiery embrace of Napalm, like great birds of prey, swooping in on the schoolchildren playing in their schoolyard, accompanied by Hitlerian Wagnerian orgasms of supremacist passion, the demonic sounds of that self-righteous, contemptuous warrior's passion. We are all too young, much to young to know what the hell we're doing, we're all dopeheads and surfers, sadistic, drunken sex-starved smiling adolescent American monsters, smiling the awful smiles of insanity as we slaughter our helpless prey. Meaningless slaughter. Pointless death. Ghastly unnecessary erroneous war. Monumental moral blunder.

And what finally do we find at the end of that gruesome river, at the end of our perilous journey? We find ourselves. And the discovery is alarming. Madness, arrogance, ruthless, contempt of all that is fine and good in human nature, thoughtlessly obliterating a fine nation for inscrutable and indefensible motives. A big stupid illiterate giant stumbling around the world in our drunken orgy of self-gratification. We have become the monsters we once abhorred, too young, too naive to even begin to appreciate the enormity of our loss, that loss of all that which we once held dear. This is the grave and ominous lesson of that journey into the Heart of Darkness. This, then, shall be our new national narrative: The epic downward spiral of a once great nation into that hopeless moral miasma.

This is what they have done to us, this is what they have wrought. Our honored Virgils, our trusted guides, our respected ORMs. This, what we have become, is their doing, this is the product of their genius and their ideology and their talent. With the power of their heavy-handed symbolics and crude metaphors they have almost succeeded in redefining our national narrative. We have become lost in that impenetrable jungle of lies and propaganda and have almost lost our humanity. We have, they have convinced us, sinned greatly, monumentally, against all mankind, and all that saves us from oblivion is heeding their grave warnings, the concerned admonishments of our counterfeit ORM. Oh, and they have worked their magic well. They have taught us how to hate ourselves with great success, and how to love our enemies, and finally, how to find hope and solace in our boundless self-contempt. There is, they tell us, still one possible chance for salvation -- our willingness to face up to our past mistakes and to try to make amends. To give up all of our old selfish and contemptible imperialistic warrior dreams and join the humble brotherhood of man. It's not too late yet, they tell us. There is still time. If we just follow their lead.

So I have taken that old trip up that long loathsome river once again and I wonder at my previous ignorance and gullibility. But no longer. Now I can see the corrupt degenerate treachery of our false guides. Their lessons are lies and their messages are empty. They have almost ruined us with their deceptions and their purposeful distortions of the truth. They have almost succeeded, they have almost robbed us of our self-respect, our hard-won and well-earned self-respect. But ultimately they have failed to destroy us. Because we can still remember, we can still remember the truth of who we are, despite their most talented and ambitious efforts to obliterate it.

We are a great fine people. We are a great fine nation. We owe apologies to no one -- least of all to ourselves. In the end the false storytellers with their secret agendas have failed. It is the beginning of a new season now, we are beginning to create a new narrative. A narrative founded on truth and hope and promise. We are looking for new Virgils. Not to lead us down into the depths of self-immolation and despair, but to lift us up to the heights of promise and fulfilment. We are looking for guides now who will teach us how to love ourselves once again and regain the strength of the righteous warriors that we are. We are free and we are kind and decent. And the old men's tales, the False Virgil's lies just won't do anymore.

For a fascinating corrective on Vietnam Vet war myths see Lew Waters great article here

Black and White: The Fight at the Top of the World

2009-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

Recently, I had the chance to see, for the second time, the June 20, 1960 return match fight between Floyd Patterson and Ingmar Johansson on television, and it brought back some interesting memories.
In the summer of 1960, I was stationed on an obscure radar site (for which this website was named) on a lonely mountaintop in Newfoundland. This was one of the many Air Force outposts that formed the Northern Defense Screen against a possible Soviet attack. If my memory serves me, there were about 180 men stationed on this remote site. Of the 180 men, approximately 35 or 40 were black. During that whole previous year we all got along together, without any particular thoughts about our racial differences. We all sat together in the mess hall and spent our spare time together. Considering our widely differing backgrounds and our present uncomfortable living conditions, we all got along pretty well, I'd say. However, all this was about to change.

One of the most anticipated fights of the decade was coming up that summer, the long-awaited rematch between the former heavyweight champ, Floyd Patterson and the big colorful Swede, Ingmar Johansson. The previous year, on June 26, 1959, Johansson, a 5-1 underdog, who didn't seem to train particularly hard, and was often seen at night spots with his attractive "secretary", took the heavyweight crown from Patterson in a stunning upset that turned the boxing world upside down. Overnight Ingmar Johansson had become a Swedish folk hero and one of the most popular celebrities in the world. A short time after the fight the two agreed to a rematch, scheduled for June 20, 1960.

As the weeks passed by, and the night of the big fight got closer, there was a subtle but noticeable growth of tension in the air. Without anyone having actually verbalized it, Ingmar Johansson had become a symbol, the 'Great White Hope', and inexorably this great contest for the heavyweight crown of the world was becoming something else, something bigger and less appealing.

Finally, on the night of the fight, everyone that could get off duty crowded into the tv room and, for the first time that I could remember, all the black airmen sat off by themselves.

Patterson knocked Johansson out in the fifth round with a leaping left hook to become the first man to recover the world's undisputed heavyweight title. The punch caught Johansson's chin and he hit the canvas with a thud, out cold before he landed flat on his back. With blood trickling from his mouth, his glazed eyes staring up at the ring lights, and his left foot twitching the Swede was counted out.

During the fight there was all kinds of cheering and yelling. But when Johansson finally lost, the black guys laughed loudly and cheered triumphantly; while all the white guys just went quiet and left the room, one by one, dejectedly. The next day, and for a number of days thereafter, the black guys all ate at their own tables and the white guys ate at their tables.

Something had happened that night. Something of value had been lost. Something that some of us would probably never get back again. That unthinking easy camaraderie had gone. Now, under those great bulky gray parkas, we were either black or we were white. Very black and very white. We had been separated.

Eventually of course things got back to normal, or something like normal. Soon we were back sitting at each other's tables again, sharing our meals and our jokes and our loneliness. After all, we were just a bunch of guys, weren't we? All mixed up together, on a freezing cold mountaintop out in the middle of nowhere, looking out for the Russkies.

The Ghosts of Times Square

2009-01-31T11:43:00.001-08:00

It’s 1955. We’re at 45th and Broadway, in the heart of the old Times Square. It’s a chilly Spring evening; women are still bundled up in their furs, men still wearing their overcoats. We’re standing under the great marquee of the venerable old Astor Theater (long gone now), watching a tall skinny young usher, all dressed up like an admiral, marching back and forth under the bright neon lights, spouting off his repetitive spiel to the endless throngs of cold, disinterested passersby:
“Step right this way, folks! Immediate seating in the balcony! Tonight we have ‘East of Eden’, with James Dean, Julie Harris and Raymond Massey! Next show begins in fifteen minutes!”

That’s me. The eighteen-year old version. Living the big life in the Big Apple, and doing my best to live up to those stringent requirements for becoming a full-fledged, legitimate Bohemian (that “free-thinking, anti-establishment” movement that came onto the scene a generation before those infinitely more numerous and infamous Hippies). I was already breaking one of the cardinal rules by working. But you have to eat and pay the rent so you compromise a little. With the exception of those evenings at the Astor, however, the rest of my life was pure unadulterated Bohemian. I was a struggling young art student, living in Greenwich Village in the 1950s. My girlfriend, also an art student, although somewhat less struggling, was the pretty, blond eighteen-year old daughter of a Brazilian embassy official. On those nights when I didn’t have to work at the Astor, we’d visit one of the local coffeehouses or bars, and spend the night engaged in long, passionate discussions with our friends about -- art, or religion, or something like that.

I shared a cramped second floor “studio” on Grove Street with my best buddy, a fellow artist and boxer who earned his money sparring at Stillman’s Gym. All of my friends were (to one degree or another) artists, writers, poets, musicians, or just plain Bohemians. During all this, I was, although I certainly didn’t appreciate it at the time, involved in the subliminal process of constructing a persona, a persona that would, barring a few adjustments, and sometimes lengthy, inadvertent interruptions, last almost a lifetime. Almost.

On those rare occasions when I actually voted, I of course voted Democratic. If you had asked me why I considered myself a Democrat I would have probably answered something to the effect that the Democrats were the “party of the people”, that they were caring and tolerant and “had concern for the little guy”. And most importantly, though I probably wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, that they were the polar opposite of the Republicans who were, to me, the corporate embodiment of my stern, materialistic Main Line stockbroker father -- against whom I would spend the greater part of a lifetime in unnecessary and self-destructive rebellion.

It's 2001. I'm sleeping late, the phone ringing wakes me up. It's my son Geoff, from North Carolina. Geoff is a former Army Ranger, fought in Desert Storm, he seldom gets rattled. He sounded rattled. “Dad!” He said. “Turn on the TV. Some crazy bastard just crashed into the World Trade Center!” I turned on CNN. We watched CNN together, he in North Carolina, me in Massachusetts. We hardly spoke. We just listened to the TV. Then, “Jesus Christ!” He said.
Jesus Christ!
Both towers! All those people! Who did it? And why? Are we at war? Who are we at war with? Who the hell is Osama bin Laden? And who are these fanatical Muslims? What the hell does Islam have to do with the World Trade Center? And, most frightening of all, what’s going to happen next?
What happened next was the Pentagon.

Immediately following the attacks on New York City, the Peace Protesters were out in force, filing into Manhattan’s parks and squares with their obligatory candles and guitars, singing for Peace, and intimating, through their homemade signs and baleful comments that somehow we, the United States, through our purported self-interested imperialist aggressions, had brought all this on ourselves. These inflammatory pronouncements of course generated loud, angry counter-protests from some offended citizens among the surrounding crowd. The painful debate had begun. Like some catastrophic earthquake, the horrific events of that awful day generated a gigantic fault line that stretched across the entire continent, dividing one half of our nation from the other by a seemingly unbridgeable gulf.

It's 2008. Where are we now? Still divided, still conflicted, a nation torn asunder, struggling to find its identity. And where am I now? Who am I now? This old reconstructed Greenwich Village liberal? What's happened? How did I change so much? How did I become this angry old right-winger? this indefatigable alarmist? this anti-Islamist warmonger? Was it those buildings coming down? Was it all of those people jumping out of those windows? Was it reading the Koran? Am I getting wiser with old age, or am I just getting harder? Did America change? Or was it just me?

That old Times Square is long gone now. All of those things are gone now. All gone. Sometimes late at night when I'm lying alone in the darkness they come back, those ghosts of Times Square. That great glowing neon marquee, the venerable old Astor, our doomed hero James Dean and my pretty blond girlfriend, and all of those good friends and all of those long, passionate discussions, and that tall skinny young usher, all dressed up like an admiral, marching back and forth under the bright neon lights, spouting off his repetitive spiel to the endless throngs of cold, disinterested passersby:
“Step right this way, folks! Immediate seating in the balcony! Tonight we have -- "

What do we have tonight, folks? What will we have tomorrow? What, I wonder, would James Dean have to say about all this?

Beslan USA: Mentioning the Unmentionable

2009-01-31T11:40:00.000-08:00

Could it happen here?

Once again, North Osettia is in the news, and once again the news is violent and alarming. It has been almost exactly four years since that horrific event that outraged the world, the bloody siege of North Ossetia's Beslan School No. 1. More than 1,000 hostages were taken at the Beslan school in the early hours of September 1, 2004, by guerrillas demanding an end to the war in nearby Chechnya. A standoff ensued until September 3, when Russian personnel stormed the school and ended the siege with a series of loud explosions and a final assault. When the smoke had cleared the total number of dead was more than 330 people, half of them children.

The Chechen jihadist leader Shamil Besayev had warned the Russian government the winter prior to the attack: “Praise Allah, we are dreaming of dying in jihad, we are dreaming of dying on the way of Allah, so that we could earn paradise and mercy of Allah.”

This is the war we are in. We must not allow ourselves to be misled or confused by sins of omissions or purposeful obfuscations. We must learn to connect the dots. We must learn to see these seemingly anomalous events for what they really are, not isolated tragedies, faraway and removed from our everyday world, not individual maniacs freaking out and killing our children in front of our very eyes on our university campuses; but rather as part of that great Islamic Jihad against the West, against the infidel. From the Munich Olympics to 9/11, from the streets of Mogadishu to the bombing of the Cole -- it's the same ruthless enemy, the same bloodthirsty child-killing jihadist Muslims. They are "dreaming of dying in jihad". And, have no doubts about it America, we are still on their list.

Last December 2007, Radarsite ran a truly alarming article, cross posted from Deb Hamilton's Right Truth, on the threats received by a number of elementary and high schools in Florida. A series of post cards [see above] were sent to several different schools in the area promising "an explosive surprise". Fortunately, nothing came of it. Whether it was proven to be a stupidly cruel hoax, or whether an actual attack had been thwarted we may never know. But, as they say, the writing was on the wall. How many similar plots have been silently thwarted we will quite possibly never know. But we can be certain of this: the minds that thought up the bloody siege of Beslan are still thinking. Could it happen here? A more pertinent question might be, why hasn't it happened here yet? Are we that good? Or have we just been lucky?

A couple of years ago I made a trip back to my childhood home for the first time in over 50 years, Of course, much had changed, some of it was completely unrecognizable, and some of it looked exactly as I had remembered it all those years. But one of the most disquieting changes that I came across on that sentimental journey were the new additions to my old elementary school. The small friendly brick building was now ringed with an ominous row of concrete traffic barriers. I found that I couldn't even get inside to visit my old school without first making an appointment and being cleared by security.

So, it seems we have adapted. We've tightened up our loose ends. We've put up the money required to install the latest access control technologies: traffic barriers, security doors, high-tech iris scanners, metal detectors, and we've developed more stringent security procedures. And, so far, so good.

But, are we really prepared?

Are we psychologically and emotionally prepared for a well planned and executed three day Beslan type siege? Are we strong enough to handle the unbearable pressure? Can we withstand the horrific drama being played out 24 hours a day for three days on our widescreen TVs? Do we have the will power to resist their inevitable outrageous demands? Will we release terrorists from Gitmo? Or pressure Israel to make some deadly concessions? What are we willing to do and not to do? Have we even seriously thought about it?

We certainly have the technology. We have the equipment. And we have the most proficient and courageous first responders, police, firemen, and SWAT teams in the world. But do we have the strength of character to stand back and let them do their jobs without interference? For the sake of our children's lives will we sacrifice our national security? Will we open the door for more deadly blackmail in the future?

Could a Beslan happen here in America, to an American school?

Yes, absolutely.

Are we prepared to face the terrible enormity of this possible scenario?

Probably not.

Can we ever be truly prepared for such a horror?

Probably not.

But we had better at least start thinking about it. Because our enemies most certainly have.

http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/2638

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/003309.php

Deserve Victory

2009-01-31T11:38:00.001-08:00

On the morning of August 8, 2008 Russian forces invaded the tiny Republic of Georgia in what Russia cynically characterized as an act of "preemptive defense". Thus once again this volatile region explodes in violence and increases the already escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington.

According to the bleak assessment of one of our Fox News commentators, "with our military already stretched thin", we are now confronted with the possibility of "being dragged into yet another war, which we cannot afford".

Indeed, we seem threatened on all sides, the martial rattling of our enemies' sabers grows louder and more ominous every day.

Drawn inexorably into conflicts and wars which we can no longer afford, our meager military forces dangerously depleted and already stretched beyond endurance, besieged by the dark forces of fear and travail

our poor beleaguered nation passes into the Valley of the Shadow of Death...

Of course, there's another way of looking at all this.

We have faced fear and travail before, haven't we? We have passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death a few times before and we're still here, aren't we? And perhaps before we all start feeling too sorry for ourselves, and too beleaguered, maybe we should take a closer look at just how badly off we really are.

Let's begin by looking at just how costly our national military burden really is. To widen our perspective a bit, here are some interesting statistics:

The percent of our national GDP currently allocated to defense is 3.7

The percent of our national GDP allocated to defense during Vietnam was 9.4

The percent of our national GDP allocated to defense in 1944 was 37.8

And what about our over-stretched and sorely depleted military?

