FREEDOM IS NOT YOURS TO DISH OUT!!
November 21, 2008 by centurean2
Fight the good fight
On April 14th, 2008 Jane Birkby (not verified) says:
I sincerely hope that John Harris makes a difference where others have failed, and that the courts recognise the lawfulness of his actions, for it affects every one of us, and our future.
The enemies of this country, who walk the halls of power seemingly with impunity, must be brought to book, or our long standing laws will be as nothing, and we face a terrifying future, because the EU have an enabling act in the Lisbon Treaty which will allow them to quash and grind those who disagree with the EU and it’s aims.
Hitler had an enabling act, Stalin had Lenin’s Article 58 of the criminal code, Tony Blair pushed his enabling act through parliament under cover of the hunting bill (Civil Contingencies Act 2004), and the EU protocol on Subsidiarity and Proportionality can be used if you do not show proper respect for the principles of Subsidiarity i.e. the EU.
George Orwell prophesied it would happen in 1984, but his dates were a little out, instead it is 2008 onwards.
This country is under threat from multiple sources, who do not believe in the nation state or democracy.
GOLDEN PRINCIPLES OF BRITISH CONSTITUTION
Sovereignty is the inalienable birthright of the people, entrusted to the Monarch and administered by
Parliament which has no lawful authority ever to breach, surrender, lend or transfer (even temporarily) sovereignty except when
conquered in war.
No one (neither Monarch, nor Prime Minister, nor any prelate, politician, judge or public servant) is above the Statute and Common
Law of the United Kingdom that form the British Constitution (including Magna
Carta [1215], the Declaration and Bill of Rights [1688/89], Acts of Union, Succession and Settlement
[1701-07], the Coronation Oath Act [1689]).
British Citizens have an inalienable right to be governed justly, lawfully and exclusively by their
Parliament in Westminster (the Crown, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and freely elected/replaceable representatives in the
Commons), all of whom are servants of the people. Parliament’s power is not supreme but conditioned by oaths of office under the
Constitution and the people’s immutable franchise.
No Taxation is lawful without representation, nor may taxes be oppressive, unnecessary,
confiscatory or contain double tax (eg VAT on petrol tax).
Trial by Jury, habeas corpus, right of appeal are inalienable right of all accused under British jurisdiction.
6. Innocence is presumed unless proved guilty in court. If acquitted, no retrial on same charge.
No fine or forfeiture before conviction by a court (eg arbitrary speeding and parking fines).
The British Constitution is sworn by solemn oaths of office and/or allegiance to be upheld and defended impartially in perpetuity
without exception by the Monarch, ministers, politicians, judges, members of the armed forces, police and others in authority.
The Government must always act within limits and constraints imposed by the Constitution; including the making and unmaking of law;
it may not diminish or transfer its own power so to act; nor weaken, ignore or over-ride the Constitution whether to serve its own
or others’ ends; it may not suspend or dispense with the law; nor impose harsh or punitive law without cause.
Constitutional Law takes precedence over administrative law. It may be improved, or expressly repealed if not entrenched; however it
may never be supplanted or repealed just by passing a newer statute or administrative instrument and its breach may be treason.
British Citizens may petition the Monarch if all other remedies fail, without fear of reprisal or prosecution. The Crown is sworn by
oath to protect all subjects from violation of their lawful rights and liberties, retaining the power and responsibility to ensure
redress is exercised.
Guaranteed Justice. There must be no undue to delay in legal proceedings. Immigrants must adhere to British laws and customs. If
wronged, British Citizens are entitled to a remedy and to seek redress in law. Punishment must fit the crime and must not be
excessive or unusual, such as torture. Judgements must be exercised with compassion and mercy at every level.
Right to be defended from our enemies.
Right to defend self, family and property by whatever reasonable means necessary.
15. Right to private ownership of property and assets.
16. Right to engage in any activity not specifically banned in the national interest or safety.
17. Right to associate freely or not to associate with any political party, trade union or
organisation, except those posing a threat to security and interests of the United Kingdom.
18. Right to freedom of speech, writing and publication.
19. Freedom of religion and worship, except the Protestant Succession shall be maintained.
20. Royal Prerogative shall be exercised personally by the Sovereign on all Constitutional issues
and foreign treaties, never on behalf of the Crown by government ministers.
21. Separation of Powers between Crown, Executive and Legislature be invariably maintained.
22. The Crown shall always retain the absolute right to dissolve and open Parliament; call General
Elections; refuse Royal Assent to any Bill that does not enjoy the settled will of Parliament or
the interest of the nation or is unconstitutional; receive and act upon public petitions declare
war if unavoidable only in self-defence of the United Kingdom and or our vital interests.
OUR BIRTHRIGHT OF GUARANTEED LIBERTY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION IS ABSOLUTE & ETERNAL
TPUC. ORG
Friday, 21 November 2008
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
The Environmentalists' Greatest Trick
The Environmentalists' Greatest Trick
If the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn't exist, arguably the Environmentalist' Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.
Case in point Barack Obama who calls for everyone to rotate their tires, drive less and use less energy-- even while unveiling a massive spending program that would choke even the 2004 GOP elephant. In other words make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out your money to fund Barack's own domestic civilian corps. Cut back on toilet paper so Obama can blow hundreds of billions on pet projects that the country can't possibly afford.
But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities.
Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore's sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. But then again the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you're smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split the vigorish.
With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.
If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.
Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn't to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.
And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama's campaign isn't being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.
And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat's milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn't affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.
It isn't that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they're forced to accept.
Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it's much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.
The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarassing SUV inside.
If the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world that he doesn't exist, arguably the Environmentalist' Greatest Trick is convincing the world that they really stand for conserving, rather than spending flagrantly.
Case in point Barack Obama who calls for everyone to rotate their tires, drive less and use less energy-- even while unveiling a massive spending program that would choke even the 2004 GOP elephant. In other words make sure to limit your showers to 1 minute of cold water, while shelling out your money to fund Barack's own domestic civilian corps. Cut back on toilet paper so Obama can blow hundreds of billions on pet projects that the country can't possibly afford.
But then why be surprised, conservation for the greater good was always a staple of planned economies in the USSR or China or Cuba, just so long as you knew that the greater good was the good of the authorities.
Hypocrisy is no obstacle to being an environmentalist prophet as Al Gore's sprawling mansion and bouts of jetting around the world with rock stars has shown us. But then again the mansions of the Party elite have never created any kind of contraction to demanding that the peasant cut down his ration of bread by another few ounces. The beauty of collectivism is that it divides humanity neatly into masters and slaves, and if you're smart enough to wield the rhetorical whip or come up with another convincing argument for cutting the rations, you get to split the vigorish.
With all the tirades about the oceans rising, the polar ice melting, the atmosphere dissolving, the globe heating up, the polar bears dying out and all the catastrophe hysteria that has overrun the country, the last thing you should expect is to have the Prophets of Disaster actually listen to their own alarmist rhetoric. As everyone knows, preaching chastity excuses the parson for his own adulteries, and preaching green excuses the politician for his three swimming pools. With carbon credits as the new indulgences, cutting back is only for those too slow to jump on the bandwagon and preach it to others.
If you can churn out a commercial featuring a multiracial panoply screaming TICK TICK TICK at the audience, in between reciting prospective disasters, you can go on showering as long as you like. At most you might be expected to buy a SMART Car and drive it to the premiere of your latest movie being shot on three continents for enough money to feed all of Africa well into the 22nd century.
Among the elite, conspicuous consumption has given way to conscious concern about consumption. The thing isn't to cut back, but to spend money and buy something that signals your concern about consumption, such as expensive organic products, electric cars or a DVD of Al Gore using his beak to point out melting icebergs on a slideshow of the Arctic. As Conspicuous Concern becomes the new hip, shallow people show how deep they are by spending more money on the status symbols that show just how opposed to wasteful consumption they are.
And environmentalism at the government level is truly no different. Obama's campaign isn't being run on a platform of spending less, but spending more. More programs. More projects. More logos and slogans and money all somehow geared toward using less energy. But can you spend more to spend less and waste more to waste less? The laws of thermodynamics would seem to say otherwise.
And while the mindless celebrities who circle any trend like starved vultures continue to preach to us that we need to stop using toilet paper and drink rat's milk, the political culture of consumption that gave birth to their idiocy continues rolling along just fine. That culture is perfectly happy with oil prices because it doesn't affect their own padded pocketbooks but does drive public disaffection that they hope to exploit.
It isn't that they really want the public spending less, but their business allies want the public spending more on the things they want to sell, things with a Recycled logo or Biofuels or Ice Cream guaranteed not to harm the habitats of Polar Bears. The trick is to get the public to buy less and spend more, on the products they buy and on the government they're forced to accept.
Real conservation has never been on their agenda or they might actually listen to the Sierra Club when it opposes immigrant. Real cutbacks in waste are not on their agenda or they might stop jetting around the country and the world for conferences and concerts. Real reductions in energy use is not on their agenda or they might actually cut back on their own energy use instead of buying carbon credits. But it's much easier to victimize Asthma patients and working class people who find themselves having to pay more for everything they buy thanks to the mesh of regulations they implement, than to actually show more responsibility in their own lives.
The Politics of Green is all about appearance over reality, about a sprawling mansion with a green sticker on it and a SMART car parked right in front of the driveway with that embarassing SUV inside.
Monday, 21 July 2008
WHO IS IN CONTROL
defender
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Wnston Churchill
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
WHO IS IN CONTROL?
Maybe this following article will help you to start to see the reasons why our political "leaders" do the things they do. For instance Mr. Milliband is very aware of what he is doing in Turkey today, helping to open the EU door http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0584853820070905?rpc=401& , his reasoning though eludes us. The plan is unfolding rapidly but they are past the point of weakness and believe they have enough strength to be bolder and more progressive. Many people look at the elite as bumbling, disconnected, incompetent, directionless and downright stupid. Do not believe it, they are very smart, charming, articulate, educated, focused, connected and determined.