The United States now spends at least 3 times as much on defense as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Libya, and Sudan combined.

The United States has the largest and most deadly air force in the entire world. The destructive capabilities of our massive and under-utilized Air Force are awesome and unmatched by any other nation. Our blue water Navy is the largest and most powerful naval force on earth, capable of taking on any three nations combined. If these formidable forces were ever to be unleashed against a potential adversary the consequences would be devastating.

Have we so easily forgotten who we are? Have we so easily forgotten what we are capable of when pushed too far? Have we so easily succumbed to the whiners and the nay-sayers before the battle has even begun?

Too costly, you say? How have your selfish little lives been altered? What have you been deprived of? How dare you speak of this war being too costly, how dare you speak of sacrifice to those amongst us who well remember what sacrifice really means. What have you given up for your country in its time of need? The whole concept of patriotism sickens you, you say? Then I pity you as I would pity a homeless orphan. You are not enlightened and sophisticated, you are merely deprived. You have not risen above patriotism, you have sunk below it. Are you proud Americans or a weak-kneed generation of whiners? Have you forgotten what it means to be an American? and what America means to this world?

Those of us who are old enough to remember will not forget. And for those who may have forgotten, or those who may have never known at all, we will remember for you.

It was like this...

During that monumental conflagration we call World War Two the world lost somewhere between 40 to 60 million people and countless millions more were left homeless or severely injured, or both. Half of the major cities in Europe and Japan were reduced to ruins. Fourteen million Americans served their country in uniform (more than ten percent of a wartime population of 135 million -- or put into today's figures, approximately thirty million people in uniform). Over 400,000 Americans gave their lives for their country (including a staggering 4,000 GIs killed in a single day—D-Day, June 6, 1944).

Virtually every family in America was affected by the War. Virtually every family in America had a father or son or brother in uniform. And all of us knew of someone who had lost a loved one. All of our private lives were unalterably subsumed into The Effort. Everyone sacrificed something. Some sacrificed everything. We learned the meaning of patriotism. We learned to do without, and to do without without complaint. Because, no matter how bad you had it, you always knew that your fathers and sons and brothers had it worse. So, you did your part and you did it proudly.

Rationing began almost immediately after America went to war, and everyone was affected by it. There was almost no part of our lives that wasn't touched by it in some way.

Beginning in May 1942, gasoline was rationed at five gallons a week. "Is this trip necessary?" became the catch phrase of the day. Car owners had to register and were given a windshield sticker based on how the car or other vehicle was used. Pleasure rides were forbidden. And riding alone was aggressively discouraged.

After the rationing of gasoline, other products soon followed. By 1943, sugar, meat, coffee, typewriters, fuel oil, gasoline, rubber, and automobiles were all rationed and available only in severely lilimited quantities.

Food rationing probably affected most Americans the most.

Each American was issued a book of ration coupons each month. Rationed goods were assigned a price and point value. Families were not restricted to certain quantities of rationed goods. But once their coupons were used up, they could not buy rationed goods until the next month. Families were encouraged to plant victory gardens. These gardens supplied a major part of the vegetable supply during the War.

Rubber and gas were the most vital product rationed. Limited fuel supplies during the war affected America in many ways. Certain fabrics like silk or synthetic fibers were not available for civilian use. In 1942, sugar and coffee began to be rationed, followed in 1943 by rationing of shoes (even tennis shoes which had become popular in America were hard to get because they had rubber soles), meat, cheese, fats and all canned foods.

Soon, even coal was rationed.

Everyone sacrificed, everyone contributed. Volunteerism was the norm. Everybody volunteered for something. Fathers, mothers, even kids volunteered for rubber drives or tin drives or lined up to donate their blood (that little white Red Cross tin lapel pin became our badge of honor, a visible validation of our childish heroism).

In short, it was our war. We owned it and we earned it and we won it. We won it with our sacrifice and our love and, yes, with our patriotism. We left no room at the table for the nay-sayers and the defeatists. We wore our patriotism proudly. And we still do.

Now, we face new challenges and new enemies. We face our own doubts and fears. We are incessantly assailed by the nay-sayers and defeatists. By sour elitists who equate love of country with maudlin emotionalism, and equate our fight for survival with selfish imperialism. We are besieged by enemies from both without and within; and by far the most dangerous of all are those enemies from within. Those misbegotten pacifists who identify more closely with our sworn enemies than with their own country, those jaded pseudo-intellectuals who firmly believe that they have risen above honor and loyalty.

We have listened to them for over four decades now. We have allowed them into our government and into our churches and synagogues, our schools and universities. We have allowed them to shape our foreign policies and the innocent minds of our vulnerable children. And they have led us to the brink of disaster. We have been seduced by the arguments of defeatists and listened to the songs of our enemies. And we have had enough now. We have had our fill.

Now it's time to turn away from all that. It's time to listen to those other voices. Those voices of strength and courage and hope. It's time to remember who we are.

It's time to deserve victory!

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http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c421.htm

http://www.fpif.org/papers/money/index.htmlhttp://www.firsttennessee.com/index.cfm?Fuseaction=ExecutiveHighlightsNewsletter.ViewContent&Item=Commentary

The Treacherous Patriots: The Fallen Eagle

2009-01-31T11:32:00.001-08:00

From The Secret of Samson's Hair: Hollywood and the Demasculinization of America by Roger W. Gardner

On May 20, 1927, Charles Augustus Lindbergh became the first aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a solo flight. After a harrowing 33.5 hour flight, the tiny single-engine “Spirit of St. Louis” touched ground at Le Bourget Airport outside Paris and the astonished Lindbergh was immediately overwhelmed by an hysterical ecstatic crowd, estimated at over 100,000 people. He had conquered the Atlantic alone and had become an instant celebrity of unprecedented renown. The following day, the President of France presented him with the prestigious Legion of Honor. On his return to the U.S. he was welcomed by President Calvin Coolidge who bestowed upon him the Distinguished Flying Cross.

His subsequent reception in New York City was the wildest in that city’s history. Mayor Jimmy Walker gave him a ticker tape parade, at which an estimated 4 million people lined the parade route just to get a glimpse of him. Shortly thereafter, the Guggenheim Fund sponsored him on a three month nationwide tour. Flying the “Spirit of St. Louis”, he touched down in 48 states, visited 92 cities, and gave 147 speeches promoting aviation. He followed this with a goodwill tour of Latin America where he met his future bride, the daughter of the American Ambassador, writer Anne Spencer Morrow. On March 21, 1929, President Coolidge presented him with the nation’s highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In an incredibly short period of time, Charles Lindbergh had achieved a remarkable level of international adulation. He represented to the world a shining ray of hope and promise in an otherwise rather dismal decade. Standing on a pinnacle of fame, which in today’s world would rank him somewhere perhaps between a movie star and an Astronaut, with his all-American good looks, his boyish smile, and his (deceptive) air of modesty, Charles Lindbergh seemed the epitome of the perfect American Hero.

Wealthy, world-famous, respected and admired, “Lucky Lindy”, as he had now come to be known, eventually settled into his spacious New Jersey estate with his lovely new wife to begin what promised to be an idyllic life. On June 22, 1930, their son, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. was born and instantly became the most famous baby in the world. They had become the true First Family of America and an adoring public followed their every move. For the Lindbergh family the future appeared filled with unbounded hope and promise -- until March 1, 1932, when baby Charles was reported missing from his crib.

Needless to say, the “Lindbergh Kidnapping Case” quickly became the most notorious kidnapping case in history. Hundreds of international reporters descended on the small New Jersey town to feed the voracious appetite of an obsessed worldwide public, covering every nuance of the investigation, trial, and the subsequent sentencing and 1936 execution of the convicted perpetrator, the somber German-American Bruno Richard Hauptmann. There is no need here to reiterate the convoluted facts and innumerable controversies surrounding this historic case, except perhaps to take note that, in some sense, the case still remains open. Articles about the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case are still being printed, websites are still being opened, and books are still being written espousing endless theories and conjectures about the guilt or innocence of Hauptman -- some even implicating Lindbergh, himself, in the infamous affair.

What is, however, relevant to our purposes is that after the kidnapping and during the highly-publicized investigation that followed, much to his adoring public’s surprise, a darker side to Lucky Lindy’s personality began to emerge. Arrogant, authoritative, domineering, he began almost immediately to take over complete control of the investigation, issuing orders to the local and State Police, controlling the news conferences, even interfering with the Federal Agents assigned to the case.

This was the first chink to appear in Charles Lindbergh’s shining armor. The second would prove to be immensely more important and involve more than just the particular idiosyncrasies of his unique personality: his well-publicized, anti-war, pro-Fascist and -- though he would later try to deny it -- overtly anti-Semitic speeches, coupled with his high-profile involvement with the America First Committee.

The America First Committee was established in September of 1940 by Yale law student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., along with several other students, including future President Gerald Ford. Supported by a group of prominent businessmen and a few well-known Senators such as Burton K. Wheeler and Gerald P. Nye, and some famous literary figures like the novelist Sinclair Lewis, poet E. E. Cummings and author Gore Vidal, the Committee launched a petition “aimed at enforcing the 1939 Neutrality Act and forcing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep his pledge to keep America out of the war.
They thoroughly distrusted Roosevelt, arguing that he was lying to the American Public”. They vehemently opposed Roosevelt’s lend-lease bill, “the convoying of ships, the Atlantic Charter,* and the placing of economic pressure on Japan”.Their platform rested on four basic principles: “The United States must build an impregnable defense of America. No foreign power, or group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America. American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war. [And, finally,] ‘Aid short of war’ [helping England to survive] weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad”.

Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, most Americans wanted to stay out of a “European war“, and the AFC skillfully tapped into these feelings.

Throughout 1940-41, Charles Lindbergh became the AFC’s chief spokesman. However, long before the formation of the AFC, Lindbergh had begun to publicly question our foreign policy and the motives of the Roosevelt administration. After the “media circus” of the kidnapping trial, Lindbergh and his wife moved to England to escape the constant scrutiny of the press. He soon became enamored of Nazi Germany, showing great admiration for Hitler’s policies and enormous respect for the German Luftwaffe -- touting its superiority over any air force in the world. After several visits he even discussed plans to move there permanently.

In England he became active in the isolationist movement, urging neutrality and appeasement of Hitler, helping to pave the way for the infamous Munich Pact. . Obviously, these efforts were greatly appreciated by the Germans. On his third visit to Nazi Germany, in October 1938, Lindbergh was presented with the Service Cross of the German Eagle by Hermann Goering. In a radio speech broadcast in September, 1939, just two weeks after England had declared war on Germany, he urged his listeners to “look beyond the speeches and propaganda they were being fed and instead look at who was writing the speeches and reports, who owned the papers and who influenced the speakers” [emphasis added] -- meaning of course the Jews.

Gradually, the public began to turn against him. Then, in a speech delivered to a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, he finally went too far, and was greeted with a chorus of catcalls and boos. Lindbergh accused the Jews of trying to entangle the United States in their self-serving pro-war policies and -- echoing almost verbatim a speech given by Hitler in the German Reichstag on September 1, 1939 -- warned them, ominously, that “Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences”

After the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, the AFC quietly dissolved. Although Lindbergh attempted to join the service, Roosevelt refused to reinstate his commission in the Air Force Reserves. None of the major airplane manufacturers was willing to give him a job. Eventually, he managed to find a position with his old friend, and fellow anti-Semite, Henry Ford, streamlining his B-24 factory in Michigan. Rejected by the public who had previously adored him, marginalized by the momentous events that overtook him and his discredited ideas, “Lucky Lindy” quickly faded from the scene. Almost.

After World War II he lived quietly in Connecticut where he served as a consultant to both the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force and to Pan American Airways. In 1953, he wrote his book Spirit of St. Louis, recounting his historic flight, which won the Pulitzer prize in 1954. That same year his tarnished reputation was somewhat repaired when President Dwight D. Eisenhower restored his assignment with the Army Air Corps and made him a Brigadier General. In 1957, director Billy Wilder made his book Spirit of St. Louis into a successful Hollywood movie, starring real-life Air Force pilot Jimmy Stewart. In the 1960s, he became a spokesman for the conservation of the natural world, speaking in favor of the protection of whales. Evidently, he remained unrepentant to the end -- after touring the Belsen concentration camp immediately after the war, in June 1945, his only comment -- a truly breathtaking example of moral equivalency -- was that “What the Germans had done to the Jew in Europe, we are doing to the Jap in the Pacific.” He later asserted that the Postwar Communist takeover of Eastern Europe proved that his views were right. He died, a fallen idol, virtually unnoticed in August 1974.
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Treacherous Patriots ll: Henry Ford

A note from Radarsite. Treacherous patriots. As we have seen in the previous Radarsite article Fallen Eagle, the line between patriotism and treason is not always easily defined. Some of America's greatest sons and daughters have gone from internationally respected, indeed, almost mythical figures to discredited celebrities. Two of these monumental figures were contemporaries who knew one another and actually became close personal friends. We have been introduced to one of them, Charles "Lucky Lindy" Lindberg. His friend and comrade, Henry Ford, was a whole other kettle of fish. -rg
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The son of Irish immigrants, William and Mary Ford, who had settled on a farm in what is now Dearborn, Michigan, Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company and the “father of the modern assembly line used in mass production” was born on July 30, 1863. He quickly discovered that farm work, and the education provided by the local one-room schoolhouse was not for him. When his beloved mother died in 1876 he was devastated. Although his father expected him to eventually take over the farm, young Henry had other ideas. With his mother gone, little remained to keep him on the farm. He later said, “I never had any particular love for the farm. It was the mother on the farm I loved”. He left home in 1879 and walked to the nearby city of Detroit, where he found work as an apprentice machinist. A couple of years later, he was hired by Westinghouse to service their steam engines. In 1891, Ford became an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, and after his promotion to Chief Engineer in 1893, he had enough time and money to devote attention to his experiments on gasoline engines. These experiments culminated in 1896 with the completion of his own self-propelled vehicle, which he named the Quadricycle. After this initial success, Ford organized a group of investors and formed the Detroit Automobile Company. Although this company soon went bankrupt, Ford never gave up the pursuit of his vision and seven years later, in 1903, at the age of 40, together with 11 other investors (whom he eventually bought out) he formed the Ford Motor Company. In October of 1908, he introduced the Model T which quickly became an enormous success, and helped to change the culture of America.

An intriguing mixture of “global vision” and small-town narrow-mindedness, Ford was undoubtedly a natural engineering genius and a shrewd, far-sighted businessman. He was also an unapologetic racist and bigot, who was increasingly becoming a crackpot conspiracy-theorist -- he stated publicly that the sinking of the Lusitania* was a hoax perpetrated by a cartel of international bankers (obviously, referring to the Jews) in order to bring the United States into the First World War.

Although an ardent pacifist in World War I, his moral scruples did not interfere with his ability to make huge profits from both wars, by turning his company into a major producer of war materials in both World War I and World War II. Ford astonished the business world in 1914 by offering a $5 a day wage that more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. The controversial move, which he referred to as the ‘wage motive’, proved hugely profitable, reducing the constant turnover of employees and, by bringing in the best mechanics and workers, greatly improving productivity. Ford’s philosophy was one of “economic independence for the United States”. He pushed for the global expansion of his company, believing that international trade and cooperation led to international peace -- a belief shared by President Herbert Hoover and the Commerce Department.

In 1911, he opened his first plants in Canada and Britain. In 1912, he cooperated with Fiat to launch the first Italian automotive assembly plants. The first plants in Germany were built in the 1920s, followed by the opening of plants in Australia, India, and France. By 1929, he had successful dealerships on six continents. His innovative business concepts and practices, which had come to be known as ‘Fordism’, were associated with successful American capitalism and were greatly admired throughout Europe, especially in Germany -- where, as we shall see, his social views would also gain enthusiastic support.