They have a strong, binding common goal. The obvious unifying bond must be the party they belong to one would think, but I believe there is more to it than that. Party politics in the UK can be too fluid, needs to change some what from time to time for lets say, appearances. Only a little mind and usually a few speeches and waffle, a new name, a law or two and it is put aside and back to the agenda as soon as it is appropreate to do so. So what is the guiding light that keep them on track. Have you ever heard of The Fabian Society? Its been around for a long long time, it is very influential, for instance, every labour prime minister, ever, has been a member up to and including the current Priminister, most of the past and present labour MP's have been and are members. The labour party emerged as the political arm of the Fabians, the Liberals are also historically closely connected, I have found that a number of conservatives are also members.
We see today that the liblabcon are hardly different politically, might that be because of a common goal?
Fabianism believes in what it describes as “the democratic control of society in all its activities.” The key word is control – whereas most people see democracy as based on the freedom and liberty of the individual, Fabian socialism places the emphasis on control of the individual – a sort of “we know what is best” attitude. It sees this as being best achieved through some form of global government, a goal it shares with Communism, (which is also based on centralised control). Some time ago an elderly friend of mine told me how she had attended Fabian Society meetings in the 1930s, and she confirmed that world government was what was discussed even then. In short, those who adhere to Fabian philosophy, seek a highly centralised power base – the elimination of national sovereignty is fundamental to the process. The emblem of the Fabian Society is the tortoise, which represents slow but steady progress. The Labour Party has always included Fabians, but Blair’s Labour now seems riddled with them. This political philosophy, widespread throughout the so called centre left parties of Europe must explain so much about how and why the EU has developed in the way that it has and why our government is so committed to the single European state. It has also had influence within the U.S. Democratic party. Members of the Fabian Society founded the London School of Economics, which has traditionally ensured that budding socialists receive a thorough grounding in traditional economics and monetary policy! http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=402
I hope you would read the full article by clicking the link and also do your own search to find out more.
Am I right or am I wrong, time will tell.
Posted by defender at 17:08
4 comments:
BFB said...
Am I right or am I wrong
Of course you are right. Check out this link
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/8/23/3177099.html
BTW, I see you have only been online for a couple of months, which explains why I haven't linked to you yet. This has now been rectified. You are now linked at 'Battle For Britain'
http://bfbwwiii.blogspot.com/
Keep up the excellent work,
Phil (BFB).
05 September 2007 20:28
BFB said...
I think maybe the above link is too long for this window. Try
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/
and scroll down to the article '2010 - Its coming, your freedom is going'.
In fact, just bookmark the blog and visit regularly, it's brilliant.
Phil.
05 September 2007 20:36
defender said...
thanks very much for that BFB. the pieces fit almost perfectly.
05 September 2007 21:00
The Green Arrow said...
Hello Defender. Good information.
I see the famous Battler Britain as linked you. A good egg.
So have I.
Good Luck
09 September 2007 06:27
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Wnston Churchill
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
WHO IS IN CONTROL?
Maybe this following article will help you to start to see the reasons why our political "leaders" do the things they do. For instance Mr. Milliband is very aware of what he is doing in Turkey today, helping to open the EU door http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0584853820070905?rpc=401& , his reasoning though eludes us. The plan is unfolding rapidly but they are past the point of weakness and believe they have enough strength to be bolder and more progressive. Many people look at the elite as bumbling, disconnected, incompetent, directionless and downright stupid. Do not believe it, they are very smart, charming, articulate, educated, focused, connected and determined.
They have a strong, binding common goal. The obvious unifying bond must be the party they belong to one would think, but I believe there is more to it than that. Party politics in the UK can be too fluid, needs to change some what from time to time for lets say, appearances. Only a little mind and usually a few speeches and waffle, a new name, a law or two and it is put aside and back to the agenda as soon as it is appropreate to do so. So what is the guiding light that keep them on track. Have you ever heard of The Fabian Society? Its been around for a long long time, it is very influential, for instance, every labour prime minister, ever, has been a member up to and including the current Priminister, most of the past and present labour MP's have been and are members. The labour party emerged as the political arm of the Fabians, the Liberals are also historically closely connected, I have found that a number of conservatives are also members.
We see today that the liblabcon are hardly different politically, might that be because of a common goal?
Fabianism believes in what it describes as “the democratic control of society in all its activities.” The key word is control – whereas most people see democracy as based on the freedom and liberty of the individual, Fabian socialism places the emphasis on control of the individual – a sort of “we know what is best” attitude. It sees this as being best achieved through some form of global government, a goal it shares with Communism, (which is also based on centralised control). Some time ago an elderly friend of mine told me how she had attended Fabian Society meetings in the 1930s, and she confirmed that world government was what was discussed even then. In short, those who adhere to Fabian philosophy, seek a highly centralised power base – the elimination of national sovereignty is fundamental to the process. The emblem of the Fabian Society is the tortoise, which represents slow but steady progress. The Labour Party has always included Fabians, but Blair’s Labour now seems riddled with them. This political philosophy, widespread throughout the so called centre left parties of Europe must explain so much about how and why the EU has developed in the way that it has and why our government is so committed to the single European state. It has also had influence within the U.S. Democratic party. Members of the Fabian Society founded the London School of Economics, which has traditionally ensured that budding socialists receive a thorough grounding in traditional economics and monetary policy! http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=402
I hope you would read the full article by clicking the link and also do your own search to find out more.
Am I right or am I wrong, time will tell.
Posted by defender at 17:08
4 comments:
BFB said...
Am I right or am I wrong
Of course you are right. Check out this link
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/8/23/3177099.html
BTW, I see you have only been online for a couple of months, which explains why I haven't linked to you yet. This has now been rectified. You are now linked at 'Battle For Britain'
http://bfbwwiii.blogspot.com/
Keep up the excellent work,
Phil (BFB).
05 September 2007 20:28
BFB said...
I think maybe the above link is too long for this window. Try
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/
and scroll down to the article '2010 - Its coming, your freedom is going'.
In fact, just bookmark the blog and visit regularly, it's brilliant.
Phil.
05 September 2007 20:36
defender said...
thanks very much for that BFB. the pieces fit almost perfectly.
05 September 2007 21:00
The Green Arrow said...
Hello Defender. Good information.
I see the famous Battler Britain as linked you. A good egg.
So have I.
Good Luck
09 September 2007 06:27
Thursday, 15 May 2008
FINAL WARNING
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FinalWarning
The Modern History Project Featured commentary:
Propaganda, Terrorism and Hypocrisy
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FinalWarning
*NEWS*ArticlesDatabaseLinksMailHelp!
Articles > Books > FinalWarning
Final Warning: A History of the New World Order
Illuminism and the master plan for world domination
-- by David Rivera, 1994 source: View From the Wall
:: With hyperlinks to the MHP database. Follow links for related info ::
Table of Contents
MHP Editors Preface
About this book
1: The Birth of Tyranny
The Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the House of Rothschild
1.1: The Freemasons
A brief history of the Freemasons in England and America
1.2: The Order of the Illuminati
The development of the Order of the Illuminati, and their infiltration of the Masonic Lodge
1.3: The Illuminati in America
The Illuminati organization spreads from Europe to America
1.4: The Rothschilds
The formation of the Rothschild banking dynasty and their support of the Illuminati program
2: Financial Background
The history of U.S. central banking, the income tax, and the private foundations of the elite
2.1: The Bank of the United States
European financial interests attempt to recapture the United States
2.2: Creation of the Federal Reserve System
Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, Jekyll Island and the creation of the Fed
2.3: The Federal Reserve System Begins Operation
Theft of the gold, fiat currency, inflation, and debt slavery
2.4: The Federal Income Tax
Collecting the interest payments for the owners of the Federal Reserve
2.5: Tax-exempt Foundations
How the elite protects their wealth while controlling education, research and public policy
3: World War I and the League of Nations
War profiteering, the League of Nations, and the seal of the Illuminati
4: Communism and Racial Tension
Promoting racial tension to destabilize American society
5: Elite Political Organizations
The Fabian Socialists, the Round Table and the Council on Foreign Relations
5.1: The Fabians, the Round Table, and the Rhodes Scholars
The Rhodes-Milner group continues the Illuminati program
5.2: The Council on Foreign Relations
The origin and goals of the elite U.S. policy organization
5.3: CFR Influence in Government, Media and Business
The pervasive influence of CFR members over all aspects of society
5.4: The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon
Nelson Rockefeller, the CFR, and their role in the Nixon Presidency
6: World War II
How the Illuminati engineered the war to further the world government program
6.1: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
A document of dubious origin that reveals the Illuminati program of control
6.2: World War II and the Buildup of Communism
The rise of Adolf Hitler, the financing of German industry, and the buildup of Soviet Communism
6.3: The Pearl Harbor Deception
Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor
7: The Spread of Communism
The origin and worldwide spread of Communism
7.1: The Origins of Communism
Socialist and communist experiments during the 1700s and 1800s
7.2: Marx, Engels and the Socialist International
Karl Marx, the Communist Manifesto, and the rise of Socialism in Europe
7.3: Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik Revolution
The Soviet Union is formed with the financial support of the Western oligarchs
7.4: Stalin and Western Support of the Soviet Union
Stalin takes power, the Soviets fight the Nazis, and the bankers control both sides
7.5: Communist Revolutions in China and Asia
Communists allowed to take over China, Korea, South Asia and Vietnam
7.6: Communist Revolution in Cuba
Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba with U.S. support, leading to a showdown with the Soviets
7.7: The Soviet Challenge to America
Soviet rhetoric, subversion, military preparation, and deception
8: Moving Towards Global Government
The United Nations, the European Union and other global organizations
8.1: The United Nations
The founding of the U.N. and the push for a Socialist world government
8.2: The European Union
European cooperation after WW2 and the formation of the European Union
8.3: The Bilderberg Group
The origins and influence of the premier international policy planning group
8.4: The Seven Sisters
OPEC, the Seven Sisters, and control of the petroleum industry
8.5: The Club of Rome and Population Reduction
The Club of Rome, the Limits to Growth, and the AIDS epidemic
8.6: International Trade Agreements
The globalisation of the economy via GATT, NAFTA and the WTO
9: Consolidating Government Power
The Trilateral Commission, the Federal government, and the rise of the police state
9.1: The Trilateral Commission
The Trilateral Commission, the CFR, and control of the White House
9.2: Centralization of Government Power
Federal districts, Executive orders, replacing the U.S. Constitution
9.3: The Rise of the Police State
Social instability, military police, gun confiscation, and detention camps
List of Source Documents
Sources referenced in Final Warning
People - Organizations - Events
modernhistoryproject.org
The Modern History Project Featured commentary:
Propaganda, Terrorism and Hypocrisy
http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp/ArticleDisplay.php?Article=FinalWarning
*NEWS*ArticlesDatabaseLinksMailHelp!