In today’s jargon, Henry Ford would be described as a ‘control freak’ -- just one personality trait among many (arrogance, stubbornness, authoritarianism, pro-Fascist and anti-Semitic beliefs), that he shared with his contemporary and good friend, Charles Lindberg. He was a pioneer of “welfare capitalism” designed to improve the lot of his workers and thereby reduce turnover. However, in order to receive these benefits, employees had to meet certain strict requirements. To this end, Ford ran his company with an iron fist, attempting to control almost every aspect of his worker’s lives, insisting that they live up to his (somewhat rigid and provincial) standards of personal conduct. He frowned on heavy drinking and gambling. To insure that his employees maintained this high level of morality, he created the “Sociological Department”, which employed 150 investigators and support staff to keep an eye on the behavior of his workers. Adamantly anti-union, he promoted Harry Bennett, a former Navy boxer to head the newly-formed (and innocuously named) Service Department, whose primary mission was to quash union organizing -- by any means deemed necessary.

Despite his paternalistic authoritarianism, Ford had no difficulty in finding, and keeping, first-rate workers; and the Ford Motor Company continued to grow and prosper. However, it was not his company policies that thrust him into the center of worldwide controversy, nor his often violent union-busting tactics, nor his heavy-handed Puritanism -- it was, rather, his vicious, relentless, and increasingly outspoken rabid brand of anti-Semitism. In 1918, Ford’s closest aide and private secretary, the anti-Semite Ernest Liebold, purchased an obscure weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, so that Ford could spread his views. The Independent ran for eight years, from 1920 until 1927 (when a lawsuit brought by San Francisco lawyer and Jewish farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro forced Ford to close the paper). The newspaper published the complete (previously discussed) “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”, along with innumerable anti-Semitic articles, which in the 1920s were bound together into a set of four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem. They were widely distributed and had great influence, especially in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler, himself, read and admired them, and hung Ford’s photograph on his wall. Of Ford, he wrote, glowingly, in Mein Kampf, “Every year makes them [the Jews] more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence”.

In 1938, the German consul at Cleveland gave Ford the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle. Although, forced to publically recant his views in response to a Jewish and liberal Christian boycott of Ford products in 1927, he never ceased disseminating his vitriolic anti-Semitic rants. In 1940, Ford told The Manchester Guardian that “international Jewish bankers” were responsible for World War II.

In 1936, Ford created the Ford Foundation, whose broad mandate was to promote human welfare. By clever manipulation of his company’s stock, he assured that control of the Ford Motor Company would remain forever in the hands of the Ford family. As senility set in, Henry Ford was gradually eased out of the presidency of the company, and eventually, in 1945, he ceded control of the company to his grandson Henry Ford II. He died in April, 1947 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 83 in his Dearborn Estate, and is buried in the Ford Cemetery in Detroit.

According to his biographer Robert Lacey, “no American contributed as much to the evils of Nazism as Henry Ford”. Regardless of public opinion, Henry Ford, like his famous compatriot Charles Lindberg, remained an unapologetic life-long anti-Semite. However, the rural communities from which he came, and with which he had so proudly associated himself throughout his lifetime, still largely admired and believed in him. In the Independent he had championed the ‘common people’ who lived in the small towns or in the country, and who made up two-thirds of his readership. They were, he claimed, the “true Americans” -- “When we stand up and sing ‘My country, ‘tis of thee’”, an early article in the Independent noted, “We seldom think of the city”.

These two men, these two colossal icons of their time, so different from one another, yet so much alike that they became lifelong friends and shared a sincere affection for each other, embodied all that was great and all that was not so great of the American character. Bold, independent, courageous and innovative, they were the very epitome of the creative American spirit. Unfortunately, they also shared those petty, unattractive flaws of small town provincialism: an insular, unquestioned self-righteousness coupled with an inherent distrust of strangers, which has traditionally made the ‘common people’ -- not just in America, but all over the world -- uniquely vulnerable to the siren songs of innumerable religious cultists and political demagogues.

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

A note from Radarsite: In our free and open society that crucial line between dissent and treason has always been controversial and difficult to clearly delineate. It has been constantly challenged and redefined. Above all else, we Americans value our liberty, and of all the liberties we cherish, none is more precious to us than our Freedom of Speech. We will passionately defend our Constitutionally guaranteed right of Freedom of Speech against all threats.

However, during a time of war these issues become increasingly more complicated. Often we have found it not only necessary, but absolutely imperative to temporarily abrogate some of our freedoms for the sake of our national security.

If exercising our Freedom of Speech actually puts our nation in greater peril, if exercising our Freedom of Speech actually benefits our enemies, then we must redefine the lines. At what point, we must ask ourselves, does legitimate protest against American involvement in foreign affairs become an act of aiding and abetting the enemy? At what point does anti-American rhetoric become seditious? And, perhaps most importantly, we must always be certain to understand the underlying motives of our dissenters, or their leaders. Are they honestly concerned for America's future? Or are they driven by some deeper, more malign interest? And, what is even more problematic, are they, despite their good intentions, merely being used as pawns by our enemies, merely playing the role of "useful idiots"?

Perhaps the most important and revealing information on this subject was the 1995 release of the shocking Venona transcripts. Finally, in their own words, we learned that everything we had been told about the Soviet Union's so-called "Domino Theory" was absolutely correct. And Korea and Vietnam were considered by the Soviets to be essential and strategic dominoes in their goal of ultimate world hegemony. Anything they could do to discredit and diminish our involvement in Vietnam helped to achieve this overall strategic purpose. Here once again, they found willing accomplices in the passionately pacifistic but woefully naive American left.

"The leadership of the anti-war movement was hijacked very early by hard-line communists whose motivation was not a desire for peace, but hatred of America." Venona transcripts

Now, once again we find ourselves in the midst of an unpopular and controversial war. And once again, our precious freedoms are being challenged.

Once again Americans have taken to the streets to protest our involvement in foreign affairs. And once again we are having to redefine that crucial but illusive line between dissent and treason.

Once again, the violent pacifists are on the march.

Where are we to draw the line this time? How do we know when that line has been crossed? When does the exercise of free speech become overt sedition?

In short, how are we to define treason?

There have been many Charles Lindberghs since the days of the German-American Bund and the America First Committee.

There have been many treacherous partriots who have more closely indentified with our mortal enemies than with their own country.

It is past time for us to look closely at our present circumstances. To redefine our perimeters of patriotism and dissent. It is not patriotic to be blind to our enemies. It is not patriotic to seek to undermine the moral foundations of this great nation of ours while she is in mortal peril. As difficult as it may be, we must somehow find the courage to face down the dissenters and redefine the lines.

But then again, perhaps it won't be as difficult as it seems. Perhaps it's just a matter of willpower and common sense. Perhaps as a Supreme Court justice once said of pornography, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. - rg

Venona transcripts:
http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2002_01/browne-cold_war.html

Serpents in the Nest: CAIR and the German-American Bund

2009-01-31T11:29:00.003-08:00

Pro-Nazi German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden. New York, United States, February 20, 1939.

Fritz Kuhn, head of the antisemitic and pro-Nazi German American Bund, speaks at a rally. United States, between 1936 and 1939.

What exactly was the German American Bund?

The German American Bund, an organization of ethnic Germans living in the United States, was marked by a pro-Nazi stance. Aside from its admiration for Adolf Hitler and the achievements of Nazi Germany, the German American Bund program included antisemitism, strong anti-Communist sentiments, and the demand that the United States remain neutral in the approaching European conflict. Public opinion surveys of 1939 show that Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German American Bund, was seen by the U.S. public as the leading antisemite in the country.

Actual membership figures for the German American Bund are not known with certainty, but reliable estimates place membership at 25,000 dues-paying members, including some 8,000 uniformed Sturmabteilungen (SA), more commonly known as Storm Troopers.

The German American Bund carried out active propaganda for its causes, published magazines and brochures, organized demonstrations, and maintained a number of youth camps run like Hitler Youth camps.

German American Bund activities often led to clashes--even street battles--with other groups, most notably with Jewish veterans of World War I. A February 1939 rally was held on George Washington's birthday to proclaim the rights of white gentiles, the "true patriots." This Madison Square Garden rally drew a crowd of 20,000 who consistently booed President Franklin D. Roosevelt and chanted the Nazi salutation "Heil Hitler."

The German American Bund closely cooperated with the "Christian Front" organized by the antisemitic priest Father Charles Coughlin. The activities of the German American Bund led both Jewish and non-Jewish congressional representatives to demand that it be investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee chaired by Martin Dies. The Committee hearings, held in 1939, showed clear evidence of German American Bund ties to the Nazi government.

Shortly thereafter, Kuhn was convicted of embezzling funds from the organization and was sentenced to prison. In the following years, a number of other German American Bund leaders were interned as dangerous aliens, and others were jailed for various offenses. By 1941 the membership of the organization had waned. After the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the U.S. government outlawed the German American Bund.

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And what exactly is CAIR?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a civil liberties and advocacy group for Muslims in North America that was created in June 1994; its professed goals are to enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice and empower American Muslims." In its work, the group has been a party to lawsuits, testified before the United States Congress, and met with President George W. Bush.

Critics say that the organization and its leadership have ties to Islamic terrorist organizations and ideologies. CAIR responds by calling the accusations "urban legends", and says that its detractors represent "the extremes in our society".

· CAIR’s lineage goes back to a key Hamas leader (Musa Abu Marzook), and that CAIR has long been connected with, and “exploited” the 9/11 attacks to raise money for the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas front group.

· CAIR is heavily supported, financially and otherwise, by suspect Saudi and UAE-based individuals and groups.

· CAIR states that the U.S. judicial system has been “kidnapped by Israeli interests,” and claims that anti-terror law enforcement action against the Holy Land Foundation was “an anti-Muslim witch hunt” promoted by “the pro-Israel lobby in America.”

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

A note from Radarsite: Overtly supporting and showing allegiance to a foreign government or entity, actively proselytizing and recruiting new members, vehemently antiwar, virulently antisemitic, actively carrying out propaganda for its causes, publishing magazines and brochures, organizing demonstrations, and ultimately seeking world hegemony. These are just a few of the parallels between the German American Bund and CAIR. There are, of course, many more.

Unfortunately, one of the most glaring differences between these two seditious organizations is that almost immediately after America went to war in 1941 the U.S. Government outlawed the Bund, whereupon it quickly dissipated and eventually disappeared completely from the American scene. Furthermore, those vociferously pro-German, anti-war Americans, or groups of Americans, such as The America First Committee, quietly and unobtrusively exited the stage after hostilities began.

Incredibly, however, seven years after 9/11 CAIR is still with us, still filing complaints and threatening law suits, still warmly welcomed by our gullible MSM, loudly condemning the latest alleged anti-Muslim atrocities, still advising our governmental agencies and our major corporations on Muslim /American relations, still fighting their phony war against that ludicrous straw man of 'anti-Muslim backlash'.

Remarkably, ingeniously, despite having been labeled by prosecutors as "unindicted co-conspirators" in connection with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, despite the startling revelations made by respected investigative journalists and authors, such as Steve Emerson, Robert Spencer et al, and despite the further indictments of eleven more CAIR officials, bringing the new total to fourteen, this gang of Islamic thugs still remain free to do their devil's work, seemingly immune to our occasional outbursts of impotent outrage.

Consider this sentence:

"German American Bund activities often led to clashes--even street battles--with other groups, most notably with Jewish veterans of World War I..."

And this recent headline:

SPARKS FLY BETWEEN JEWS AND MUSLIMS IN TORONTO

JDL Stages Demonstration at Arab Federation Building

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Defiant chants of "Condemn Muslim Terrorism Now" and "Jewish Blood Is Not Cheap" could be heard in streets of downtown Toronto, on Thursday afternoon, July 31st, as 30 members of Toronto's Jewish Defense League staged an angry demonstration in front of the offices of the Canadian Arab Federation.

Perhaps there is no single quote which more succinctly expresses the continuing success that CAIR has undoubtedly enjoyed in pulling the wool over our collective eyes than this credulous entry in Wikepedia:

"The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a civil liberties and advocacy group for Muslims in North America".

It should be obvious by now that CAIR is no less of a danger to us today than the German American Bund was to us in 1941. It should be equally obvious that CAIR must be completely and totally expunged from our vulnerable American society. But in order for us to achieve this absolutely crucial objective we must harden our hearts against compromise and appeasement. We must somehow find the strength to acknowledge these irrefutable truths and find the courage to act on them. And -- perhaps the most difficult challenge of all -- we must confront those amongst us who still believe in the fundamental goodness of serpents. - rg

----------------------------------------------------
CAIR sources:

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2008/08/sparks-fly-between-jews-and-muslims-in-toronto---jdl-stages-demonstration-at-arab-federation-building.html
http://www3.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jun/11/20070611-034232-5919r/

http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2005/07/the_american_is.html

http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/08/cair_identified_by_the_fbi_as.php

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/

Bund sources :http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005684

Hollywood and the Jews: Understanding Hollywood's Historic Left Turn

2009-01-31T11:25:00.000-08:00

A note from Radarsite: Why do so many Jews vote Democratic? Recently, in response to Gary Fouse's explosive reports on antisemitism at UC Irvine, and some other related articles, this question came up. And it is a good one. Why are so many American Jews so avowedly left-wing, even at the expense of supporting Israel? How can this be? How can American Jews align themselves with the pro-Arab, anti-Israel, Muslim-appeasing left? How could American Jews be so heavily involved in anti-American organizations like the outrageous ACLU? How did this happen?

While I certainly do not pretend to have any special expertise in this complicated and contentious subject, I have nonetheless given it a great deal of thought. Below I have posted a portion of a yet-to-be-completed book called "The Secret of Samson's Hair: Hollywood and the Demasculinization of America". The book is based on the assumption that a great deal of the way in which we perceive ourselves and this nation of ours has been formulated in the movies we have grown up with. And it quickly becomes apparent that we cannot discuss this subject without at least beginning to understand the pivotal role of the Jews in Hollywood.
I hope that in some small way this contributes to our understanding of this important question. - rg

In 1947, the newly reconstituted House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC)* announced its decision to come to Hollywood “to look at Communists throughout the film industry.”* That same year, then 38-year-old Elia Kazan offered up his (at the time) trenchant, Oscar-winning treatise on anti-Semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement, through which he sought to make two important and socially relevant points (both of which were true): that the Jews (who had virtually created Hollywood and still dominated all of the major studios) had also fought and died for their country, and that anti-Semitism was still alive and well in America. It was a valiant effort that, though it may have helped ameliorate some of the more blatant inequalities in American society, did not have the power to stave off the barely-concealed virulent anti-Semitism at the core of the coming political storm, nor indeed to save himself personally from the wreckage of its aftermath.

The grand concept of a pernicious and omnipotent Communist Soviet Jewry (Hitler’s favorite topic) was based on the supposition that there existed a disproportionate number of Jews in leadership positions within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.*

Until the onslaught of the Second World War, this assertion was basically valid (and, historically speaking, perfectly logical). With the collapse of the repressive, ultra-conservative, religiously orthodox (and traditionally anti-Semitic) Romanov dynasty, and the subsequent success of the March 1917 Revolution, the Russian Jews saw their main chance: to once and for all escape from their precarious, marginalized existence in Tsarist Russia, where for centuries they had lived under the continuous threat of periodic (and seemingly arbitrary) bloody pogroms. Now, for the first time in the long tortuous history of their continental Diaspora,* here, it seemed, was a fortuitous and unique opportunity to finally find their place in a secular (indeed, soon to be atheistic) society. From the Russian Jewish revolutionary Lev Davidovich Bronstein— who would later change his name to Leon Trotsky* and rise to become Lenin’s famous political partner (some would say mentor), eventually assuming the all-powerful mantle of Commissar of War—down through a whole cadre of regional commissars and local party functionaries, the Jews enthusiastically embraced their new Socialistic Utopia.

As history unfolded, many Russian Jews and Jews throughout Europe increasingly looked to the seemingly successful Soviet Union and to Communism as a bulwark against the emerging specter of Nationalistic (and violently anti-Semitic) Fascism—ironically, the fanatically atheistic U.S.S.R. would come to be seen by the Jews as their long-hoped-for “Promised Land.” Unfortunately, it would prove to be a monumental miscalculation with disastrous results.

For many Jews all over the world, the lessons of the horrors of the Holocaust—the greatest and most devastating anti-Semitic pogrom in history—were crystal clear: whatever hopes they might have for surviving in a world of these constantly reoccurring episodes of fervent right-wing Nationalistic risings (and the anti-Semitic purges that inevitably followed in their wake) resided in the victorious and ascendant Communist Party of the U.S.S.R. For better or for worse, they would place their fate in the Internationalistic Left for the foreseeable future. And, for some, that future included Hollywood.