Articles > Books > FinalWarning
Final Warning: A History of the New World Order
Illuminism and the master plan for world domination
-- by David Rivera, 1994 source: View From the Wall
:: With hyperlinks to the MHP database. Follow links for related info ::
Table of Contents
MHP Editors Preface
About this book
1: The Birth of Tyranny
The Freemasons, the Illuminati, and the House of Rothschild
1.1: The Freemasons
A brief history of the Freemasons in England and America
1.2: The Order of the Illuminati
The development of the Order of the Illuminati, and their infiltration of the Masonic Lodge
1.3: The Illuminati in America
The Illuminati organization spreads from Europe to America
1.4: The Rothschilds
The formation of the Rothschild banking dynasty and their support of the Illuminati program
2: Financial Background
The history of U.S. central banking, the income tax, and the private foundations of the elite
2.1: The Bank of the United States
European financial interests attempt to recapture the United States
2.2: Creation of the Federal Reserve System
Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, Jekyll Island and the creation of the Fed
2.3: The Federal Reserve System Begins Operation
Theft of the gold, fiat currency, inflation, and debt slavery
2.4: The Federal Income Tax
Collecting the interest payments for the owners of the Federal Reserve
2.5: Tax-exempt Foundations
How the elite protects their wealth while controlling education, research and public policy
3: World War I and the League of Nations
War profiteering, the League of Nations, and the seal of the Illuminati
4: Communism and Racial Tension
Promoting racial tension to destabilize American society
5: Elite Political Organizations
The Fabian Socialists, the Round Table and the Council on Foreign Relations
5.1: The Fabians, the Round Table, and the Rhodes Scholars
The Rhodes-Milner group continues the Illuminati program
5.2: The Council on Foreign Relations
The origin and goals of the elite U.S. policy organization
5.3: CFR Influence in Government, Media and Business
The pervasive influence of CFR members over all aspects of society
5.4: The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon
Nelson Rockefeller, the CFR, and their role in the Nixon Presidency
6: World War II
How the Illuminati engineered the war to further the world government program
6.1: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
A document of dubious origin that reveals the Illuminati program of control
6.2: World War II and the Buildup of Communism
The rise of Adolf Hitler, the financing of German industry, and the buildup of Soviet Communism
6.3: The Pearl Harbor Deception
Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor
7: The Spread of Communism
The origin and worldwide spread of Communism
7.1: The Origins of Communism
Socialist and communist experiments during the 1700s and 1800s
7.2: Marx, Engels and the Socialist International
Karl Marx, the Communist Manifesto, and the rise of Socialism in Europe
7.3: Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik Revolution
The Soviet Union is formed with the financial support of the Western oligarchs
7.4: Stalin and Western Support of the Soviet Union
Stalin takes power, the Soviets fight the Nazis, and the bankers control both sides
7.5: Communist Revolutions in China and Asia
Communists allowed to take over China, Korea, South Asia and Vietnam
7.6: Communist Revolution in Cuba
Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba with U.S. support, leading to a showdown with the Soviets
7.7: The Soviet Challenge to America
Soviet rhetoric, subversion, military preparation, and deception
8: Moving Towards Global Government
The United Nations, the European Union and other global organizations
8.1: The United Nations
The founding of the U.N. and the push for a Socialist world government
8.2: The European Union
European cooperation after WW2 and the formation of the European Union
8.3: The Bilderberg Group
The origins and influence of the premier international policy planning group
8.4: The Seven Sisters
OPEC, the Seven Sisters, and control of the petroleum industry
8.5: The Club of Rome and Population Reduction
The Club of Rome, the Limits to Growth, and the AIDS epidemic
8.6: International Trade Agreements
The globalisation of the economy via GATT, NAFTA and the WTO
9: Consolidating Government Power
The Trilateral Commission, the Federal government, and the rise of the police state
9.1: The Trilateral Commission
The Trilateral Commission, the CFR, and control of the White House
9.2: Centralization of Government Power
Federal districts, Executive orders, replacing the U.S. Constitution
9.3: The Rise of the Police State
Social instability, military police, gun confiscation, and detention camps
List of Source Documents
Sources referenced in Final Warning
People - Organizations - Events
modernhistoryproject.org
Monday, 12 May 2008
Islam is Democracy's cancer
The most basic demand for participating in any program is the ability to abide by its rules. When it comes to Democracy, the most basic rule is that there is no absolute power and that the democratic system remain place. Winning and losing in a democracy is not a zero sum game and multiple parties and multiple viewpoints come to the table, hammer out compromises and keep the country running. A party may lose one election but then come back and win another one. Violence gets shelved as a tool of transition.
Politics outside Democratic rules often yields zero sum games, ruthless contents of will and power, in which the punishment for political failure is imprisonment or death. Democracy is meant to shift that balance by allowing different sides to participate. What it requires however is that all sides abide by the premise of democracy, that the democratic system itself remain in place from turn to turn. That is the one thing Islamic parties can't and won't do.
Within a democracy, totalitarian parties are a trojan horse, whether they are Communist or Nazi or Islamist. They cannot be allowed to exist because they participate in the democratic process only with the endgame of ending democracy once they have amassed enough power.
Yet many British seemed to have trouble understanding this when it came to the Communist party, because the Democratic process, like the Geneva Convention and the Constitution and other consensual agreements, has been mischaracterized as universal. But no agreement is universal. An agreement can only exist between peoples or groups who agree to abide by its terms. Human rights cannot apply to those who violate them. Conventions on the treatment of prisoners do not apply to those who do not follow them. Democracy does not apply to the un-democratic and the anti-democratic.
Islamist party in the Muslim world and the West have learned to mimic the tactics of the Communist parties, to put on a Democratic facade for the West, to give lip service to the Democratic process while slowly taking over from the inside.
The election of a Muslim party to power is a De Facto coup, it's only a matter of time until the actual takeover happens. When it does, there may still be elections as in Iran, but the only ones running will be approved Islamist parties. Because while we may fail to understand that Democracy is a consensual agreement, the Islamist enemy understands it quite well and their system is quickly set up to suppress non-Islamist and Anti-Islamist organizations from within any electoral process.
And that is why Islam is Democracy's cancer, adept at exploiting Democracy's institutions and rules, its respect for human rights and sentimental willingness to believe that anyone can participate and become ennobled by the process, to come to power.
The false view of democracy as universal, rather than limited to those who accept its premises, has led to multiple disasters as the Government has championed "Democracy" in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Egypt and Pakistan, only to be rewarded with terrorism and the rise of the Islamists, time and time again.
Now Rice is set to join the EU in backing Erdogan's Islamist party in Turkey over its secularist opponents. Never mind that the secularist military and political establishment were reliable American allies, while Erdogan has fed hatred of America. Never mind that Erdogan's AKP has conducted an assault on its opposition and subverted the judiciary. Never mind that Erdogan's AKP has undermined the War in Iraq from the start. Erdogan wants Turkey to join the EU... and that is enough for the EU to support him and apparently enough for Rice to stab the United States and its allies once again in the back... and back the totalitarian ambitions of an Islamic party.
Many "thinkers" such as John Esposito and Noah Feldman have resumed championing the discredited idea that Islam is Democratic or leads to Democracy, when the overwhelming evidence of history and geo-politics is not on their side. Not only is Islam not democratic, but by its very nature it is anti-democratic.
The Separation of Church and State in Turkey or anywhere else, protects government from religion and religion from government. Religion by its very nature holds by uncompromising absolutes. Government in a democracy deals in compromises. When government and religion bleed into each other, either religion becomes compromised or government becomes uncompromising. The former leads to the sort of hollow secularized religion you can see in the Church of England. The latter leads to the sort of fanaticism that drowns half a world in blood.
The fusion of Islam and democracy is a nightmare written in blood. It's an old nightmare over a thousand years old brought to life again by rising oil prices and Western weakness.
Meanwhile the consensual agreements that have formed the institutions of the West have become mischaracterized as universal, leaving Western institutions with no defense against the cancer of Islamism.
Politics outside Democratic rules often yields zero sum games, ruthless contents of will and power, in which the punishment for political failure is imprisonment or death. Democracy is meant to shift that balance by allowing different sides to participate. What it requires however is that all sides abide by the premise of democracy, that the democratic system itself remain in place from turn to turn. That is the one thing Islamic parties can't and won't do.
Within a democracy, totalitarian parties are a trojan horse, whether they are Communist or Nazi or Islamist. They cannot be allowed to exist because they participate in the democratic process only with the endgame of ending democracy once they have amassed enough power.
Yet many British seemed to have trouble understanding this when it came to the Communist party, because the Democratic process, like the Geneva Convention and the Constitution and other consensual agreements, has been mischaracterized as universal. But no agreement is universal. An agreement can only exist between peoples or groups who agree to abide by its terms. Human rights cannot apply to those who violate them. Conventions on the treatment of prisoners do not apply to those who do not follow them. Democracy does not apply to the un-democratic and the anti-democratic.
Islamist party in the Muslim world and the West have learned to mimic the tactics of the Communist parties, to put on a Democratic facade for the West, to give lip service to the Democratic process while slowly taking over from the inside.
The election of a Muslim party to power is a De Facto coup, it's only a matter of time until the actual takeover happens. When it does, there may still be elections as in Iran, but the only ones running will be approved Islamist parties. Because while we may fail to understand that Democracy is a consensual agreement, the Islamist enemy understands it quite well and their system is quickly set up to suppress non-Islamist and Anti-Islamist organizations from within any electoral process.
And that is why Islam is Democracy's cancer, adept at exploiting Democracy's institutions and rules, its respect for human rights and sentimental willingness to believe that anyone can participate and become ennobled by the process, to come to power.
The false view of democracy as universal, rather than limited to those who accept its premises, has led to multiple disasters as the Government has championed "Democracy" in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Egypt and Pakistan, only to be rewarded with terrorism and the rise of the Islamists, time and time again.
Now Rice is set to join the EU in backing Erdogan's Islamist party in Turkey over its secularist opponents. Never mind that the secularist military and political establishment were reliable American allies, while Erdogan has fed hatred of America. Never mind that Erdogan's AKP has conducted an assault on its opposition and subverted the judiciary. Never mind that Erdogan's AKP has undermined the War in Iraq from the start. Erdogan wants Turkey to join the EU... and that is enough for the EU to support him and apparently enough for Rice to stab the United States and its allies once again in the back... and back the totalitarian ambitions of an Islamic party.
Many "thinkers" such as John Esposito and Noah Feldman have resumed championing the discredited idea that Islam is Democratic or leads to Democracy, when the overwhelming evidence of history and geo-politics is not on their side. Not only is Islam not democratic, but by its very nature it is anti-democratic.
The Separation of Church and State in Turkey or anywhere else, protects government from religion and religion from government. Religion by its very nature holds by uncompromising absolutes. Government in a democracy deals in compromises. When government and religion bleed into each other, either religion becomes compromised or government becomes uncompromising. The former leads to the sort of hollow secularized religion you can see in the Church of England. The latter leads to the sort of fanaticism that drowns half a world in blood.
The fusion of Islam and democracy is a nightmare written in blood. It's an old nightmare over a thousand years old brought to life again by rising oil prices and Western weakness.
Meanwhile the consensual agreements that have formed the institutions of the West have become mischaracterized as universal, leaving Western institutions with no defense against the cancer of Islamism.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Modern Britain: No Laughing Matter
Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Modern Britain: No Laughing Matter
By A. Millar
Created 2008-05-01 09:03
Earlier generations of Britons believed that certain things simply could not happen in Britain. Even in the country’s darkest moments of war or depression, this conviction differentiated the then proud nation from the U.S.S.R., third world countries, and unstable regimes that might fall to dictatorship any moment. News blackouts, and the banning of a book or film of course occurred here or there, but these never seemed very serious events.
When the Thatcher government banned the sale of the novel, Spycatcher, in Britain, it was smuggled into the country from abroad, and reported in the press despite legal challenges. Humor was the public’s usual way of dealing with such things, and the banning of a book that most people could get ahold of, turned politics into a laughing stock. And not for the first or last time either. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, when Oswald Moseley’s “black shirt” fascists were parading through London, Lady Astor commented that if they should ever gain power the British people would die laughing. How prophetic this was. A few years later Charlie Chaplin denounced and mocked the Nazis in his film, The Great Dictator, even as prime minister Neville Chamberlain sort to win “peace for our time” by appeasing Hitler.
In the 1980s and early 1990s the satirical puppet show, Spitting Image, which mocked the politicians of the time, became a staple of television viewing, even for those who generally did not like television that much. The puppets were grotesque, but politics at that time – and before that time – was raw, unscripted. Thatcher, like other leaders, spoke from the gut as well as the brain, and the picture was not always pretty, but it was human, and it represented the British people. In an excellent op-ed piece for The Daily Mail recently, Lord Tebbit – Thatcher’s once right-hand man – spoke of his love for his puppet-portrayal as a “leather-clad bovver boy,” his dismay at the banal, politically correct, mainstream parties who seem indistinguishable from one another, and constant political failings that are, “so ridiculous that it is beyond satire.”
Political correctness has cowed society and politics, and trodden down common sense and humor. Unlike the defiant, bawdy Brit of the past, today he thinks before he speaks, running through the list of forbidden words, and making sure not to let one slip. And so much now is taboo. The English Democrats Party is under investigation for racism, for using the term, “tartan tax,” a student was arrested for calling a police horse “gay,” and, if you need to see the proof of such extreme “politically correct” intolerance, a Youtube video showing a young man being arrested for singing, “I’d rather wear a turban” (deemed racist by the arresting officer), can be seen here.
A common language is one of the traditional, defining marks of a nation, and the criminalization of words will have a very profound consequence for the British. Though rarely acknowledged as such, humor is another defining mark, and one that makes use of the nation’s language in particular ways that relies on the audience having a good general knowledge of culture, history, and politics. Notably, Voltaire once commented that tragedies could be translated from one tongue to another, but that comedies could not. Anyone wishing to grasp the English comedy would need to, “spend three years in London, to make yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse every night,” he suggested.
Political correctness has changed British politics and society, the latter of which has been famed for its ability to laugh at itself – an ability that has certainly helped to keep it free and democratic. Extremists – whether of the fascist, politically correct, or Islamic type – are united in their suspicion – even rejection – of humor. Humor shows them for what they really are. When the “Mohammed cartoons” provoked riots and death threats by Islamic radicals, Jack Straw could only remark,
I said at the time that the cartoons were reprinted in Europe – though not here in the United Kingdom – that doing so was needlessly insensitive and disrespectful. The right to freedom of expression is a broad one and something which this country has long held dear. […] But the existence of such a right does not mean that it is right – morally right, politically right, socially right – to exercise that freedom without regard to the feelings of others.
With those words Straw beheads the figure of humor before our eyes, in order to appease those who might be offended. Not every Muslim is humorless, of course, and in the U.S., for example, there is a comedy show called “Allah made me funny,” with Muslim comedians who are able to poke fun at themselves. The show was the initiative of Preacher Moss, who wanted to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims after 9/11. Yet in Britain we see that appeasement has become de facto policy of the “liberal” media, with various controversial words or subjects banned. Ben Elton – a comedian and author once noted for his staunchly Left-wing politics – recently accused the B.B.C. of being too “scared” to poke fun at radical Islam, noting that he was even told not to use the entirely innocuous phrase, “Mohammed came to the mountain” apparently for fear of the consequences.
A few days ago, it emerged that the B.B.C. and rival television broadcaster I.T.V. insisted that the Christian Choice political party make changes to the language of its electoral broadcast concerning their opposition to the building of Europe’s largest mosque in London. The party had described Tablighi Jamaat, the group behind its planning, as “separatist,” and noted that some “moderate Muslims” were against the mega-mosque. But the B.B.C. was worried, and insisted the group be described as “controversial” instead. And, it disallowed the term “moderate Muslims” as it implied that Tablighi Jamaat was not moderate. I.T.V. would not even allow the group to be described as “controversial,” although this would certainly appear to be an appropriate – if mild – term. Tablighi Jamaat is opposed to Muslims mixing with non-Muslims, and wants to separate their flock from Jews and Christians by – according to one of their advocates in Britain – creating, “such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta.”
Ten years ago, we would have laughed at a comedy sketch in which people were banned from describing hate mongers as “controversial.” We would have laughed at a sketch of a student being arrested for calling a horse “gay.” The lunacy of it all seems so Monty Python or Spitting Image, yet this is the reality of modern Britain.
But I wonder if bawdy, rowdy humor is not now being confined to the past, and along with it an entire way of thinking, and an effective weapon that has proved the best defense of common sense and ordinary people. Gone, it seems, is the type of politician that was feisty and unapologetic in the pursuit of liberty. Contrast Churchill – drinker, cigar smoker, and a man with a quick wit and sharp tongue – with those who embody modern politics – Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Ken Livingstone, Tony Blair, or David Cameron – and one cannot help but feel that the future of Britain may be no laughing matter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3220
Modern Britain: No Laughing Matter
By A. Millar
Created 2008-05-01 09:03
Earlier generations of Britons believed that certain things simply could not happen in Britain. Even in the country’s darkest moments of war or depression, this conviction differentiated the then proud nation from the U.S.S.R., third world countries, and unstable regimes that might fall to dictatorship any moment. News blackouts, and the banning of a book or film of course occurred here or there, but these never seemed very serious events.
When the Thatcher government banned the sale of the novel, Spycatcher, in Britain, it was smuggled into the country from abroad, and reported in the press despite legal challenges. Humor was the public’s usual way of dealing with such things, and the banning of a book that most people could get ahold of, turned politics into a laughing stock. And not for the first or last time either. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, when Oswald Moseley’s “black shirt” fascists were parading through London, Lady Astor commented that if they should ever gain power the British people would die laughing. How prophetic this was. A few years later Charlie Chaplin denounced and mocked the Nazis in his film, The Great Dictator, even as prime minister Neville Chamberlain sort to win “peace for our time” by appeasing Hitler.
In the 1980s and early 1990s the satirical puppet show, Spitting Image, which mocked the politicians of the time, became a staple of television viewing, even for those who generally did not like television that much. The puppets were grotesque, but politics at that time – and before that time – was raw, unscripted. Thatcher, like other leaders, spoke from the gut as well as the brain, and the picture was not always pretty, but it was human, and it represented the British people. In an excellent op-ed piece for The Daily Mail recently, Lord Tebbit – Thatcher’s once right-hand man – spoke of his love for his puppet-portrayal as a “leather-clad bovver boy,” his dismay at the banal, politically correct, mainstream parties who seem indistinguishable from one another, and constant political failings that are, “so ridiculous that it is beyond satire.”
Political correctness has cowed society and politics, and trodden down common sense and humor. Unlike the defiant, bawdy Brit of the past, today he thinks before he speaks, running through the list of forbidden words, and making sure not to let one slip. And so much now is taboo. The English Democrats Party is under investigation for racism, for using the term, “tartan tax,” a student was arrested for calling a police horse “gay,” and, if you need to see the proof of such extreme “politically correct” intolerance, a Youtube video showing a young man being arrested for singing, “I’d rather wear a turban” (deemed racist by the arresting officer), can be seen here.