Evidence of a strong and active Jewish component in Hollywood’s Communist Party in the late forties and early fifties is undeniable and unsurprising. However, to make the false syllogism, as some HUAC members most certainly did—most notably the rabid and outspoken anti-Semite John Rankin, D. Miss.—that a disproportionate representation of Jews in Hollywood’s executive offices (or for that matter in the media in general or the medical and legal professions throughout the U.S.) was somehow the result of the machinations of some nefarious group of caftaned Jewish Elders (as described in the famous but spurious Protocols of the Elders of Zion) was simply ridiculous and ignored the fundamental principles of meritocracy inherent in our democratic system (if you don’t produce, you don’t succeed). If it appeared to some members of HUAC (and anti-Semites almost everywhere) that Jewish moguls were running Hollywood (and they were), it was because they had brought with them to this country the determined and uncompromising work ethic of the poor immigrant; and because they were good at what they did; and, finally, because they understood the American public and what they wanted and they gave it to them. In short, if there were any conspiracies involved in the Jewish Experience in America, it was conspiracies to keep them out, not to help them assimilate and succeed.

Unfortunately, there would be one notorious exception to this reasonable premise: the highly-publicized and internationally controversial trials of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.* Accused of being part of a transatlantic spy ring, centered on Ethel’s brother David Greenglass who worked at the nuclear research station at Los Alamos, they were subsequently found guilty of passing on atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. In 1951, they were convicted of espionage against the United States and sentenced to death—David Greenglass, Ethel’s duplicitous brother, saved his life by turning witness for the prosecution. (Despite numerous appeals from many western European countries, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.) Later liberal revisionist arguments in support of the Rosenbergs: that the Russians would have gotten the bomb sooner or later anyway, hold as much moral weight as the murderer’s claim that his act wasn’t really a crime because the victim would have died eventually anyway.

It was this blatant betrayal of American trust by American Communist Jews, together with the rising death toll from Korea and the escalating tensions of the Cold War that formed the context in which these HUAC hearings must be seen. And it was in this poisonous atmosphere that the former Communist Party member and perhaps the greatest director of the era made his fateful decision to testify before HUAC as a so-called “friendly witness.” In a “closed executive session”—which HUAC later leaked to the press—Elia Kazan proceeded to denounce the Communist Party, which he had left long ago (Kazan had quit the Party in 1936 in protest of the Soviet’s treatment of their artists). Then, more importantly, in an act that would be described by some as abject cowardice and would remain unforgiven to this very day,* Kazan named names of old party members from the 1930s (who had previously been named), and confirmed for all time his role in history as the Black Judas of the innocent Hollywood Left -- whereupon he would get up from the witness chair and go out and create one of the most magnificent (supposedly self-justifying) opus magnuses in cinematic history:

On the Waterfront (1954), a great, timeless, heroic film whose anti-capitalist message (who was the real evil force behind John Friendly’s bullying union leader?) may have been just a touch too subtle for the House Committee on un-American Activities.

The Hollywoodized version of this turbulent era has proven to be an unqualified propaganda success, universally accepted as revealed truth. It had been, we were told, nothing less than Hollywood’s Holocaust, whose innocent victims had been banished --not to the ovens or the gas chambers, but to New York or London or that shadowy underworld of pseudonymous ghostwriters. In truth, it had proven to be a giant social turbine that generated dozens of self-serving revisionist autobiographies, numerous treacheries and obfuscations, a number of banishments and blown careers, a few actual jail sentences, many cowardly betrayals of friends and associates, and a few heroic stances.*

Only now are we just beginning to learn the whole unpleasant truth—that the House Committee on un-American Activities was, indeed, a pack of nasty, self-aggrandizing, mostly anti-Semitic, bullying politicians who were, for the most part, absolutely right. Were there Communists rampant in Hollywood in the forties and fifties? Since the 1930s almost every liberal creative intellectual in Hollywood or New York or London either belonged to the Communist Party or had thought about joining it. From Henry Fonda’s Oscar winning (but absurdly long-winded and pompous) “I’ll be there...” speech at the end of John Ford’s classic version of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath (1940) to Hemingway’s romanticized (and unabashedly pro-Leftist) interpretation of the Spanish Civil War, it had become accepted intellectual gospel that the Left was right and the Right was wrong.

Hollywood’s traditional political position — Leftist (mostly Democratic) opposition to Capitalist (mostly, but not always, Republican) governments, though temporarily suspended during the astounding Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1938, can be traced back to at least the early 1930s when active far-left pro-Communist groups and guilds flourished under the protective umbrella of the seemingly benign “Popular Fronts.”

However, as this discussion has already stretched the confines of our usual format -- and perhaps the patience of our loyal readers -- we will have to continue this at some later time. - rg

Notes:

-- “…HUAC”: For this quote and much of the history of this tumultuous period I am indebted to Ronald and Allis Radosh’s Red Star Over Hollywood (Encounter Books 2005)

-- “…throughout the film industry”: See above.

-- “…of the Soviet Union”: “For an anti-Semite with a desire to find a scapegoat, there was a simple explanation. It was all the fault of the Jews. In Moscow, Trotsky the Jew directing revolution with his fellow Communist leaders Zinoviev and Kamenev. In Hungary, Bela Kun the Jew setting up his Soviet Republic with Jews serving as eight of his eleven commissars. In Berlin, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In Munich, where he had seen the revolution at first hand, Eisner, Toller, Landauer, Levine, and Levien. Jews, Jews. They were the ones. All Marxists. Jews were Marxists, and Marxists were Jews. The left, which had stabbed in the back the brave men fighting at the front, was an international Jewish conspiracy, started by the Jew Karl Marx, whom Germany had foolishly nurtured and educated. It had all been done by Jews.” -- Hitler’s “Jewish stab-in-the-back theory”. Hitler: The Path to Power Charles Bracelen Flood (Houghton Mifflin 1989), p.62

-- “…their continental Diaspora”: A partial list of the persecutions of the Jews of Europe would include: Dagobert’s expulsion of the Jews from Gaul in 626 A.D.; Edward I’s expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290; their expulsion from France and the confiscation of all their property by Phillip VI in 1306; in 1479, the Spanish Inquisition began and the Jews were persecuted there until 1492 -- they were finally expelled from Spain completely in 1509; the Jews were persecuted in Germany and their writings burned in 1650; the Jews were persecuted in Poland in the years between 1740 and 1786; the Jews were persecuted in Prussia under Frederick the Great (r. 1740-1786) who imposed special taxes on them and ordered their exclusion from the professions; in 1881-1904, the Jews in Russia (as previously discussed) were victims of innumerable (mostly religiously-inspired) pogroms and government sponsored massacres under the so-called “Russification” measures -- in just one week the Tsar’s notorious “Black Hundreds” killed more than 3,000 Jews; in 1894, anti-Semitism appeared rampant in France, culminating in the infamous Dreyfus case; later, anti-Semitism in Germany flourished openly under Lueger. The monumental slaughter of Jews in our own time is of course a matter of record.

-- “…Leon Trotsky”: It is indicative of the criminality of the Soviet regime that all three of its “Founding Fathers” used aliases. In addition to the aforementioned Trotsky, Vladimir Illich Ulyanov had at least a half-dozen pseudonyms before eventually choosing the name of “Lenin”; and our friendly “Uncle Joe” began life as Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili; he then used the rather undistinguished alias “Koba” for a time, before finally settling on his sexy new moniker “Stalin” (man of steel). Nor were these merely harmless non-de-plumes used to protect otherwise innocent political dissenters. In Stalin’s case, in particular, he was known by the Tsarist police to be a dangerous criminal with a long “rap sheet” -- for everything from general hooliganism to bank robbery. It would be fascinating to contemplate how the course of American history might have been altered if, say, Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton had had similar backgrounds.
For Lenin: Lenin Robert Service (Macmillan 2000).
For Stalin: Stalin -- And the shaping of the Soviet Union Alex de Jonge (William Morrow 1986); also: Stalin -- The Court of the Red Tsar Simon Sebag Montefiore (Alfred A. Knopf 2003).

-- “…Julius and Ethel Rosenberg”: It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact on the 1950s American public of the Rosenberg trials. One could, perhaps, equate them with the O. J. Simpson trial of 1995, except that, beyond their enormous local notoriety, the Rosenberg trials had truly international significance -- the Internationalistic Left vs. the primarily American Conservative Right. Coming, as it did, on the heels of the highly-publicized and controversial Alger Hiss case, and the lesser known but undoubtedly more damaging British/American Klaus Fuchs/Harry Gold espionage trial, the Rosenberg affair shocked a generally complacent American public by the exposure of an actual American Communist spy network operating here on our own soil. However, even after their final sentencing and execution in 1953, the (unquestionably guilty)* Rosenbergs continued generating endless debate, and for the rest of the century they remained (for the left) unassailable symbols of martyrdom for the righteous causes of the glorious Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.

-- “…to this very day”: “…in 1999...the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally voted to give director Elia Kazan its “Lifetime Achievement” award. Kazan was then in his late eighties and in poor health…when the aging director approached the podium [to accept the award]…a group of Hollywood’s finest -- including Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, David Geffen, Sherry Lansing and Richard Dreyfus -- sat stonily while others gave a standing ovation…This rejectionism, not Kazan’s artistic and personal achievement became the star of the night”. Red Star Over Hollywood, p.239-40

-- “…a few heroic stances”: Some celebs went on to make a virtual career of their supposed heroic stances before HUAC -- most notably the coarse, outspoken and ever self-promoting author and playwright Lillian Hellman (1905-1984). See above.

The Shameful Patriot

2009-01-31T11:21:00.000-08:00

A note from Radarsite:
Warning: The following article is unfair and unbalanced.
If you are looking for a gentlemanly debate on the morality of America, or on the moral justification of American national or foreign policy you should probably stop right here. There are a great number of sites out there that will be more than happy to accomodate you. But this isn't one of them.

Our mission here is simple, clear and unequivocal: we support our great nation. This means that whatever we do here on these pages is done to promote the cause of American victory in this great Clash of Civilizations which we call the Global War on Terror. We love our country. We do not devote all of our talents and energies seeking to undermine her credibility. We do not seek to discredit, dishonor or embarrass her. We will do everything in our power to honor and strengthen her.

Our obvious enemies, the blood-soaked Islamists, the relentless Communists, and this world's brutal petty potentates are generally clear and open in their statements of hatred; there is little that is ambiguous about their opinions of us, or their intentions toward us. Their mission, too, is simple, clear and unequivocal: they wish to destroy us or subjugate us.

But we have other, perhaps even more dangerous enemies, enemies who live amongst us; indeed they are us. They are that part of us who hates us. They are the Treacherous Patriots. You know who they are. They are our friendly next door neighbors and our good-hearted relatives, they are are children's school teacher or perhaps the young girl at the supermarket checkout counter. Above all, they will tell you, they are all patriotic Americans, loyal Americans who sincerely believe that somehow by burning our flag they will save our country. They eagerly remind us daily of our supposed misdeeds, our long, self-centered, ruthless history of oppression of the weak and powerless of this world. They love America so much that they are willing to see us defeated in order to change our misbegotten ways. They thoroughly believe in their mission, too; they thoroughly believe that they know better. You see, they have the inside scoop. They've read the articles and listened to their professors. They watch tv and they know the score. They will not be misled by war-mongering racists or xenophobic right-wing Christian zealots.

To support their bleak assessment of America they patiently sift through the detritus of our shameful history, searching for the incontrovertible evidence of our manifest crimes. They are convinced that the only way to heal these grievous self-inflicted wounds is to heed the admonishments of our enemies. We must, they say, be willing to learn from our adversaries, and, most importantly, we must be willing to learn from our own past mistakes. That great long litany of dreadful mistakes which comprise the awful history or this flawed nation. We must learn from the unmitigated and unnecessary horrors of our Hiroshimas and Nagasakis, from our murderous Vietnams and Kent States. We must learn from our horrific ethnic cleansing of our noble Native Americans and the brutal enslavement and continuing subjugation of our down-trodden African-Americans.

Perhaps, they are willing to concede, we were noble once, perhaps long ago, but not lately. Certainly not now. Whatever we started out to be, somewhere along the way we lost our bearings and now we have become the enemy of the world. The oppressor of mankind. The Great Satan.

They are proud of their enlightenment and eager to share it with us. Here is one of them now:

I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?

The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty. Beyond being wrong, it just isn't very smart. We all agree that slavery in this country was wrong; as was the decimation of the Native American populations. We all agree that the Holocaust and several other acts of genocide in the twentieth century were wrong. So when will we finally admit that American military intervention in the Middle East is wrong as well?

So, there you have it. The voice of the Treacherous Patriot. This is their grave message to America: You were wrong when you woke up in the morning, and it's been going downhill since then. Not quite hopeless, though, not quite yet. There's still time to change our ways, still time to heed their dire warnings. There's still November. There's still that Change we can believe in.

I don't know about you, but I cannot, I will not tolerate this pompous and ignorant bulls**t any longer. I will ignore it, I will delete it, but I will not debate it. I will no longer just agree to disagree with them. I will no longer allow these saboteurs a place at my table. This is the enemy within. This is the deliberate and shameless perfidy of the Treacherous Patriot.

The Thirty Years War: Iran's Uninterrupted War Against America

2009-01-31T11:16:00.001-08:00

Cross posted from ACT
http://www.actforamerica.org/

This is a revealing look into the mindset of the militant leaders of Iran – and their views of the West. They are convinced America does not have the political will to do what is necessary to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. What’s more, past attempts at “dialogue” have only emboldened President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullahs.

Interestingly, as noted in the commentary below, the one action that did cause Iran to suspend part of its nuclear program was our invasion of Iraq. Those who understand that the militant Muslim world respects strength and power are not surprised by this.

Iran cannot be allowed to complete the building of nuclear weapons. An Iran with nuclear weapons is simply unthinkable and unacceptable.

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

BOMBS AWAY

WHY THE US POLICY ISN'T WORKING - AND IRAN WILL GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Why Iran Will Get Nuclear Weapons

June 15, 2008 --

"Hit us and we shall hit you ten times harder!" This is how General Muhammad-Ali Jaafari, the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) has responded to speculation about a possible attack by the United States and/or Israel on Iran's nuclear installations.

Jaafari replaced General Yahya Safavi last year after the latter made a speech in which he implicitly warned the mullahs that Iran's military was not ready for war against far more powerful enemies.

Those familiar with Iranian military capabilities know that it is Safavi's sober assessment, and not Jaafari's bluster, that reflects the true situation.

The problem is that Jaafari can make his claim because he, and his political masters in Tehran, are convinced there would be no military action against their regime.

In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the then newly-minted President of the Islamic Republic and darling of the IRGC, unveiled a strategy based on the assumption that once George W. Bush is out of the White House, the United States would bite the bullet and accept a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic as "regional superpower" in the Middle East.

Two events convinced Ahmadinejad that his strategy was correct:

The first came in May 2006 when the Bush administration, then at the nadir of its unpopularity because of the situation in Iraq, joined the line of supplicant Europeans begging Tehran to negotiate a deal.

That unexpected shift in Washington's policy produced the opposite effect.

Far from persuading Ahamdinejad that this was a good time to defuse the situation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's attempt at nuance and multilateral diplomacy convinced Tehran that the Americans had blinked.

The second event that confirmed Ahmadinejad's belief that "America cannot do a damn thing" came with last year's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Using a language of obfuscation, the NIE claimed that Tehran had abandoned key aspect of its nuclear program in 2003. The NIE undermined the whole case brought by the International Atomic Energy Agency against the Islamic Republic.

Whatever one might say about Ahmadinejad, one thing is certain: he plays an open hand. He is convinced that the US does not have the stomach for a fight and that Bush is the last American president to even dream of pre-emptive war.

He thinks the dominant mood in the US, and the West in general, is one of pre-emptive surrender.

Ahmadinejad may well be right: there is not going to be any war against the Islamic Republic.

Here is why: as soon as there are tangible moves, not just threats, leaked through The New Yorker's investigative reporters, that could threaten the existence of he Khomeinist regime, Tehran will announce a temporary suspension of its uranium enrichment program in accordance with three United Nations' Security Council resolutions.