A common language is one of the traditional, defining marks of a nation, and the criminalization of words will have a very profound consequence for the British. Though rarely acknowledged as such, humor is another defining mark, and one that makes use of the nation’s language in particular ways that relies on the audience having a good general knowledge of culture, history, and politics. Notably, Voltaire once commented that tragedies could be translated from one tongue to another, but that comedies could not. Anyone wishing to grasp the English comedy would need to, “spend three years in London, to make yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse every night,” he suggested.
Political correctness has changed British politics and society, the latter of which has been famed for its ability to laugh at itself – an ability that has certainly helped to keep it free and democratic. Extremists – whether of the fascist, politically correct, or Islamic type – are united in their suspicion – even rejection – of humor. Humor shows them for what they really are. When the “Mohammed cartoons” provoked riots and death threats by Islamic radicals, Jack Straw could only remark,
I said at the time that the cartoons were reprinted in Europe – though not here in the United Kingdom – that doing so was needlessly insensitive and disrespectful. The right to freedom of expression is a broad one and something which this country has long held dear. […] But the existence of such a right does not mean that it is right – morally right, politically right, socially right – to exercise that freedom without regard to the feelings of others.
With those words Straw beheads the figure of humor before our eyes, in order to appease those who might be offended. Not every Muslim is humorless, of course, and in the U.S., for example, there is a comedy show called “Allah made me funny,” with Muslim comedians who are able to poke fun at themselves. The show was the initiative of Preacher Moss, who wanted to bridge the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims after 9/11. Yet in Britain we see that appeasement has become de facto policy of the “liberal” media, with various controversial words or subjects banned. Ben Elton – a comedian and author once noted for his staunchly Left-wing politics – recently accused the B.B.C. of being too “scared” to poke fun at radical Islam, noting that he was even told not to use the entirely innocuous phrase, “Mohammed came to the mountain” apparently for fear of the consequences.
A few days ago, it emerged that the B.B.C. and rival television broadcaster I.T.V. insisted that the Christian Choice political party make changes to the language of its electoral broadcast concerning their opposition to the building of Europe’s largest mosque in London. The party had described Tablighi Jamaat, the group behind its planning, as “separatist,” and noted that some “moderate Muslims” were against the mega-mosque. But the B.B.C. was worried, and insisted the group be described as “controversial” instead. And, it disallowed the term “moderate Muslims” as it implied that Tablighi Jamaat was not moderate. I.T.V. would not even allow the group to be described as “controversial,” although this would certainly appear to be an appropriate – if mild – term. Tablighi Jamaat is opposed to Muslims mixing with non-Muslims, and wants to separate their flock from Jews and Christians by – according to one of their advocates in Britain – creating, “such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta.”
Ten years ago, we would have laughed at a comedy sketch in which people were banned from describing hate mongers as “controversial.” We would have laughed at a sketch of a student being arrested for calling a horse “gay.” The lunacy of it all seems so Monty Python or Spitting Image, yet this is the reality of modern Britain.
But I wonder if bawdy, rowdy humor is not now being confined to the past, and along with it an entire way of thinking, and an effective weapon that has proved the best defense of common sense and ordinary people. Gone, it seems, is the type of politician that was feisty and unapologetic in the pursuit of liberty. Contrast Churchill – drinker, cigar smoker, and a man with a quick wit and sharp tongue – with those who embody modern politics – Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Ken Livingstone, Tony Blair, or David Cameron – and one cannot help but feel that the future of Britain may be no laughing matter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3220
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
An Anatomy of Surrender
Bruce Bawer
An Anatomy of Surrender
Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.
Spring 2008
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2567
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÂmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission.
The Western media are in the driver’s seat on this road to sharia. Often their approach is to argue that we’re the bad guys. After the late Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim Fortuyn sounded the alarm about the danger that Europe’s Islamization posed to democracy, elite journalists labeled him a threat. A New York Times headline described him as marching the dutch to the right. Dutch newspapers Het Parool and De Volkskrant compared him with Mussolini; Trouw likened him to Hitler. The man (a multiculturalist, not a Muslim) who murdered him in May 2002 seemed to echo such verdicts when explaining his motive: Fortuyn’s views on Islam, the killer insisted, were “dangerous.”
Perhaps no Western media outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion more regularly than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester’s top imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death penalty for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock—and the BBC, in a dispatch headlined imam accused of “gay death” slur, spun the controversy as an effort by Casson to discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its story with comments from an Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who equated Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality with those of “other orthodox religions, such as Catholicism” and complained that focusing on the issue was “part of demonizing Muslims.”
In June 2005, the BBC aired the documentary Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which sought to portray concerns about Islamic radicalism as overblown. This “stunning whitewash of radical Islam,” as Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson put it, “helped keep the British public fast asleep, a few weeks before the bombs went off in London subways and buses” in July 2005. In December 2007, it emerged that five of the documentary’s subjects, served up on the show as examples of innocuous Muslims-next-door, had been charged in those terrorist attacks—and that BBC producers, though aware of their involvement after the attacks took place, had not reported important information about them to the police.
Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic. When the Mohammed cartoons—published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to defy rising self-censorship after van Gogh’s murder—were answered by worldwide violence, only one major American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined such European dailies as Die Welt and El País in reprinting them as a gesture of free-speech solidarity. Editors who refused to run the images claimed that their motive was multicultural respect for Islam. Critic Christopher Hitchens believed otherwise, writing that he “knew quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for ‘restraint’ was simple fear.” Exemplifying the new dhimmitude, whatever its motivation, was Norway’s leading cartoonist, Finn Graff, who had often depicted Israelis as Nazis, but who now vowed not to draw anything that might provoke Muslim wrath. (On a positive note, this February, over a dozen Danish newspapers, joined by a number of other papers around the world, reprinted one of the original cartoons as a free-speech gesture after the arrest of three people accused of plotting to kill the artist.)
Last year brought another cartoon crisis—this time over Swedish artist Lars Vilks’s drawings of Mohammed as a dog, which ambassadors from Muslim countries used as an excuse to demand speech limits in Sweden. CNN reporter Paula Newton suggested that perhaps “Vilks should have known better” because of the Jyllands-Posten incident—as if people who make art should naturally take their marching orders from people who make death threats. Meanwhile, The Economist depicted Vilks as an eccentric who shouldn’t be taken “too seriously” and noted approvingly that Sweden’s prime minister, unlike Denmark’s, invited the ambassadors “in for a chat.”
The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.
When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views.
After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”
So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are “moderate” (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn’t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are “Islamophobes.”
The entertainment industry has been nearly as appalling. During World War II, Hollywood churned out scores of films that served the war effort, but today’s movies and TV shows, with very few exceptions, either tiptoe around Islam or whitewash it. In the whitewash category were two sitcoms that debuted in 2007, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Little Mosque on the Prairie and CW’s Aliens in America. Both shows are about Muslims confronting anti-Muslim bigotry; both take it for granted that there’s no fundamentalist Islam problem in the West, but only an anti-Islam problem.
Muslim pressure groups have actively tried to keep movies and TV shows from portraying Islam as anything but a Religion of Peace. For example, the Council for American-Islamic Relations successfully lobbied Paramount Pictures to change the bad guys in The Sum of All Fears (2002) from Islamist terrorists to neo-Nazis, while Fox’s popular series 24, after Muslims complained about a story line depicting Islamic terrorists, ran cringe-worthy public-service announcements emphasizing how nonviolent Islam was. Earlier this year, Iranian-Danish actor Farshad Kholghi noted that, despite the cartoon controversy’s overwhelming impact on Denmark, “not a single movie has been made about the crisis, not a single play, not a single stand-up monologue.” Which, of course, is exactly what the cartoon jihadists wanted.
In April 2006, an episode of the animated series South Park admirably mocked the wave of self-censorship that followed the Jyllands-Posten crisis—but Comedy Central censored it, replacing an image of Mohammed with a black screen and an explanatory notice. According to series producer Anne Garefino, network executives frankly admitted that they were acting out of fear. “We were happy,” she told an interviewer, “that they didn’t try to claim that it was because of religious tolerance.”
Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”
Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel rape in Oslo by exhorting women to “realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
More recently, high-profile Europe experts Ian Buruma of Bard College and Timothy Garton Ash of Oxford, while furiously denying that they advocate cultural surrender, have embraced “accommodation,” which sounds like a distinction without a difference. In his book Murder in Amsterdam, Buruma approvingly quotes Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen’s call for “accommodation with the Muslims,” including those “who consciously discriminate against their women.” Sharia enshrines a Muslim man’s right to beat and rape his wife, to force marriages on his daughters, and to kill them if they resist. One wonders what female Muslims who immigrated to Europe to escape such barbarity think of this prescription.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and one of Britain’s best-known public intellectuals, suggested in February the institution of a parallel system of sharia law in Britain. Since the Islamic Sharia Council already adjudicates Muslim marriages and divorces in the U.K., what Williams was proposing was, as he put it, “a much enhanced and quite sophisticated version of such a body, with increased resources.” Gratifyingly, his proposal, short on specifics and long on academic doublespeak (“I don’t think,” he told the BBC, “that we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights, simply because it doesn’t immediately fit with how we understand it”) was greeted with public outrage.
Another prominent accommodationist is humanities professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, author of an August 2007 essay in the New York Times Magazine so long and languorous, and written with such perfect academic dispassion, that many readers may have finished it without realizing that it charted a path leading straight to sharia. Muslims’ “full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected,” Lilla wrote. For the West, “coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle.”
Revealing in this light is Buruma’s and Garton Ash’s treatment of author Ayaan Hirsi Ali—perhaps the greatest living champion of Western freedom in the face of creeping jihad—and of the Europe-based Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan. Because Hirsi Ali refuses to compromise on liberty, Garton Ash has called her a “simplistic . . . Enlightenment fundamentalist”—thus implicitly equating her with the Muslim fundamentalists who have threatened to kill her—while Buruma, in several New York Times pieces, has portrayed her as a petulant naif. (Both men have lately backed off somewhat.) On the other hand, the professors have rhapsodized over Ramadan’s supposed brilliance. They aren’t alone: though he’s clearly not the Westernized, urbane intellectual he seems to be—he refuses to condemn the stoning of adulteresses and clearly looks forward to a Europe under sharia—this grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and protégé of Islamist scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi regularly wins praise in bien-pensant circles as representing the best hope for long-term concord between Western Muslims and non-Muslims.
This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”
With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”
The UN’s position on the question of speech versus “respect” for Islam was clear—and utterly at odds with its founding value of promoting human rights. “You don’t joke about other people’s religion,” Kofi Annan lectured soon after the Magazinet incident, echoing the sermons of innumerable imams, “and you must respect what is holy for other people.” In October 2006, at a UN panel discussion called “Cartooning for Peace,” Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor proposed drawing “a very thin blue UN line . . . between freedom and responsibility.” (Americans might be forgiven for wondering whether that line would strike through the First Amendment.) And in 2007, the UN’s Human Rights Council passed a Pakistani motion prohibiting defamation of religion.
Other Western government leaders have promoted the expansion of the Dar al-Islam. In September 2006, when philosophy teacher Robert Redeker went into hiding after receiving death threats over a Le Figaro op-ed on Islam, France’s then–prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, commented that “everyone has the right to express their opinions freely—at the same time that they respect others, of course.” The lesson of the Redeker affair, he said, was “how vigilant we must be to ensure that people fully respect one another in our society.” Villepin got a run for his money last year from his Swedish counterpart, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who, after meeting with Muslim ambassadors to discuss the Vilks cartoons, won praise from one of them, Algeria’s Merzak Bedjaoui, for his “spirit of appeasement.”
When, years after September 11, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged publicly that the West was at war with Islamic fascism, Muslims’ and multiculturalists’ furious reaction made him retreat to the empty term “war on terror.” Britain’s Foreign Office has since deemed even that phrase offensive and banned its use by cabinet members (along with “Islamic extremism”). In January, the Home Office decided that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be described as “anti-Islamic activity.”
Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the “spirit of appeasement.” In 2005, Norway’s parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country’s most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it’s arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society’s norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman’s request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her.
Those who dare to defy the West’s new sharia-based strictures and speak their minds now risk prosecution in some countries. In 2006, legendary author Oriana Fallaci, dying of cancer, went on trial in Italy for slurring Islam; three years earlier, she had defended herself in a French court against a similar charge. (Fallaci was ultimately found not guilty in both cases.) More recently, Canadian provinces ordered publisher Ezra Levant and journalist Mark Steyn to face human rights tribunals, the former for reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the latter for writing critically about Islam in Maclean’s.
Even as Western authorities have hassled Islam’s critics, they’ve honored jihadists and their supporters. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth knighted Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a man who had called for the death of Salman Rushdie. Also that year, London mayor Ken Livingstone ludicrously praised Qaradawi as “progressive”—and, in response to gay activists who pointed out that Qaradawi had defended the death penalty for homosexuals, issued a dissertation-length dossier whitewashing the Sunni scholar and trying to blacken the activists’ reputations. Of all the West’s leaders, however, few can hold a candle to Piet Hein Donner, who in 2006, as Dutch minister of justice, said that if voters wanted to bring sharia to the Netherlands—where Muslims will soon be a majority in major cities—“it would be a disgrace to say, ‘This is not permitted!’ ”
If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved.
Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has noted that in 2006, when 17 terrorists were arrested in Toronto on the verge of giving Canada “its own 9/11,” “the police did not mention that it had anything to do with Islam or Muslims, not a word.” When, after van Gogh’s murder, a Rotterdam artist drew a street mural featuring an angel and the words thou shalt not kill, police, fearing Muslim displeasure, destroyed the mural (and a videotape of its destruction). In July 2007, a planned TV appeal by British cops to help capture a Muslim rapist was canceled to avoid “racist backlash.” And in August, the Times of London reported that “Asian” men (British code for “Muslims”) in the U.K. were having sex with perhaps hundreds of “white girls as young as twelve”—but that authorities wouldn’t take action for fear of “upsetting race relations.” Typically, neither the Times nor government officials acknowledged that the “Asian” men’s contempt for the “white” girls was a matter not of race but of religion.
Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)
Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.
The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively—and some, approvingly—while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.
But we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves.
Bruce Bawer is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. He blogs at BruceBawer.com.
An Anatomy of Surrender
Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia.
Spring 2008
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2567
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÂmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission.
The Western media are in the driver’s seat on this road to sharia. Often their approach is to argue that we’re the bad guys. After the late Dutch sociologist-turned-politician Pim Fortuyn sounded the alarm about the danger that Europe’s Islamization posed to democracy, elite journalists labeled him a threat. A New York Times headline described him as marching the dutch to the right. Dutch newspapers Het Parool and De Volkskrant compared him with Mussolini; Trouw likened him to Hitler. The man (a multiculturalist, not a Muslim) who murdered him in May 2002 seemed to echo such verdicts when explaining his motive: Fortuyn’s views on Islam, the killer insisted, were “dangerous.”
Perhaps no Western media outlet has exhibited this habit of moral inversion more regularly than the BBC. In 2006, to take a typical example, Manchester’s top imam told psychotherapist John Casson that he supported the death penalty for homosexuality. Casson expressed shock—and the BBC, in a dispatch headlined imam accused of “gay death” slur, spun the controversy as an effort by Casson to discredit Islam. The BBC concluded its story with comments from an Islamic Human Rights Commission spokesman, who equated Muslim attitudes toward homosexuality with those of “other orthodox religions, such as Catholicism” and complained that focusing on the issue was “part of demonizing Muslims.”
In June 2005, the BBC aired the documentary Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, which sought to portray concerns about Islamic radicalism as overblown. This “stunning whitewash of radical Islam,” as Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson put it, “helped keep the British public fast asleep, a few weeks before the bombs went off in London subways and buses” in July 2005. In December 2007, it emerged that five of the documentary’s subjects, served up on the show as examples of innocuous Muslims-next-door, had been charged in those terrorist attacks—and that BBC producers, though aware of their involvement after the attacks took place, had not reported important information about them to the police.
Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic. When the Mohammed cartoons—published in September 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten to defy rising self-censorship after van Gogh’s murder—were answered by worldwide violence, only one major American newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined such European dailies as Die Welt and El País in reprinting them as a gesture of free-speech solidarity. Editors who refused to run the images claimed that their motive was multicultural respect for Islam. Critic Christopher Hitchens believed otherwise, writing that he “knew quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for ‘restraint’ was simple fear.” Exemplifying the new dhimmitude, whatever its motivation, was Norway’s leading cartoonist, Finn Graff, who had often depicted Israelis as Nazis, but who now vowed not to draw anything that might provoke Muslim wrath. (On a positive note, this February, over a dozen Danish newspapers, joined by a number of other papers around the world, reprinted one of the original cartoons as a free-speech gesture after the arrest of three people accused of plotting to kill the artist.)
Last year brought another cartoon crisis—this time over Swedish artist Lars Vilks’s drawings of Mohammed as a dog, which ambassadors from Muslim countries used as an excuse to demand speech limits in Sweden. CNN reporter Paula Newton suggested that perhaps “Vilks should have known better” because of the Jyllands-Posten incident—as if people who make art should naturally take their marching orders from people who make death threats. Meanwhile, The Economist depicted Vilks as an eccentric who shouldn’t be taken “too seriously” and noted approvingly that Sweden’s prime minister, unlike Denmark’s, invited the ambassadors “in for a chat.”
The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.
When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views.
After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”
So it goes in this upside-down, not-so-brave new media world: those who, if given the power, would subjugate infidels, oppress women, and execute apostates and homosexuals are “moderate” (a moderate, these days, apparently being anybody who doesn’t have explosives strapped to his body), while those who dare to call a spade a spade are “Islamophobes.”
The entertainment industry has been nearly as appalling. During World War II, Hollywood churned out scores of films that served the war effort, but today’s movies and TV shows, with very few exceptions, either tiptoe around Islam or whitewash it. In the whitewash category were two sitcoms that debuted in 2007, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Little Mosque on the Prairie and CW’s Aliens in America. Both shows are about Muslims confronting anti-Muslim bigotry; both take it for granted that there’s no fundamentalist Islam problem in the West, but only an anti-Islam problem.
Muslim pressure groups have actively tried to keep movies and TV shows from portraying Islam as anything but a Religion of Peace. For example, the Council for American-Islamic Relations successfully lobbied Paramount Pictures to change the bad guys in The Sum of All Fears (2002) from Islamist terrorists to neo-Nazis, while Fox’s popular series 24, after Muslims complained about a story line depicting Islamic terrorists, ran cringe-worthy public-service announcements emphasizing how nonviolent Islam was. Earlier this year, Iranian-Danish actor Farshad Kholghi noted that, despite the cartoon controversy’s overwhelming impact on Denmark, “not a single movie has been made about the crisis, not a single play, not a single stand-up monologue.” Which, of course, is exactly what the cartoon jihadists wanted.
In April 2006, an episode of the animated series South Park admirably mocked the wave of self-censorship that followed the Jyllands-Posten crisis—but Comedy Central censored it, replacing an image of Mohammed with a black screen and an explanatory notice. According to series producer Anne Garefino, network executives frankly admitted that they were acting out of fear. “We were happy,” she told an interviewer, “that they didn’t try to claim that it was because of religious tolerance.”
Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”
Leading liberal intellectuals and academics have shown a striking willingness to betray liberal values when it comes to pacifying Muslims. Back in 2001, Unni Wikan, a distinguished Norwegian cultural anthropologist and Islam expert, responded to the high rate of Muslim-on-infidel rape in Oslo by exhorting women to “realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”
More recently, high-profile Europe experts Ian Buruma of Bard College and Timothy Garton Ash of Oxford, while furiously denying that they advocate cultural surrender, have embraced “accommodation,” which sounds like a distinction without a difference. In his book Murder in Amsterdam, Buruma approvingly quotes Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen’s call for “accommodation with the Muslims,” including those “who consciously discriminate against their women.” Sharia enshrines a Muslim man’s right to beat and rape his wife, to force marriages on his daughters, and to kill them if they resist. One wonders what female Muslims who immigrated to Europe to escape such barbarity think of this prescription.
Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and one of Britain’s best-known public intellectuals, suggested in February the institution of a parallel system of sharia law in Britain. Since the Islamic Sharia Council already adjudicates Muslim marriages and divorces in the U.K., what Williams was proposing was, as he put it, “a much enhanced and quite sophisticated version of such a body, with increased resources.” Gratifyingly, his proposal, short on specifics and long on academic doublespeak (“I don’t think,” he told the BBC, “that we should instantly spring to the conclusion that the whole of that world of jurisprudence and practice is somehow monstrously incompatible with human rights, simply because it doesn’t immediately fit with how we understand it”) was greeted with public outrage.
Another prominent accommodationist is humanities professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, author of an August 2007 essay in the New York Times Magazine so long and languorous, and written with such perfect academic dispassion, that many readers may have finished it without realizing that it charted a path leading straight to sharia. Muslims’ “full reconciliation with modern liberal democracy cannot be expected,” Lilla wrote. For the West, “coping is the order of the day, not defending high principle.”
Revealing in this light is Buruma’s and Garton Ash’s treatment of author Ayaan Hirsi Ali—perhaps the greatest living champion of Western freedom in the face of creeping jihad—and of the Europe-based Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan. Because Hirsi Ali refuses to compromise on liberty, Garton Ash has called her a “simplistic . . . Enlightenment fundamentalist”—thus implicitly equating her with the Muslim fundamentalists who have threatened to kill her—while Buruma, in several New York Times pieces, has portrayed her as a petulant naif. (Both men have lately backed off somewhat.) On the other hand, the professors have rhapsodized over Ramadan’s supposed brilliance. They aren’t alone: though he’s clearly not the Westernized, urbane intellectual he seems to be—he refuses to condemn the stoning of adulteresses and clearly looks forward to a Europe under sharia—this grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and protégé of Islamist scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi regularly wins praise in bien-pensant circles as representing the best hope for long-term concord between Western Muslims and non-Muslims.
This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”
With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”
The UN’s position on the question of speech versus “respect” for Islam was clear—and utterly at odds with its founding value of promoting human rights. “You don’t joke about other people’s religion,” Kofi Annan lectured soon after the Magazinet incident, echoing the sermons of innumerable imams, “and you must respect what is holy for other people.” In October 2006, at a UN panel discussion called “Cartooning for Peace,” Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor proposed drawing “a very thin blue UN line . . . between freedom and responsibility.” (Americans might be forgiven for wondering whether that line would strike through the First Amendment.) And in 2007, the UN’s Human Rights Council passed a Pakistani motion prohibiting defamation of religion.
Other Western government leaders have promoted the expansion of the Dar al-Islam. In September 2006, when philosophy teacher Robert Redeker went into hiding after receiving death threats over a Le Figaro op-ed on Islam, France’s then–prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, commented that “everyone has the right to express their opinions freely—at the same time that they respect others, of course.” The lesson of the Redeker affair, he said, was “how vigilant we must be to ensure that people fully respect one another in our society.” Villepin got a run for his money last year from his Swedish counterpart, Fredrik Reinfeldt, who, after meeting with Muslim ambassadors to discuss the Vilks cartoons, won praise from one of them, Algeria’s Merzak Bedjaoui, for his “spirit of appeasement.”
When, years after September 11, President George W. Bush finally acknowledged publicly that the West was at war with Islamic fascism, Muslims’ and multiculturalists’ furious reaction made him retreat to the empty term “war on terror.” Britain’s Foreign Office has since deemed even that phrase offensive and banned its use by cabinet members (along with “Islamic extremism”). In January, the Home Office decided that Islamic terrorism would henceforth be described as “anti-Islamic activity.”
Western legislatures and courts have reinforced the “spirit of appeasement.” In 2005, Norway’s parliament, with virtually no public discussion or media coverage, criminalized religious insults (and placed the burden of proof on the defendant). Last year, that country’s most celebrated lawyer, Tor Erling Staff, argued that the punishment for honor killing should be less than for other murders, because it’s arrogant for us to expect Muslim men to conform to our society’s norms. Also in 2007, in one of several instances in which magistrates sworn to uphold German law have followed sharia instead, a Frankfurt judge rejected a Muslim woman’s request for a quick divorce from her brutally abusive husband; after all, under the Koran he had the right to beat her.
Those who dare to defy the West’s new sharia-based strictures and speak their minds now risk prosecution in some countries. In 2006, legendary author Oriana Fallaci, dying of cancer, went on trial in Italy for slurring Islam; three years earlier, she had defended herself in a French court against a similar charge. (Fallaci was ultimately found not guilty in both cases.) More recently, Canadian provinces ordered publisher Ezra Levant and journalist Mark Steyn to face human rights tribunals, the former for reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, the latter for writing critically about Islam in Maclean’s.
Even as Western authorities have hassled Islam’s critics, they’ve honored jihadists and their supporters. In 2005, Queen Elizabeth knighted Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a man who had called for the death of Salman Rushdie. Also that year, London mayor Ken Livingstone ludicrously praised Qaradawi as “progressive”—and, in response to gay activists who pointed out that Qaradawi had defended the death penalty for homosexuals, issued a dissertation-length dossier whitewashing the Sunni scholar and trying to blacken the activists’ reputations. Of all the West’s leaders, however, few can hold a candle to Piet Hein Donner, who in 2006, as Dutch minister of justice, said that if voters wanted to bring sharia to the Netherlands—where Muslims will soon be a majority in major cities—“it would be a disgrace to say, ‘This is not permitted!’ ”
If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved.
Canadian Muslim reformist Irshad Manji has noted that in 2006, when 17 terrorists were arrested in Toronto on the verge of giving Canada “its own 9/11,” “the police did not mention that it had anything to do with Islam or Muslims, not a word.” When, after van Gogh’s murder, a Rotterdam artist drew a street mural featuring an angel and the words thou shalt not kill, police, fearing Muslim displeasure, destroyed the mural (and a videotape of its destruction). In July 2007, a planned TV appeal by British cops to help capture a Muslim rapist was canceled to avoid “racist backlash.” And in August, the Times of London reported that “Asian” men (British code for “Muslims”) in the U.K. were having sex with perhaps hundreds of “white girls as young as twelve”—but that authorities wouldn’t take action for fear of “upsetting race relations.” Typically, neither the Times nor government officials acknowledged that the “Asian” men’s contempt for the “white” girls was a matter not of race but of religion.
Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)
Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures.
The key question for Westerners is: Do we love our freedoms as much as they hate them? Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled. As for Muslims living in the West, surveys suggest that many of them, though not actively involved in jihad, are prepared to look on passively—and some, approvingly—while their coreligionists drag the Western world into the House of Submission.
But we certainly can’t expect them to take a stand for liberty if we don’t stand up for it ourselves.
Bruce Bawer is the author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. He blogs at BruceBawer.com.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
CRIMINALITY OR JIHAD
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020797.php
Fitzgerald: Criminality or jihad?
"I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine," he said. "But adding the word 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' certainly doesn't help our cause as Americans. It's counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total, in a very negative way. And certainly that's not something that we want to do." -- from this article
Criminality is the work of individuals, who break the law because they feel like it. It is prompted not by ideology, but rather by what has prompted criminal activity since the beginning of time.
Terrorism by Muslims is quite different. It can be the act of a collective, of Muslims acting in concert, and supported financially and morally by other Muslims who may prefer to participate in violent Jihad indirectly -- the better, for example, to participate in other, non-violent, but just as dangerous and possibly more effective methods of Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam. Where an individual Muslim may be acting, he is doing so not on his own behalf, not to enrich himself, but to further what he has learned -- and learned from the texts, not mistranslated and not misunderstood, of Islam itself: Quran, Hadith, and Sira.
Furthermore, it is important that Infidels understand that they are having war made upon them, and that the war is not limited to what non-Muslims correctly identify as "terrorism." Rather, many or most Muslims are easily persuaded that it is not terrorism at all, but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority -- so unfair! -- and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of "equalizing," of leveling the grimmest of playing-fields.
It is important to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism," if the only alternative is "terrorism." But it would be most helpful to speak and write of Jihad, to explain what Jihad means -- what it means and has meant to Muslims over the past 1350 years, and to quickly get over the ludicrous business of those who pretend the word's main meaning is something about an interior struggle to maintain a virtuous life, or somesuch variant.
Why is it important to use the word "Jihad"? Because emphasis, exaggerated emphasis, on "terrorism" makes people pay no attention to much more effective and dangerous instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa aimed at the psychically and economically marginal, and demographic conquest. The latter is especially worrisome. Consider the Netherlands, where there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 800,000 in 2004, and over a million today.
It is unfortunate that none of the political leaders in the West, and few in the press, radio, television, feel they have a responsibility to learn the contents of Islam, or to learn something of the history of Islamic conquest, and subjugation of non-Muslims, over the past 1350 years. A great deal could be learned. It requires some effort and some time, and nowadays how many, in the class of people whose responsibility it is to protect and instruct us, would take that time, and make that effort?
The answer is: very few.