Such an announcement will instantly defuse the situation, break the diplomatic coalition created by Bush, and, possibly, even inspire Nancy Pelosi to praise Ahmadinejad as a man of peace. To launch a war against Iran in such a situation would become politically impossible, even if John McCain is president.

A temporary suspension would not undermine Iran's plans to build a "nuclear surge capacity" - that is to say producing all that is needed for making atomic warheads without actually manufacturing bombs. Iranians, inspired by 3,000 years of history, know the value of patience. They are not in a hurry. They know that weaving a Persian carpet sometimes takes years.

In 2003, Iran did announce a suspension of its uranium program. Now, however, we know that even during that suspension, Tehran was working on other aspects of its nuclear project.

This time, the regime might accept another temporary suspension only if its own survival is at stake.

Taking measures that might hurt the people of Iran won't do the trick. The mullahs are as concerned about the welfare of their people as Saddam Hussein was about that of the Iraqis and Robert Mugabe is of the Zimbabweans. Sanctions already imposed by the UN make life more difficult for the average Iranian but have little effect on the regime.

This means that the Islamic Republic will not, indeed cannot, offer any concessions unless faced with the prospect of regime change.

Ahmadinejad has said as much, albeit in different words.

He has castigated his predecessor Muhammad Khatami for accepting suspension in 2003 when the regime was not in danger. Khatami says he did so because at the time, shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he feared that the Americans might make a right turn and march on Tehran as well.

In other words, it was fear of regime change that persuaded the mullahs to accept suspension five years ago. As soon as that fear was gone and Bush appeared to be headed for a political lynching in his own country, the program was resumed at an even faster pace.

The way Western politicians talk about it, one gets the impression that the Iranian nuclear issue is a quirk of the mullahs that could be fixed with the threat of sticks and promise of carrots. It is not.

The Iranian nuclear issue has three layers.

The first concerns the power struggle in Tehran. Ahmadinejad has built his macho image on this issue. If he backs down he will be politically dead.

The second layer concerns the regime's strategy for hegemony in the Middle East. The Islamic Republic needs tactical "nuclear parity" to guarantee it won't be attacked with nuclear weapons as it proceeds to drive the Americans out of the Middle East, help destroy Israel as a Jewish state, and impose Khomeinism on the Arabs in the name of Islamic unity.

The third layer concerns the regime's ambitions, spelled out by Ahmadinejad and others, to create an international coalition to challenge the global system dominated by the United States.

Ahmadinejad has already promised anti-American regimes in Latin America "full support and protection" against the "Great Satan" in Washington. Iran is already laying the foundations for an armaments industry in Venezuela. One day a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic may extend its nuclear umbrella to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador and, why not, even Cuba.

The Islamic Republic has been at war against the United States and the international system it leads for almost 30 years. This has been a low intensity war because the US and its allies have shied away from full-scale confrontation. The US has shown it has lots of power but not the courage to use even a fraction of it. The Islamic Republic's power, on the other hand, is "tiny," as Senator Barack Obama has noted. But the mullahs have been prepared to use that "tiny" power in full, with already devastating effects.

The issue is not how to avoid war with the Islamic Republic. It is how to end a war that has been going on for almost 30 years.

As in all wars there are three ways to end this one: surrender, make a deal, or win.

A note from Radarsite: This is perhaps the clearest, most concise analysis of the evolving Iranian threat we have yet to come across. "Surrender, make a deal, or win" -- these are our options. Is there really any choice? "An Iran with nuclear weapons is simply unthinkable and unacceptable". I simply cannot believe that we -- the United States or Israel -- will allow Iran to go nuclear. One or the other of us will do what has to be done. And we will do it before November.

However, if I am wrong, if we cannot find the necessary will to act now while we still have a chance to contain this threat, if we prevaricate and procrastinate beyond that inevitable deadline, then, by God, we will justly deserve the righteous contempt of our adversaries, and must then resign ourselves to live with the consequences of our cowardice.

For more on this subject see:
- "Should We Bomb Iran?"
http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/05/should-we-bomb-iran.html

- "The Strong Horse and the Weak Horse: America and the Fall of the Roman Empire"
http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/05/strong-horse-and-weak-horse-jimmy.html

Being Polite in the Age of Terror

2009-01-31T11:12:00.001-08:00

Prior to 9/11... Prior to 9/11... I am having increasing difficulty remembering how things were for me prior to 9/11. Things have changed so much that that world now seems like some alien place to me, strange and faraway, almost as faraway as my ancient childhood. What did I do prior to 9/11? What did I think about prior to 9/11? What were my priorities? Who were my friends? How did I relate to my friends and acquaintances? How did they relate to me? Certainly our particular political leanings were at the very bottom of the list of our concerns. In retrospect, life seemed so much simpler then. My friends were my friends because they liked me and I liked them. That's all. Nothing very complicated there.

I had developed what I considered to be a fairly well-adjusted and complete persona, one which had taken me a lifetime to define. I was an artist and a writer and a student of history. I was relatively easy to get along with. I don't ever recall getting into an argument with anyone over Augustus' role in the degradation of the Republic, or Caracala's cynical decision to extend the franchise of Roman citizenship. I think I was just naturally polite, a result perhaps of that lapsed Quaker upbringing. All of my friends were just naturally polite. All of my friends were interesting people. I was interested in people who were interested in life, people who questioned things. I watched PBS and CNN and even MSNBC without any noticeable physical discomfort or sense of alarm. I hardly ever thought about Islam.

I once heard a cop say that if everyone had been brought up to be polite, he'd be out of a job. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Politeness is a sign of civility and common decency. It's impolite to lie, or to steal someone else's property, it is very impolite to murder and rape.

Prior to 9/11, there was a whole group of words that we were used to seeing together in the same context. They had become almost interchangeable: politeness and goodness; tolerance and understanding, kindness and generosity. We all wanted to be good, didn't we? I mean, I can't remember ever waking up in the morning and deciding to hurt as many people as I could that day. Like most of you, I'm sure, I wanted to incorporate those familiar words -- politeness, goodness, tolerance, kindness and generosity into my character as best as I could. Of course, I didn't always succeed, but I think I tried.

And now...

Things have gotten complicated, haven't they?

I can no longer watch PBS or CNN or especially MSNBC. Their blatant anti-Americanism makes me sick to my stomach. I am unsure of my new persona. I still have friends, but they are fewer in number, and their particular political leanings are now of the utmost importance. I am more wary of people and what they say. I am less interested in being polite and more interested in being truthful. I am no longer certain as to what being good means anymore. I see tolerance now as a potential enemy, an unthinking reaction that has put -- and is continuing to put -- our lives in jeopardy, a weakness that can be -- and is being -- effectively exploited by our enemies. Even those old unquestioned standbys, kindness and generosity have become suspect in this new and unfamiliar world. Are we being kind and generous by granting those murderous "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo almost the same Constitutional rights as any American citizen enjoys? Are we being kind and generous by refusing to profile Muslim men in our airports? Are we being kind and generous by allowing Muslims to build more and more mosques in this country and by acquiescing to their ceaseless and arrogant demands?

I'm afraid I have hardened. I am finding it increasingly difficult to play the game -- the politeness game. My life, all of our lives, are in terrible jeopardy and if you truly cannot -- or if you simply will not -- see this, then I can no longer just agree to disagree with you. The days of this friendly gentleman's agreement have long past. We are at war now. If you feel that it is your personal duty to try to undermine the moral foundation of this country of ours during this time of its greatest peril, I can no longer just agree to disagree with you. The lines have been drawn; they were drawn on 9/11.

There are, unfortunately, those among us who still believe in the inseparability of those comforting words: politeness and goodness; tolerance and understanding, kindness and generosity. Many of these people sincerely believe that all of the problems and all of the threats that we face today are our own fault, the results of our imperialistic racism and bigotry, and in Barrack Hussein Obama, they feel that they have found a way out of their collective guilt. They believe that he represents the personification of all of those lovely words. And they will proudly cast their votes for him this November and sleep soundly that night.

And we will be lost.

We are halfway there right now.

Useful Idiots: The Maddening Complacency of the Dhimmi

2009-01-31T11:09:00.001-08:00

A note from Radarsite: Occasionally we find a comment so disturbing and so revealing that it deserves more than just a simple reply in the comments section; it deserves an article. This is one of those occasions.
On June 4, 2008, Radarsite posted an original article "The Serpent is in the Nest: The Islamification of Dearborn, Michigan". It was subsequently sent to several other venues. The comments below represent the first response to this article from one of those websites.
The subject of the article -- the danger inherent in the Muslim immigration to the U.S. -- is a highly contentious one, and passionately opposing views were not unexpected. However, what makes these particular comments so infuriating isn't the fact that the author disagrees with the premise of the article, rather, it is that typical liberal smug, condescending tone that permeates their response. And, more importantly, it is the abysmal ignorance that underlies it.

Here, then again, is the basic argument, followed by the commenter's response, and a final word from Radarsite.

The Islamic Center of America

Dearborn, Michigan
Total Population 97,775
City Area 24.4 miles
Muslim Population 30,000
500,000 Muslims live in the entire Detroit Metro Area.
Population (By Ancestry):
Arab 30.0%
German 13.7%
Polish 11.8%
Irish 9.4%
English 6.7%
Italian 6.4%
----------------------------------

AMERICA'S ISLAMIZATION

CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants to see the United States become a Muslim country.

In 1970 there were an estimated one-hundred thousand Muslims in the United States. Today, a mere 34 years later, the number is approximately 7-10 million! More than a quarter of a million people of Arab descent live in southeastern Michigan, making the area the second-largest Arab community outside the Middle East (after Paris, France). One frightening example of their prolific growth in American is Dearborn, Michigan. Of a total population of 90,000 Dearborn residents, 25,000 are now Arabs! And of all the Dearborn children under the age of 18, a full 58% are Arab children! Other developing centers of Arab/Muslim growth are Florida, Texas, New Jersey and California. God Bless America!

Every year huge numbers of Arabs/Muslims from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwaitis, Syria, Egypt, Albania and dozens of other ethnic Muslim states who hate America swarm into the United States and add to the already increasing numbers of Arab/Muslim. And every year hundreds of mosques, which preach the extermination of all non-Muslims and the Islamization of America, are being added to the thousands already pointing their minarets skyward. Militant Islam is rapidly spreading its tentacles across America. One of the few Islamic moderates in this country, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, estimated that "extremists" have taken over 80% of the mosques in the US, nearly all funded by Saudi Arabia. These extremists are working single-mindedly to turn America into an Islamic state, with the Koran as its foundation.

Many mosques, "Islamic Learning Centers" and Arab/Muslim Student Unions are distributing large numbers of pamphlets and leaflets attacking Judaism, Christianity and other non-Muslim religions and urging young Americans (esp. angry black Americans) to convert to Islam! Not surprisingly, a large number of African-Americans convert to Islam while in the prison systems! The National Islamic Prison Foundation, which coordinates a campaign to convert inmates to Islam claim an average of 135,000 such conversions per year.

This is Islam

And this is Islam

And this...

And this...

These are our enemies

These are their symbols

And these are their words:

"This Is A War Of Destiny Between Infidelity And Islam."
(Text Of Bin Laden's Audio Message To Muslims In Iraq, Posted On Jihadist Websites, 12/28/04)

"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all!"Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists (1942)-- Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini

In 1996 and then again in 1998 Osama bin Laden issued two fatawa -- that Muslims should "kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw military forces from Islamic countries and withdraw support from Israel."

Bin Laden: "The Whole World Is Watching This War And The Two Adversaries; The Islamic Nation, On The One Hand, And The United States And Its Allies On The Other."

What is there in these simple, direct and unequivocal messages that remains obscure? What is there here that lends itself to misinterpretation? Could these undeniable experts be any less ambiguous in their pronouncements? This is, they tell us quite plainly, "a war between Infidelity and Islam", a war between "the Islamic Nation and the United States and its Allies." And, even more clearly, "Islam is not a religion of pacifists".

Yet we will not listen. We will not heed their warnings. We refuse to acknowledge the weight of their solemn words. Blinded by Hope, abandoned by Reason, we steadfastly refuse to understand their meaning.

From Blinded by Hope, Abandoned by Reason
http://radarsite.blogspot.com/2008/03/blinded-by-hope-abandoned-by-reason.html

These are the Dhimmis

DHIMMI: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

7th-21st century. The notion of Dhimmitude, originating in the 7th century, still applies today to non-Muslims under Islamic rule—whether Jews or Christians, whether in Saudi Arabia or in Sudan. Dhimmitude began in 628 CE when Mohammed and his forces conquered the Jewish oasis at Khaybar. They massacred many of the Jews and forced the rest to accept a pact ("Dhimma") which rendered them inferior to their Muslim conquerors. Over the centuries, the ideology of Dhimmitude expanded into a formal system of religious apartheid.

Institutionalized apartheid. In Shari’a law, there are official discriminations against the Dhimmi, such as the poll-tax or jizya. <>R>
No legal rights. Jews may not testify in court against a Muslim and have no legal right to dispute or challenge anything done to them by Muslims. There is no such thing as a Muslim raping a Jewish woman; there is no such thing as a Muslim murdering a Jew (at most, it can be manslaughter). In contrast, a Jew who strikes a Muslim is killed.

Humiliation and vulnerability. Jews and Christians had to walk around with badges or veils identifying them as Jews or Christians. The yellow star that Jews had wear in Nazi Germany did not originate in Europe. It was borrowed from the Muslim world where it was part of the apartheid system of Dhimmitude.

Conditional protection. The protection of the Dhimmi is withdrawn if the Dhimmi rebels against Islamic law, gives allegiance to non-Muslim power (such as Israel), refuses to pay the poll-tax, entices a Muslim from his faith, or harms a Muslim or his property. If the protection is lifted, jihad resumes. For example, Islamists in Egypt who pillage and kill the Copts do so because they no longer pay their poll-tax and therefore are no longer protected.
From Dhimmi.com

Here are the comments

Re: The Serpent is in the Nest: The Islamification of Dearborn, Michigan
Posted: Jun 5, 2008 7:48 PM

"So, in other words there's nothing to worry about. To fear the Islamification of Dearborn is just another sign of American Islamophobia. Right?"
Why, of course not. Already we have a bunch of other serious problems that we're trying to deal with...

The Italianification of Paramus, NJ;

The Irishification of Boston;

The Cubanification of Miami;

The Snowbirdification of Coral Gables;

The Amishification of Northern Pennsylvania;

The Chinification of San Francisco;
And I don't know what it is about those northern climes, but the
Bjornification of Duluth, Minn. ranks right up there. Why, do you know
that One in ten kids up there is now named Sven or Brigid?

The Irishification of part of my city is so bad that those damned Micks forced the city to put up a stoplight that has the green light over the red;
the only place in the country that has happened.

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

This, my friends is Dhimmitude in action. This is the unchanging liberal mindset. All cultures, and all peoples are the same. The immigration to the U. S of the Muslims represents no greater threat to our security than did the preceding immigration of the Poles or the Irish or the Chinese. All religions are basically the same and all are working for peace. To infer any special dangerous traits to the Muslim community is just a form of racism and intolerance.
The whole concept of the Islamist threat to America is nothing but a Republican ploy. 9/11 was an isolated event, a tragic anomaly, a senseless disastor, like a hurricane or a flood or a tornado. There is nothing is to be learned from the horrendous examples of Europe or Scandinavia or Britain.
Not only do our blinded liberals deny the threat to our Western civilization, but they work assiduously to obtruct our own efforts to combat the threats, and in so doing, have justifiably earned that ignoble label of collaborators.
One can only wonder which is the most dangerous: the obvious threats from our Islamist enemies who openly threaten our cultural survival, or the maddening complacency of the Dhimmis? -- rg

It's All About Us: The Dangers of Liberal Egocentrism

2009-01-31T11:06:00.001-08:00

Mort Kondracke Fox News

Sadly, as we observed on tonight's edition of Fox News (May 16, 2008), even that most likable and unusually rational liberal regular, Mort Kondracke, apparently suffers from that dangerously contagious congenital leftist affliction: liberal egocentrism.

In discussing Obama's now-disastrous remark about sitting down and talking with our enemies, such as our friendly Mr. Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah's charming Nasrallah, Kondracke revealed all the classic symptoms of this serious judgmental disorder. He spoke enthusiastically of Obama's opportunity to cash in on President Bush's obvious failures in foreign policy initiatives. In particular, he focused his criticism on Bush's fateful refusal to communicate with the likes of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Ill. Then -- and herein lies the core of the sickness -- he confidently attributed our lack of success in 'reining in' these tyrants to this lack of chat.

Why is this particular illness so dangerous to our national health? What's wrong with this idea?

Surprisingly perhaps, I'm not going to discuss the obvious fallacies involved in this historically discredited idea. Even though they themselves cite the Kennedy/Kruschev meeting as an example of this successful diplomacy. I won't bring up the fact that this was in reality a diplomatic disaster -- for us. At a time when our two competing military forces were almost at parity -- or, indeed, perhaps even more heavily weighted on the side of the Soviets -- all that this much-touted sitdown accomplished was to make us appear weaker in our enemy's eyes.

And, let us not forget for one moment, that they definitely were our enemy, an enemy determined to "bury" us. In what way did this pow-wow deter Kruschev? Did it deter him in his European aggressions? Or in his subsequent near-calamitous Caribbean adventures?

Likewise, I'll not bring up that shameful but somewhat shopworn specter of Chamberlain visiting Herr Hitler, hat in hand. I'll also avoid mentioning that awkward little historical fact that, as Hirohito's bombers were in the air on their way to Pearl Harbor, we were engaging the Japanese Diplomats in diplomatic niceties at our State Department. No, I'm not going to even go there. Despite the fact that these inglorious episodes -- and many others like them -- irrefutably prove the uselessness -- no, the utter insanity -- of negotiating with fanatical tyrants; this is not what this essay is about; this is a discussion of that eminently deadly and spreading leftist disease called Liberal Egocentrism.

OK, so just what is Liberal Egocentrism?

In a nutshell, it is simply a self-centered, myopic view of this world we live in. It is the unstated belief that all of the many complicated gears and levers of this world are powered by the enormous generator of our own omnipotent egos. We are the Prime Mover in this political universe. What happens or what doesn't happen is a direct result of our actions or our inactions. Although these fundamental principles are not written down in any document or manifesto, nonetheless, they are the primary governing principles of our liberal politicians.

Our friends and our enemies do not act according to their own agendas; but, in the skewered view of our Liberal Egocentics, they merely react to our agenda. According to this unspoken principle, we are the single most important factor in the global equation. An Ahmadinejad, or a Kim Jong Ill, or even an Osama bin Laden do not have a well-thought-out plan of their own, they are just waiting to see what we will do.

Having accepted the fact that we are the Prime Mover, then it necessarily follows that if things aren't moving in the direction we would like, then we must be doing something wrong. Ahmadinejad is acting the way he is because Bush didn't talk to him. Same with Castro, and Chavez and Kim Jong Ill and Putin and Nasrallah -- If we had just sat down with them for a few hours and talked...

My friends, every single one of these vicious brutes wants the same thing: power. Power and more power. Most are driven by their own monumental egos, some are also driven by horrific apocalyptic visions, straight out of Revelations. But each and every one of these bloody tyrants have their very own personal agenda, over which we hold little or no influence. To not understand this basic fact, to utterly ignore this undeniable truth, as our Liberal Egocentrics are presently doing, is putting our very lives in jeopardy -- in terrible jeopardy.

The Liberal Egocentrics have an untreatable deafness. They cannot hear contrary voices speak. Liberal Egocentrics are immune to the effects of logic and are blind to the light of reason. They refuse to understand that our friends -- and especially our enemies -- have ambitions and desires that have nothing whatsoever to do with them. That all of their empty rhetoric and their grandiose posturing have little or no effect on these actors. Our friend's and our enemy's intricate gears and levers are functioning quite well without the benefit of the power of their omnipotent egos.

In summation, to save ourselves, to save this wonderful but vulnerable nation, we must first defeat these delusional ideologues, these dangerous Liberal Egocentrics. We must pop their balloons and deflate their egos. We must learn how to listen to our enemies once again, we must learn to take them at their word. When they promise to destroy us, we cannot misunderstand or purposely manipulate their words. They are not promising to destroy us unless we sit down with them and talk. Our Liberal Egocentrics are hearing these comforting words, but our enemies are not speaking them.

Once again, we must fight the battles that are there, not the battles that we wish were there.

God help us to regain our strength and purpose. God help us to see this world clearly, and not through the distorted vision of our pacifist desires. - rg

The Strong Horse and the Weak Horse: America and the Fall of the Roman Empire

2009-01-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

Endorsed by Fox News at GOP Hub

"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."

Osama bin Laden

"Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain. I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming
home."

John McCain

It has become fashionable to draw parallels between the supposed misadventures of our “New American Imperialism” and the “Fall of the Roman Empire” -- a comparison that conveniently overlooks the fact that it took over a thousand years for the Roman Empire to ‘fall’. One of the most glaring inconsistencies of this comparison is that the Roman Empire was an unapologetically ruthless military power, which experienced no liberal pangs of guilt about its hard-won conquests. Indeed, to the typical Roman, who enthusiastically relished the daily bloody spectacles of the arena, the whole concept of having moral qualms about the manner in which they had acquired their vast Empire would be incomprehensible.

The Roman formula for conquering new provinces was fairly straight-forward. The Roman legions would simply annihilate any opposing force (no matter how long it took, or what it cost them in lives and treasure), systematically root out all remaining insurgents, and impose a locally administered Roman-style government, which would eventually build Roman-style buildings in which to conduct Roman-style business.

Once their territories were conquered, however, the Romans would govern them with a relatively light touch (despite a spate of anti-Roman, pro-Christian “biblical movies” produced in the 1950s -- usually starring the late Charlton Heston -- that invariably portrayed the Roman soldiers as sadistic brutes). So long as the local citizenry behaved according to the proscribed boundaries of the Roman model of civilization, adhered to the basic tenets of Roman jurisprudence, paid their taxes (which, for the most part, were considerably less than they had been paying under their previous rulers), and offered ceremonial homage to the Emperor once a year, the Roman attitude towards the local customs and religious practices was generally fair and unobtrusive.

However, Roman authorities would react swiftly and mercilessly to any perceived threat of dissent. In 146 B.C., in the city of Corinth, in the Roman protectorate of Greece, two Roman envoys were set upon by an unruly crowd of malcontents and were beaten up. The Roman response was quick and unequivocal.

The Senate dispatched the brutal Roman General Mummius who, with his four Legions, attacked the city of Corinth. He killed all of the men of military age, enslaved all of the remaining populace, burned the city to the ground and then, ceremoniously sowed salt on the earth so that nothing would ever grow there again.

An over-reaction? Perhaps. However, needless to say, after Corinth, anyone considering attacking a Roman citizen would, most likely, have serious second thoughts.

Indeed, if we are looking for parallels between our present-day American society and the Roman Empire, we need look no further than this episode of the two Roman ambassadors in Corinth, and compare the Roman reaction then to our government’s ignoble non-response to the plight of our helpless 70 American citizens who were held hostage for 444 days in the infamous 1979 Tehran Embassy takeover.

What then, if anything, can we learn from the history of the Romans?

First, when discussing the moral lessons symbolized by the 'Fall of the Roman Empire' we should perhaps consider how long it actually took to 'fall'. If one accepts the traditional date for the founding of Rome of 753 B. C., and the traditional date of the 'fall' of 476 A.D., then that means that the Roman civilization lasted for something like 1,200 years, while the actual process of the 'fall' arguably took about 300 years.

Transposing these figures onto America's timetable, this would mean that we might start losing ground around the year 2705, and could be in serious trouble by the year 3005. It seems to me that it would be a little difficult to realistically describe this 1200 year process as a 'fall'. I think it could better be described as a pretty big success story.

Additionally, this particular episode at Corinth occurred approximately 200 years before the Empire really reached it's peak, and, far from hindering the development of the Roman world, this incident, and many others like it, only served to strengthen its reputation and intimidate its potential rivals.

For 444 days, while our hapless President Jimmy Carter dithered and dallied with endless and empty diplomatic negotiations, our helpless 70 American citizens suffered the painful privations and unknown perils of their captivity. Only when a new president was sworn into office, an altogether different kind of man, whom they suspected might actually resort to force, were the hostages released.

These, then, are the lessons from Corinth in 146 B.C., and from Tehran in 1979 A. D. Somewhere between these two extreme reactions there is an eternal truth.

There are times when force is the only answer.

This now is our new enemy

These are his warriors

This is his ambition

And this is the threat

Will we be the Strong horse?

Or the Weak Horse?

Note from Radarsite: A large portion of this article was lifted from an earlier unpublished essay "America and the Fall of the Roman Empire". It would be remiss of me to reference this essay without acknowledging all of the help and good advice I received from my friend and first editor Marilyn A., who attempted -- with varying degrees of success -- to rein in my natural loquaciousness. I am still benefiting from her insightful suggestions. -- rg

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Elect Obama, Destroy America

2009-01-31T11:00:00.001-08:00

Elect Obama, Destroy America

Political hyperbole? Right-wing alarmist propaganda?

Consider this.

The Ruinous Bequests of the Sixties

Most protest movements begin as an organized expression of a legitimate grievance -- some perceived societal injustice, perhaps in response to actual governmental or judicial tyranny. If the timing is right and the issues resonate, successful protest movements can flourish and quickly grow into full-fledged revolutions, and revolutions can often degenerate into bloody civil wars.

Is America presently in the midst of such a potentially explosive scenario? Unfortunately, the signs appear to be more and more ominous. Since those traumatic events of September 11, 2001, this nation has been resolutely dividing itself into two increasingly hostile and irreconcilable camps. That reasonable 'middle ground', traditionally amenable to compromise, has been steadily shrinking until it has become all but hypothetical. It has been argued, not unconvincingly, that not since those anxious years in the mid-Nineteenth Century, prior to our perhaps inevitable, but monstrously destructive Civil War, has this great country been so split asunder.

Once again, the split is to be between Republican and Democrat, Right and Left, but this November's election will not be between the traditional Republican Right and the traditional Democratic Left; but rather between an ascendant but conflicted New Left, and a beleaguered and conflicted New Right. This New Age Democratic Party is torn between the Hillary Clinton Political New Left of old-style Democratic politics -- i.e., pro-labor, pro-big government, "One World", Socialistic agenda -- whose ultimate goal however appears to many to be primarily a personal return to political power, and the charismatic Barack Obama's Cultural New Left, an idealistic social movement, which views political power as simply a means to an end, the end being the implementation of sweeping cultural changes in our American society. Each in their own way are ideological products of the Sixties. But, as destructive as the victory of either candidate would ultimately be to our cherished American Dream, of the two, the prospects of an Obama presidency are by far the most alarming.

Despite his oft-repeated promises to "bring America together", by his own words and actions and revealing personal associations -- and that of his prospective First Lady -- for all of his undeniable charismatic appeal, Barack Hussein Obama is simply a racist. His vision of America is racist, and his solutions to our problems are racist. His appeal is to those backward-looking, self-destructive forces of negativity and defeatism inherent in all cultures at all times. His song is not a new one, it's that same same old seductive siren song of victimization which has lured countless gullible societies to their doom -- 'You deserve more than what you have, and you would have more than you presently have, had you not been victimized by Them, the Enemy, the Other -- the colonialist, the Jews, or the Whites.'

Thus, in Barack Obama's skewered vision, America is to be seen as a battleground: it is to be Us versus Them again. The historically suppressed colored peoples of this world versus the ruthless and domineering post-colonialist Whiteys. His appeal is to the politically naive or the purposefully ignorant, those who willfully, for their own selfish motivations, deny all political and cultural progress and achievement, no matter how obvious. Far from the high-minded rhetoric of their humanistic speeches, they are simply the latest genus of that same old species of self-serving politicians -- devious, amoral and cynical. They are intellectually, emotionally, and often financially invested in defeat. They are the dangerous products of protest movements gone awry.

As history has repeatedly proven, once a nascent protest movement begins to succeed and achieve a certain level of public acceptance and validation, it can easily devolve into an entrenched political entity, virtually indistinguishable from any other entrenched political entity, with its own newly-acquired set of selfish goals and objectives. This new political entity no longer has one single clear cut societal agenda (i.e. the Cause); their efforts now become divided. One of their most important goals inevitably becomes self-perpetuation -- often by even more ruthless means than the original tyranny against which they successfully battled. At some point, this political survivalist mentality can, and usually does, completely subsume the lofty goals of the original movement. Thus a new -- and perhaps even more dangerous tyranny is born. A tyranny, like all tyrannies, whose primary mission is to sustain itself at all costs.

How many times during these last few turbulent centuries have we seen this fateful scenario play itself out on the world's stage -- in Robespierre's France, in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba -- all with invariably murderous consequences?

But what happens if the primary goals of the original protest movement are actually realized? Does the movement then merely melt away and quietly re-assimilate itself back into that society which it has successfully transformed? Hardly. The movement's leaders have too much invested in the Cause to simply disband their troops and ride off into the sunset. Through the Cause these leaders have achieved power, and power seldom voluntarily walks off the stage.

But with their original goals accomplished and their real or theoretical enemies defeated, what possible purpose can be served by their continuing existence? They have now essentially become Rebels Without a Cause. How, then, can they perpetuate their own legitimacy?

The answer of course is to ignore the reality of their victories and create new enemies -- or to somehow skillfully resurrect the old ones.

Virtually every successful revolutionary movement which has morphed into a tyranny has sustained itself in this manner. The once fanatical revolutionaries are now battling counter-revolutionaries. Their entire raison d'etre has now become to prosecute this never-ending battle to purportedly protect the achievements of the Glorious Revolution from its innumerable reactionary enemies. This is an unalterable prerequisite to their survival; there can be no successful tyranny without enemies. Thus the Revolution becomes a perpetual 'work-in-progress', a never-ending war. Now, ironically, to admit success would be to admit defeat. They must continuously convince their followers, or subjects, that they are constantly under siege from these relentless counter revolutionary forces. The leaders are now to be viewed as society's protectors, protecting the helpless vulnerables from the predatory Enemy. And if perchance there is no viable predatory enemy, then they must create one.

The American -- and eventually, world-wide -- protest movements of the 1960s provide us with a perfect example of this ultimately self-destructive paradigm, which -- due in large part to America finding itself in the midst of yet another contentious and unpopular war -- is drawing us once again into its deadly vortex. The protest movements of the Sixties produced some truly remarkable changes for the better in our American society. But there was also a dark side. Part of the message of the Sixties was the message of helplessness. It is "attempting to cure the alcoholic by convincing him that he has good reason to drink". Its well-intentioned but deadly condescension has brought us the bleak realities of inner city despair. The self-perpetuating crime-ridden, drug-infested, inter-generational poverty and hopelessness of the Seventies. And now, they are bringing us this devastating message once again.

The Seventies: The Bleak Landscape of Victimization:

Does it matter that Barack Hussein Obama is at least partially black? Yes, tremendously. Not to us, but to Barack Hussein Obama. It is the very essence of his being, the banner of his Crusade. Without the 'race issue', Barack Obama would be just another politician. It is his focus and his justification. And, if we are not careful it will become ours: there are many among us who have unwittingly bought into the false premise that all of the existential threats we face in this turbulent world are of our own making. They are not evidence of our real enemies evil intentions, but rather the results of our own inherent racism and prejudice. And they will proudly cast their vote for Barack Hussein Obama merely to prove to themselves and to the world that they are not racists.

However, it is certainly fair to ask, if race or color are still truly overriding factors with the American public, then how is it that we exhibited no such national hang-ups when coping with Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice? And if race and gender are still the salient issues they were in the Furious Sixties, then how does one explain the current makeup of our Democratic Presidential Candidates? One a woman, one a black? It's a pretty difficult argument to sustain.

To all but the most blind and biased liberals, the surprising victories of the Feminist and Civil Rights movements of the Sixties have been nothing short of astonishing. How anyone in today's America can watch television, go to a movie, listen to popular music, or read a national newspaper and come away feeling that either blacks or women are underrepresented is incomprehensible. Today there are women and blacks -- and, yes, lesbians and homosexuals and transgenders -- in every conceivable facet of American life -- in the military, the media, the business world, sports, entertainment, politics. Only those deeply invested in a contrarian agenda would be cynical enough to deny it.

We, the United States of America, have come closer in this Twenty-First Century to achieving a pure meritocracy than any other civilization in history. But will this undeniable fact impress those self-doomed generational victims and their professional enablers? Hardly. For these aging warriors of the Sixties and their current ideological offspring the very concept of victory is an unpleasant, perhaps even a deadly admission. For without a battle, what use are warriors? If gender-based and racial parity have actually been achieved, then what possible use do we have for a Gloria Steinem or an Al Sharpton ? What, then, can these poor dispossessed Bands of Brothers -- or, more often, Sororities of Sisters -- do with their disbanded warriors ? What roles can there be in today's meritocracy for a NOW or an NAACP? Those roles which would actually benefit man -- or womankind, they have, to their everlasting dishonor, steadfastly refused to even consider. These disenfranchised organizations could help to change the world, but they cannot get past their own deflated and bruised egos. The feminists could be rising as one powerful voice in support of their oppressed sisters in Islam; and the black activists could be wooing their brothers and sisters away from the devastating consequences of a life lived as a victim. But they don't. They won't. To keep themselves in power, to preserve their personal tyrannies, they choose rather to perpetuate the myth, and seal the plight of the true victims of this world.

To vote for Barrack Hussein Obama and his dark vision of America is to vote for defeatism and negativity. It is willfully turning your back on the hope and promise of this wondrous meritocracy we call America. It is buying into the outrageous lie that America itself is the problem, and that only by changing the whole concept of Americanism can we hope to cure the evils of this world.

Would electing Barack Obama mean the destruction of America?

Only you can decide.

A Global Race War?

2009-01-31T10:58:00.001-08:00

Warning: This article has a PC rating of "X"

Are we in the beginning stages of a global race war?

Not yet, thank God. But consider this.

Islam, through the obvious successes of Al Qaeda and its affiliates in intimidating and embarrassing the West, has touched the heartstrings of many of the colored peoples of this world, and re enforced that seething undercurrent of post-colonial victimization that runs at varying depths throughout the Third World. Thus, thanks to the cynical machinations of the Islamists, our world is in danger of being divided once again -- as Japan and Germany both attempted to divide it in their own special ways, for their own special purposes -- between those supposedly exploited peoples of this world and their purported oppressors, who, they have once again convinced themselves, are the cause of all of their troubles -- past, present and future.

By ingeniously tapping into this latent but persistent strain of reverse racism, Islam has presented itself as a champion of the Third World in its never-ending battle to break free from the cruel shackles of white suppression. This is how this very real Clash of Civilizations is beginning to play itself out -- even here in America with the recently uncovered Wright/Obama anti-white crusade.

Unfortunately, the great and undeniable flaw in this seductive paradigm is that, with a few notable exceptions, whenever and wherever the black man, or, if you prefer, the man of color, has achieved a certain amount of autonomy and broken away from the yoke of overbearing white governance the consequences of this new found freedom have almost invariably been bloody and chaotic. Whether we look to post-colonial Africa, or those sordid post-colonial kingdoms and ruthless dictatorships of the Middle East -- or even our own American cities where the black majority has taken hold of the reins of government, the results are invariably the same: society self-destructs and the crime rate soars. Outside investments quickly dry up and corruption runs rampant. Whether the example is Haiti, Philadelphia, Rhodesia, Algeria or New Orleans, the same bloody post-colonial, post-white governance downward-spiralling scenario plays itself out.

This is such an explosive subject. It has become almost impossible to talk about it without creating a huge furor, or nowadays, without actually breaking some new multiculturalist law. Yet, somehow, to deal with the truths of our world, to even attempt to solve some of its most critical problems, we must find the courage to discuss these issues openly, honestly, and without malice.

What, then, is my point? Am I merely trying to prove that whites are somehow superior to the colored peoples of this world?
No.
But it is undeniable to all but the most committed ideologues that by almost any standard Western civilization has proven itself superior to a lot of other civilizations. What, then, is the proper message to those people in some of those other civilizations who feel disenfranchised and betrayed by history? Give up? Accept the inevitability of the white yoke forever? Learn to live with the fact that you were somehow born naturally inferior? Hell no! I repeat -- Hell no! This is the hopeless and deadly message of our enemies. This is the negative message of inverted racism. This is the darkness of Islam.

Our message is simply this: Cut out the crap. Start being truthful with yourselves and quit blaming others for all of your troubles -- the Crusaders, the white colonialists, the Jews, the WASPS -- The Victimization Card only gives you a losing hand. If you attach yourself to the victim's cause, the cause of hatred and resentment and revenge, you will lose your God-given chance to succeed. Look at history and try to be honest. Did the Victimization Card ever really work? It certainly doesn't look that way to me. The Victimization Card has given us endless strife, a lot of wars, and a few Indian casinos, but has seldom if ever helped a suffering people.

No, the way out of the darkness is to follow the light of truth. If your way hasn't proven successful, then dump it. Attach yourself to those other ways of thinking and acting that have proven to be successful. Go with the winners. The winners don't have colors, they have civilizations. Don't lay back and sulk with the losers. Are you listening, Palestinians? Don't plot revenge, plot success.

This whole volatile subject has nothing whatsoever to do with race or color, but everything to do with civilizations, and everything to do with truth.

Of course, this whole earth-shaking subject is to be considered taboo. We are forbidden to even broach this subject. We are all, we are being admonished every day, equal. All peoples are equal, all religions are equal, all races are equal. If one group of people gets ahead of another group of people in terms of civilizational development it must have been perpetrated through some kind of trickery or malfeasance. Not by hard work or merit. Not by finding a system that works.

Damn it. Islam is succeeding by suppressing the truth of its real tyrannical and totally intolerant nature and presenting itself as the rallying banner of global victimization. And we, in the Judeo-Christian West, have yet to find a viable method to counter the deceitful foundations of this growing movement. All of the unsuccessful or disgruntled people of this world are now to become united under Islam in their struggle against all of the successful people of this world. In fact, in this new-fangled version of religious Marxism, individual success itself is now to be considered the ultimate evil. The price for this apparent unity demanded by Islam of all of its subjects and converts is the same price that all tyrants have demanded throughout the course of human history -- submission, or in another word, "Islam".

Are we, then, in the beginning stages of a global race war?

Not yet. But, take heed -- if the Islamists continue to seduce converts into their bleak world vision, it could soon become one.

And then, God help us all, no matter what color.

Note: I almost forgot to give proper credit to Maggie's Notebook, for her great article about the utter uselessness of the UN. This is what actually got me going. You've got to read it.

http://maggiesnotebook.blogspot.com/2008/04/un-security-council-takes-action.html

Same Game, Different Players

2009-01-31T10:55:00.000-08:00

Muslim-American women playing basketball in the U. S. 2008

Japanese-American women playing basketball at Manzanar. 1942

A note from Radarsite:
In the preceding article "Playing the Muslim Game" Planck's Constant laid out an original and cogent argument for confronting the Muslim immigrant situation in America. This present article is an attempt to further this important conversation.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor without warning, killing approximately three thousand people, and thus Japan declared war on America. Confronted with the existence of a large Japanese population on American soil, of demonstrably dubious loyalty, our government decided to take action. Thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans were uprooted and removed from American society, and the still highly-controversial program of Relocation and Internment was initiated.

On September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists drove hijacked American airliners into highly-populated buildings in New York City and Washington DC. without warning, killing approximately three thousand people, and thus Islam declared war on America. Confronted with the existence of a large Muslim population on American soil, of demonstrably dubious loyalties, we decided to provide them with more foot baths at our universities and our airports.

Do those bold preemptive -- but still-contentious actions in 1942 provide us with an instructional precedent for our current immigrant problems? Or are they to be viewed, as many still proclaim, as merely an eradicable moral stain on our national character? Let's take a closer look at some of the similarities and some of the differences.

In 1942, some 112,000 Japanese were living on the Pacific Coast. About 40 percent were resident aliens and the remainder, by virtue of U.S. birth, were American citizens. The citizens, however, were mostly children, and when the U.S. declared war on Japan, their parents became enemy aliens. Moreover the Japanese emperor claimed all Japanese, wherever born, as subjects. They were referred to as doho, meaning countrymen. Japanese residents in the U.S. sent their children to “Japanese school” on Saturdays. A teacher in one of the schools told his American-born students, “You must remember that only a trick of fate has brought you so far from your homeland, but there must be no question of your loyalty. When Japan calls, you must know that it is Japanese blood that flows in your veins.”

Resident Japanese also sent their children to Japan for schooling. By 1940, more than 20,000 American-born Japanese had been educated in Japan. Known as kibei, they were fluent in Japanese, steeped in Japanese history and culture, and supporters of Japanese expansion in the Far East. They could hardly be distinguished from young militarists in Japan. Lt. Cmdr. K.D. Ringle of the Office of Naval Intelligence had been investigating the kibei for several months when the Japanese perpetrated their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. In January 1942, he submitted a report saying:

[T]he most potentially dangerous element of all are those American citizens of Japanese ancestry who have spent the formative years of their lives, from 10 to 20, in Japan and have returned to the United States to claim their legal American citizenship within the last few years. Those people are essentially and inherently Japanese and may have been deliberately sent back to the United States by the Japanese government to act as agents.

The notorious Kokuryukai (Black Dragon) Japanese espionage network had been operating since at least the early thirties throughout North America. They had successfully penetrated the Boeing Plant and stolen the blueprints for a new American bomber. Their extremely effective espionage operations in Hawaii had assured the success of the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Question: Given this known threat, how was our government expected to deal with the Japanese population on the West Coast? What possible tests could they have improvised to determine with any degree of certainty whether a Japanese-American's loyalties lay with the US or with their original homeland? According to the best statistics found on this subject, approximately 80-85% of the interned Japanese were actually loyal American citizens. But this still would have left us with the threat of 15-20% (or approximately 15-20,000) of those Japanese of questionable loyalty -- not to mention the unknowable threat from the Kokuryukai network. Faced with an extremely difficult situation, with major moral ramifications, our American government, rather than overreacting, did the best job it could do under the circumstances to protect Americans. We have been morally chastised by the universal Pacifist Left relentlessly for a half century for having had the courage to make these difficult wartime decisions.

In 2003, Rep. Michael Honda (D-Calif.), introduced House Resolution 56, which would make February 19 a National Day of Remembrance for those Japanese who were “interned” during World War II. It was on February 19, 1942, that President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, requiring the evacuation of Japanese aliens and American-born Japanese along with German and Italian aliens from the Pacific Coast. After a year in the House Committee on the Judiciary, the resolution was then placed on the House calendar.

Honda’s resolution contains a series of misrepresentations that have passed for fact for so many years that they are now generally accepted without question. Moreover, the resolution posits (surprise, surprise) President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment and its report, “Personal Justice Denied,” as the final authority on the subject. After “20 days of hearings” and “over 750 witnesses,” the commission concluded that the Relocation and Internment was not justified by military necessity but was the result of “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

That conclusion, however, is contrary to the facts as revealed by MAGIC, the decryptions of coded Japanese transmissions. The commission ignored MAGIC entirely in its original report, as it did witnesses who were available to proffer information supporting Roosevelt’s order. The few witnesses who attempted to testify in support of E.O. 9066 were drowned out by an unruly mob of spectators.

Throughout 1941, the U.S. frequently intercepted reports of resident aliens and Japanese Americans providing information to Japanese agents. In a decrypted message on May 9, for example, a Japanese agent in Los Angeles reports, “We have already established contact with absolutely reliable Japanese in the San Pedro and San Diego area, who will keep a close watch on all shipments of airplanes and other war materials .... We shall maintain connection with our second generations who are at present in the [U.S.] Army, to keep us informed of various developments in the Army. We also have connections with our second generations working in airplane plants for intelligence purposes.”

After Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, thousands of Japanese Americans ended up being interned in camps for the duration of World War II. Despite the abridgement of their constitutional rights, the vast majority of Japanese Americans remained strongly loyal to the United States. As one wartime Japanese American said, “Yes, the United States did make a mistake [about the internment] but we felt it was our country–right and wrong.”

Such pro-U.S. sentiment among Japanese Americans was due, in large part, to the strong assimilation process that existed before the war. Rather than today’s multiculturalism, which believes that all cultures are equally good and which Balkanizes immigrants and separates them from historic American culture, immigrant Japanese and their children were expected to become mainstream Americans. Japanese-American community leaders and organizations emphasized this goal.

A 1942 Japanese-American creed stated: “I believe in [America’s] institutions, ideals and traditions; I glory in her heritage; I boast of her history; I trust in her future. Because I believe in America, and I trust she believes in me, and because I have received innumerable benefits from her, I pledge myself to do honor to her at all times and in all places.” The result of this assimilation process was a sincere and deep patriotism on the part of most Japanese Americans.

Perhaps the most visible sign of this patriotism was the willingness of legions of young Japanese-American men to join specially formed combat units of the U.S. Army. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed of Japanese Americans, became the most highly decorated unit of the war for its bravery in the European theater. It’s worth noting that many Japanese Americans had wanted to fight against Japan. One Japanese-American recruit said, “I was excited and felt we were going to the Pacific Theater at that time. I talked to a number of officers and enlisted men of Japanese American ancestry about the possibility of going to the Far East. No one had any objections. We were ready to go.”

Contrast those sentiments with the pronouncements and actions of Muslim American spokesmen and groups in the wake of the September 11th attack by Muslim terrorists, many of whom had illegally immigrated to the U.S.. There have been no stirring pleas for young Muslim Americans to enlist in the American military or organizing of patriotic rallies in Muslim communities. Indeed, on a recent segment of 60 Minutes, a supposedly moderate Muslim American cleric, citing U.S. foreign policies, accused the U.S. of being an “accessory” to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Although condemning terrorism in general, officials for key Muslim American groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations CAIR)have been hesitant to condemn Osama bin Laden, the all but certain mastermind behind the September 11 terror attacks. This is unsurprising given that CAIR and other Muslim groups such as the American Muslim Council (AMC) have in the past refused to condemn known Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah and have criticized the conviction of the Islamic extremists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Adopting the strategy of other ethnic-based groups, CAIR and AMC prefer to fight perceived biases against Muslims in American society rather than making immigrant Muslims better Americans.

In a survey of Muslims in Los Angeles County, Kambiz Ghanea Basiri, a fellow of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, found that “a significant number of Muslims, particularly immigrant Muslims, do not have close ties or loyalty to the United States.” Indeed, he found that 12 out of 15 immigrants feel more allegiance to a foreign country than to the United States.

One can only wonder how that patriotic 1942 Japanese American creed would be received in the Muslim American community of today.

The same game, different players? You decide.

Radarsite gratefully acknowledges its debt to the two following articles:
Internment Scandal Roger D. McGrath
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_03_15/article.html

and

December 7th, September 11th and Immigrant Assimilation Lance T. Izumi

http://www.vdare.com/misc/izumi_assimilation.htm

AA for Islam

2009-01-31T10:53:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated an important anniversary.

Thirty years sober. After having been given a grim prognosis of two months to live if I continued down that self-destructive road of alcoholism. Against all odds, against that long, irrefutable history of previously broken promises and humiliating failures, somehow, with a lot of help, I succeeded.

Today I am seventy-one years old, passionately engaged with this turbulent world of ours and inordinately and perhaps undeservedly happy. I am what's known as a recovering or recovered alcoholic -- take your pick. Either way I don't drink.

I credit my sobriety to the lessons learned in AA. Prior to my experience in AA my life was a continuous downward spiral of self-destruction. The doctors to whom I had gone for help invariably looked to the “historical solution” to my problems -- delving into my childhood, my relationship with my mother and father, etc. Not one of them ever simply suggested that I quit drinking. So I continued drinking and continued going to my analysts and my life continued spiraling downwards. Then, finally, after my fourth hospitalization, I was effectively coerced (against my better judgment) into attending an AA meeting. That was February 16, 1978. And I haven't had a drink since that day.

What was it about the AA message that proved so successful? Two things come to mind. First, I remember someone at a meeting saying this: Imagine that you wake up and you’re in a burning building and you have no idea how you got there. What do you do? Answer: You get the hell out of the building. Later, when you are safe and sound, if you want to try to figure out how you got into such a predicament, or who exactly started the fire (the historical solution), you can delve into it at your leisure. However, as your life improves, and things get better and better, affixing blame for your previous troubles becomes less and less meaningful.

Secondly, the whole premise of the AA philosophy is built on unconditional surrender and honesty, rigorous self-honesty -- honestly admitting that you are defeated, that the old ways don’t work, and that you need to turn your life around; but that you also need to accept responsibility for your own life and quit blaming others.

What in the world, you might well ask, does this gratuitous personal revelation have to do with the world we live in and with Islam?

And I would answer: everything.

It has occured to me that this latest violent incarnation of Islam, almost the entire Arab World, and the Palestinians in particular, are all locked in an obsessive, self-destructive downward spiral not unlike alcoholism. And, as with alcoholism, seeking an “historical solution” -- i.e., who has the more legitimate claim to the land -- just doesn’t work. Perhaps they must collectively reach that proverbial “rock bottom” and admit defeat (1948) and finally and unconditionally surrender in order to have a chance to recover and move on. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. As hard as it is, you must just quit.

For me it took twenty-five years, two failed marriages, and several bungled careers before I reached my particular rock bottom and finally admitted defeat. For Germany and Japan, in the first half of the Twentieth Century, it took two world wars, the death of millions, and finally, the complete and total destruction of two hateful and evil regimes to reach their historical turning point. It took the relentless imposition by the Allies of Unconditional Surrender to achieve these miraculous turnarounds. No room was to be left for retrospective qualifications or rationalizations, no absurd revisions of history -- such as transpired in post-WWI Germany -- were to be allowed. No false promises or temporary truces would be accepted. Not this time around.

Only complete and utter Unconditional Surrender. In short -- they had to hit rock bottom. Which they did. And, against all odds, within five short years Japanese kids were playing baseball in Tokyo, and Germany (at least that democratic Western part of it) was well on its way to becoming a national economic powerhouse. And, just as suddenly, as the prospects for success became more and more apparent, that whole outmoded, now-useless, unhealthy concept of victimization began to lose its appeal. Thus, hope replaces self-pity, and we rise anew from the ashes of our despair.

In 1948, in a rare display of Arab unity, all of the surrounding hate-filled Arab states came together to wage a war of total annihilation against the tiny fledgling State of Israel. They mustered their huge supremely confident armies and, assured of a magnificent success, they savagely attacked the insignificant and ill-prepared Israeli forces.

And they lost.

Not only did all of the combined Arab states lose, but they suffered one of the most humiliating and ignoble military disasters in modern history.
And Israel continued to live and to thrive.

But the embittered Arab states never unconditionally accepted the awful reality of their defeat. Almost immediately after the disaster, the Arab world began their delusional retrospective qualifications and rationalizations, their absurd revisions of history. Year by year, war by disastrous war, they sank lower and lower into that dark hopeless world of self-pity and hatred. That irresponsible world of lies and denials, wherein nothing is your fault and everything is the fault of others. And as Israel prospered, the Arab world seethed with self-loathing and plotted revenge.

The first time I got to tell my tragic life's story in front of the group, based upon my previous experience, I was pretty assured of the response I would get. The usual response was immediate unqualified sympathy and affection. That night, my sponsor and mentor, a tall, kindly, soft-spoken older gentleman, with fourteen years of sobriety, whom we all called Big John, was seated next to me. When I finished my story, everyone was very quiet and then Big John got up and put his long arm around my shoulder and said, very softly, "You know something, Son? You're full of sh*t."

And thus it began. That long hard road to disciplined self-honesty. That whole frightening process of abandoning all of those comforting old lies and obfuscations, abandoning that whole sick delusional persona. And, it should come as no great surprise, that those amongst us who were unwilling or unable to try to become honest with themselves were the ones who didn't make it. A lot of those less fortunate people are no longer with us.

What, I wonder, will it take for those embittered Islamists, those hate-filled Arabs, that whole new generation of Palestinians, nurtured on years of hatred and revenge, to reach their collective rock bottom? How many more years of death and destruction? Where is the end of this Arab/Islamic downward spiral? Who, if anyone, will be Islam's Big John? Who will put their big strong arms around them and tell them lovingly that they're full of sh*t?

Who knows?

One thing is certain, though. One cannot break out of this suicidal spiral without being scrupulously honest with oneself. One must reject the false comfort of the role of victim -- how many horrors have been unleashed on this world by purported victims?

In short, the only thing that works is to just quit. And the only way to quit is to learn how to be honest, scrupulously and uncompromisingly honest with yourselves.

And finally, my friends, we must never give up hope, because life without hope is no life at all.

The New Barbarians

2009-01-31T10:51:00.000-08:00

"Not surprisingly the author is N. American, a continent grown incontinent after 9/11 and where most people's knowledge of Europe fits snugly on the back of a very small stamp."
"The average American citizen doesn't care about the world's problems, they only care about what brand of shoes they wear...sad but true!"
-- Recent comment from a British website

Really? I, for one, have grown sick and tired of these false and deceptive Old World arguments eagerly put forth against our great country, sick of the dishonest and transparent ruse of comparing the lowest forms of our American culture to the highest forms of some other culture in order to make the point that America is degrading the native cultures of the world. Too many pictures of those tacky MacDonald's Golden Arches in Cairo or those blaring Coke signs in Rome. We didn't exactly force this on you, you know? We didn't twist your delicate arms until you cried Uncle. If you didn't want this materialistic glitter, it wouldn't be there. Simple as that. You despise our degenerate culture yet you adore our fantasy Disneylands.

But, what about all those other things? What about all those tremendous advances in medicine, science, technology, and the arts? What of our long honorable history of unparalleled generosity? What of all those war torn countries -- many of whom were our bitterest enemies -- who, through our open-hearted generosity were saved from utter collapse and ruin? What of our fashionably despised and dishonored military who, if they had not taken up their honorable duty in Britain and in Europe and tolerated the condescending insults from the very people they were protecting, who would have fallen under the boot of brutal Fascist or Communist tyrannies long ago and more than once?

Yet of course you despise us for this, you despise the strength that protects you. Why then not forswear our help and turn to that ever-more-hopelessly conflicted and useless UN for your protection? Or put your trust in that comically befuddled military power of the EU? The answer of course is simple. You need us. You need our protection and you despise us for that fact.

You love our inane glitzy Hollywood culture and of course you despise us for that, too. You look down your pinched noses at our pedestrian morays, but you would sell your grandmother for a shot on American Idol. Your pervasive multicultural absurdities have led you to eagerly embrace the blatant lie of Muslim moral superiority -- despite all of the buckets of bloody evidence to the contrary. You have meekly acquiesced to a degenerate belief system that attempts to equate the embarrassment of a Britney Spears to the beheading of a Daniel Pearl. And you are proud of your cowardice and call it a shining example of tolerance and open-mindedness. You have refined yourself out of reality, and the delicate and precious world that you have constructed in its place will shatter about you like glass at the very first assault.

Simply put, you are dishonoring the honorable heritage of your brave grandparents, you are losing your will to fight back and thereby losing your precious and honorable society, yet you have the pomposity to attempt to condescend to our strong and brave America, whose soldiers are fighting and dying all over this violent world for other people's freedoms. You insult us and you degrade us. And you rest assured in the comfortable conviction that you are somehow inherently intellectually and morally superior to us.

Well, this particular Yank, who has spent his whole adult life studying, is getting a little fed up with taking these innumerable snide remarks from a little people who haven't shown the backbone or courage to save their own wonderful country from this growing onslaught of brutal barbarians. To appease your oppressors and save your precious hides, you have turned your backs on your own heroic sons, like the brave Lionheart, and criminalized his honesty and driven him from his home. You have embraced the cowardice of Chamberlain as your role model, and attempted to disguise your weaknesses by pretending that they are some higher form of civilized behavior called Multiculturalism.

We, then, the rude Yanks, are the new barbarians now. Yet, how then is it that somehow we have managed to accumulate more symphony orchestras than any other two European countries combined? more successful operas, more successful ballets, more internationally recognized artists and authors than any other country in this hemisphere? And why is it that this crass, unlettered public of ours, who is only interested in what brand of shoes they wear, works harder and puts in more hours and takes less vacations than any of those feeble and declining unionized socialistic European workers wallowing in their increasingly failing and stagnant economies could ever conceive of?

Through our good-hearted but misguided generosity we have become a paradigm of East Berlin in reverse -- we are being forced to build walls to keep out the daily onslaught of frantic and desperate invaders who besiege our degenerate nation daily, literally dying and selling their very bodies to just get one foot into our detestable imperialistic country -- to grab hold of that slim chance that perhaps today, if they're lucky, and if they don't get raped or robbed or sold off into prostitution rings, they just might make it past the border control and find a place here to live and perhaps find a little hope and happiness. These desperate people put the lie to all of those self-serving intellectual bullsh*t arguments about the declining moral promise of America or the unjust system of our government daily with their own blood.

For at least two generations now we Americans have been taking it on the chin from ignorant, self-righteous student activists and disillusioned psuedo-intellectuals brought up on that pervasive academic witches brew of those Marxist-driven, Moscow coordinated sanctimonious and cynically manipulated student protest movements of the 60s. We -- and you -- are now living with the bitter fruits of their destructive labors. Cynicism and disillusionment have become a refined art form throughout Old Europe and the UK, the motley uniform of the latest anti-capitalist, anti-American, antiwar avant-garde. To be wise is to be cynical, distrustful, and anti-American -- only trailer park bumpkins are unthinkingly patriotic, only the uninformed, unwashed, beer-drinking chain-smokers are to be seen saluting the American flag without embarrassment.

Your house is on fire, yet somehow you manage to find the time to come over here and criticize our garden.

Blinded by Hope, Abandoned by Reason

2009-01-31T10:49:00.000-08:00

"This Is A War Of Destiny
Between Infidelity And Islam."
(Text Of Bin Laden's Audio Message To Muslims In Iraq, Posted On Jihadist Websites, 12/28/04)

"Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all!"
Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists (1942)-- Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini

In 1996 and then again in 1998 Osama bin Laden issued two fatawa -- that Muslims should "kill civilians and military personnel from the United States and allied countries until they withdraw military forces from Islamic countries and withdraw support from Israel.

Bin Laden: "The Whole World Is Watching This War And The Two Adversaries; The Islamic Nation, On The One Hand, And The United States And Its Allies On The Other.

What is there, my friends, in these simple, direct and unequivocal messages that remains obscure? What is there here that lends itself to misinterpretation? Could these undeniable experts be any less ambiguous in their pronouncements? This is, they tell us quite plainly, "a war between Infidelity and Islam", a war between "the Islamic Nation and the United States and its Allies." And, even more clearly, "Islam is not a religion of pacifists".

Yet we will not listen. We will not heed their warnings. We refuse to acknowledge the weight of their solemn words. Blinded by Hope, abandoned by Reason, we steadfastly refuse to understand their meaning.

It has been six and one half years now since the catastrophe, and incredibly we have not yet found the political or moral courage to identify our true enemies. We distort and obfuscate the overwhelming evidence to support our insupportable optimism. Confronted by Naked Evil, we refuse to recognize its presence and retreat into the temporary comfort of our pitiful rationalizations and our misleading euphemisms. We cling desperately to our hopelessly outdated discredited theories and our wishful thinking. We continue to denigrate the power and the determination of our adversaries -- not because we know it to be true, but rather because we will it to be true and because it makes us feel better. Our old familiar list of comforting illusions still somehow sustains us:

All religions are basically the same.

All religions are centered on the search for Peace and Love.

All people are basically the same; they are all searching for Peace and Love.

If violence comes from a particular religion, then it necessarily follows that the basic tenets of that particular religion have been perverted: the religion itself cannot be faulted, it is merely the work of a few misguided fanatics, who can be found in any religion -- even Christianity.

These are the falsehoods we cling to even as the enemy approaches. Yes, we tell ourselves, our enemies are troublesome, but they are merely a fanatical minority. Islam itself is a peaceful religion. It has been hijacked by a few crazy people. But our war is not with Islam. Definitely not with Islam...

"This is a war of destiny between Infidelity and Islam"

There is nothing here, my friends, but crystal clarity. There are no disclaimers or qualifications. No possibilities here for misinterpretation. Yet -- incredibly, and disastrously -- we persist in our denial. We are drunk with denial. While our enemies are cold sober with hatred.

An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism. "We have too many mosques in this country," said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y. "There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully."

Sunday, February 24, 2008
HOMELAND INSECURITY
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=5714

"A Date Which Will Live in Infamy" (satire)

2009-01-31T10:47:00.001-08:00

Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" Speech To the Congress of the United States:

[revised and updated]

[...] I also want to speak tonight directly to the Japanese people.
We respect your culture and your faith. Shintoism is practiced freely by many millions of decent Japanese. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Shintoism blaspheme the name itself. (Applause.) The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack the peaceful religion of Shintoism. The enemy of America is not our many Japanese friends. Our enemy is that small radical group of Japanese fanatics who have hijacked the peaceful Japanese nation and declared war on humanity. (Applause.)

The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. My friends, we must be strong in the face of adversity. The enemy wants to destroy our American way of life. We must not let this happen. We must not alter our day-to-day activities and our constitutionally-guaranteed right to the pursuit of happiness. If we change our way of life in anyway whatsoever, then the enemy wins. (Applause.)

A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more. So, take the kids and get out the car and go out there and have some fun, my friends. Remember, our enemies are hoping that we will change our way of doing things here in America. We must not give them that victory. Good night, and God bless you all. (Applause.)

We will not change our way of life or the enemy will win.

In other news:

Antiwar activists busy at home

Antiwar widow, Mrs. Emily Ferguson, whose heroic Marine husband Homer was killed in April on Saipan writes another angry letter to President Roosevelt protesting our inhumane treatment of Japanese prisoners of war.

The fiery Mrs. Ferguson, the highly-visible symbol of the growing American antiwar movement WWAW (War Widows Against War) has opposed the War in the Pacific from the very beginning, referring to it as an illegal and unjust act of revenge. "Our treatment of our Japanese POWs is inhumane and unconscionable and goes against all that we stand for as a nation of principles," said Mrs. Ferguson at a recent Peace Rally in Philadelphia. Her message to America: "We should be ashamed of ourselves."

Antiwar rally in Chicago

Friday May 15

America First Committee decries war effort. Calls for tolerance and understanding.

Several speakers took to the podium in today's rally at the Grovesner Auditorium in southwest Chicago and accused the federal government of racism and unfair discrimination against Japanese-Americans. The AFC has repeatedly accused FDR of lying to the public in order to bring America into an unnescessary and unwanted war with Japan. "We have brought nothing but death and suffering to the innocent people of Japan," said an AFC spokesman William Connors. "We were attacked on December 7th because of the selfish imperialistic policies of this current administration. We cannot go around the world bullying other nations and not expect to make enemies. We should be ashamed of ourselves."

And from Washington

Washington DC

FDR appoints U.S. Envoy to Japanese Empire, repairing battered image and explaining ourselves

In a move which some critics describe as an effort to mollify the growing antiwar elements within his own party, FDR appointed Japanese-American businessman and philanthropist Yushido Osaki special envoy to the Japanese Empire. His mission, according to a senior White House spokesman, is to repair the fundamental misunderstandings between the Japanese people and the Americans. "It is hoped that by explaining our American culture and our long-term international goals that we can end this unfortunate atmosphere of suspicion and hostility which currently exists between our two great nations."

To some, this is seen as a move to appease some of his more vocal critics both within and outside of the administration, who have long argued for conciliation and dialogue with the Japanese government, rather than continuing military confrontation. We shall see what this latest effort produces.

Tomorrow's story: Rising American casualties in the Pacific. Is it worth it?

Note from Radarsite: Beginning in 1942, gas was rationed at five gallons per week; later that year, sugar and coffee were rationed, followed in 1943 by rationing of shoes, meat, cheese, fats and all canned goods. Over 95% of Japanese POWs survived the war, while only 49% of Allied POWs returned to their native lands.