And we will all pay. We have already paid in the countries of Western Europe -- in Great Britain and France, in Germany and Spain, in Belgium and Italy and the Netherlands and Denmark and Norway and Sweden. We have all paid and will be grimly paying for the fact that the political and media elites were so criminally negligent over the past 35 years as Muslim immigrants by the millions were allowed in and given every conceivable benefit, and allowed to build mosques and madrasas. They were allowed to settle in without anyone questioning what this meant, what Islam was all about, and whether or not the "problems" -- as they are demurely called -- with Muslim migrants were merely, as some continue to pretend, the same problems that all immigrants experience or present, or whether there was something about that "problem" that had to do with the nature of Islam as a Total Belief-System. That Total Belief-System is inculcated with a brainwashing, and reinforced at every level, in states, societies, communities, even families suffused with Islam. That explains why, in every Infidel land, no matter what its makeup or what its politics or what the attitude of its citizens, the same problems are posed by one particular group of immigrants and by no other group -- not by Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists, not by Caribbean blacks, nor by non-Muslim blacks from sub-Saharan Africa, not by Mexicans, not by Central Americans, not by Andean Indians, not by any group at all. But they are posed by Muslims, to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, wherever they come from.
And that is the fix that Western Europe, and therefore the historic West, is now in. It was a problem that, had the handful of cassandras -- see for example the writings of Jacques Ellul -- been heeded, could have been avoided. Entirely manageable once, it is manageable -- with great difficulty – today.
But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
Fitzgerald: Criminality or jihad?
"I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine," he said. "But adding the word 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' certainly doesn't help our cause as Americans. It's counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total, in a very negative way. And certainly that's not something that we want to do." -- from this article
Criminality is the work of individuals, who break the law because they feel like it. It is prompted not by ideology, but rather by what has prompted criminal activity since the beginning of time.
Terrorism by Muslims is quite different. It can be the act of a collective, of Muslims acting in concert, and supported financially and morally by other Muslims who may prefer to participate in violent Jihad indirectly -- the better, for example, to participate in other, non-violent, but just as dangerous and possibly more effective methods of Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and dominance, of Islam. Where an individual Muslim may be acting, he is doing so not on his own behalf, not to enrich himself, but to further what he has learned -- and learned from the texts, not mistranslated and not misunderstood, of Islam itself: Quran, Hadith, and Sira.
Furthermore, it is important that Infidels understand that they are having war made upon them, and that the war is not limited to what non-Muslims correctly identify as "terrorism." Rather, many or most Muslims are easily persuaded that it is not terrorism at all, but rather a form of qitaal, or combat, simply updated to meet modern conditions, where the Infidels have military superiority -- so unfair! -- and bombs in restaurants and on busses and planes smashed into buildings is merely a form of "equalizing," of leveling the grimmest of playing-fields.
It is important to use the phrase "Islamic terrorism," if the only alternative is "terrorism." But it would be most helpful to speak and write of Jihad, to explain what Jihad means -- what it means and has meant to Muslims over the past 1350 years, and to quickly get over the ludicrous business of those who pretend the word's main meaning is something about an interior struggle to maintain a virtuous life, or somesuch variant.
Why is it important to use the word "Jihad"? Because emphasis, exaggerated emphasis, on "terrorism" makes people pay no attention to much more effective and dangerous instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa aimed at the psychically and economically marginal, and demographic conquest. The latter is especially worrisome. Consider the Netherlands, where there were 1,500 Muslims in 1960, 15,000 in 1970, 800,000 in 2004, and over a million today.
It is unfortunate that none of the political leaders in the West, and few in the press, radio, television, feel they have a responsibility to learn the contents of Islam, or to learn something of the history of Islamic conquest, and subjugation of non-Muslims, over the past 1350 years. A great deal could be learned. It requires some effort and some time, and nowadays how many, in the class of people whose responsibility it is to protect and instruct us, would take that time, and make that effort?
The answer is: very few.
And we will all pay. We have already paid in the countries of Western Europe -- in Great Britain and France, in Germany and Spain, in Belgium and Italy and the Netherlands and Denmark and Norway and Sweden. We have all paid and will be grimly paying for the fact that the political and media elites were so criminally negligent over the past 35 years as Muslim immigrants by the millions were allowed in and given every conceivable benefit, and allowed to build mosques and madrasas. They were allowed to settle in without anyone questioning what this meant, what Islam was all about, and whether or not the "problems" -- as they are demurely called -- with Muslim migrants were merely, as some continue to pretend, the same problems that all immigrants experience or present, or whether there was something about that "problem" that had to do with the nature of Islam as a Total Belief-System. That Total Belief-System is inculcated with a brainwashing, and reinforced at every level, in states, societies, communities, even families suffused with Islam. That explains why, in every Infidel land, no matter what its makeup or what its politics or what the attitude of its citizens, the same problems are posed by one particular group of immigrants and by no other group -- not by Chinese, Hindus, Vietnamese Buddhists, not by Caribbean blacks, nor by non-Muslim blacks from sub-Saharan Africa, not by Mexicans, not by Central Americans, not by Andean Indians, not by any group at all. But they are posed by Muslims, to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, wherever they come from.
And that is the fix that Western Europe, and therefore the historic West, is now in. It was a problem that, had the handful of cassandras -- see for example the writings of Jacques Ellul -- been heeded, could have been avoided. Entirely manageable once, it is manageable -- with great difficulty – today.
But it is manageable only if Muslim migration is halted, and funds from Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states are prevented from being used to build up a fifth column within the Infidel lands through mosques, madrasas, propaganda, and armies of Western hirelings, some of them merely venal, some of them something worse, all of them traitors to the West, who deserve to be seen, and to be treated, as we would have treated those who were in the pay of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
For St Georges day
Britishness and our Flag. 23.4.2008.
In this year of two-thousand and eight,
The EU flag has become a symbol of hate,
Given the same status as our own “Union Jack”,
Brought in by stealth- behind people’s back.
Year upon year, we watched with shame,
While a few British MP’s that thought the same
To ratify a Treaty quickly, was the race
For a political Union we should forever embrace.
In the UK Flag they wrapped themselves up,
And like Judas as he, from that cup did sup,
They called for “Britishness” to come to the fore,
Ere that Treaty once ratified, made it no more.
For shame now taint’s our once proud flag,
So still, no flight, for chastened, a rag,
For home-bred traitors lent their hand
Sing no British Anthem for that too was banned.
Yet privately and safely behind closed doors,
We celebrate all that we once had before,
Until the day comes, as surely it will,
We can proudly declare and we will fulfil
Our destiny once more, independent and free,
For that is all we ever wanted to be,
Proud to be British, embracing all,
Our Commonwealth friends, a welcoming call.
Our flag will flutter once more in the breeze,
Not still, nor close to the pole in shameful freeze
Only those that are true to Oath and Queen
Will understand what true freedom means.
So hoist your flag high this St George’s day,
Do not let anything get in its way,
Sing out our Anthem in voices loud,
Of all that is British once more be proud.
Posted by Anne Palmer on April 23, 2008 6:50 AM
In this year of two-thousand and eight,
The EU flag has become a symbol of hate,
Given the same status as our own “Union Jack”,
Brought in by stealth- behind people’s back.
Year upon year, we watched with shame,
While a few British MP’s that thought the same
To ratify a Treaty quickly, was the race
For a political Union we should forever embrace.
In the UK Flag they wrapped themselves up,
And like Judas as he, from that cup did sup,
They called for “Britishness” to come to the fore,
Ere that Treaty once ratified, made it no more.
For shame now taint’s our once proud flag,
So still, no flight, for chastened, a rag,
For home-bred traitors lent their hand
Sing no British Anthem for that too was banned.
Yet privately and safely behind closed doors,
We celebrate all that we once had before,
Until the day comes, as surely it will,
We can proudly declare and we will fulfil
Our destiny once more, independent and free,
For that is all we ever wanted to be,
Proud to be British, embracing all,
Our Commonwealth friends, a welcoming call.
Our flag will flutter once more in the breeze,
Not still, nor close to the pole in shameful freeze
Only those that are true to Oath and Queen
Will understand what true freedom means.
So hoist your flag high this St George’s day,
Do not let anything get in its way,
Sing out our Anthem in voices loud,
Of all that is British once more be proud.
Posted by Anne Palmer on April 23, 2008 6:50 AM
Monday, 21 April 2008
HANGING IS BACK
But not for serial killers, murderers, kiddy fiddlers, child murderers or traitors.
Its for political offenses.
http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/
Monday, April 21, 2008
Lisbon Treaty introduces EU-wide death penalty
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is no-one that Cranmer has ever heard of, but she is chair(wo)man of the German political party Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo). She spoke recently on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, and drew attention by analysis by one Professor Schachtschneider, who is also not someone with whom Cranmer is acquainted.
However, it appears that the Treaty of Lisbon reintroduces the death penalty in Europe, which Helga Zepp-LaRouche thinks is ‘very important’ (just a bit), ‘in light of the fact that Italy was trying to abandon the death penalty through the United Nations, forever. And this is not in the treaty, but in a footnote, because with the European Union reform treaty, we accept also the European Union Charter, which says that there is no death penalty, and then it has a footnote, which says, "except in the case of war, riots, upheaval"—then the death penalty is possible. Schachtschneider points to the fact that this is an outrage, because they put it in a footnote of a footnote, and you have to read it, like really like a super-expert to find out!’
Cranmer has not bothered to check this footnote to a footnote, not least because, although he has never heard of Helga Zepp-LaRouche or Professor Schachtschneider, he is inclined to trust them impeccably against the scheming and manipulating liars in Brussels.
Let us not forget that the Union is acquiring the legal authority to ‘provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies’, which means raising its ‘own resources’ to finance them, which may be regarded as conferring on it revenue-raising powers, which will eventually be subject to QMV instead of unanimity. But it may also be the authority to crush any opposition, especially that which does not accord with its ‘objectives’.
The European Union not only possesses such symbols of statehood as its own flag, anthem, motto and annual official holiday. It now has its own government, with a legislature, executive and judiciary, its own President, its own citizens and citizenship, its own human and civil rights code, its own currency, economic policy and revenue, its own international treaty-making powers, foreign policy, foreign minister, diplomatic corps and United Nations voice, its own crime and justice code and Public Prosecutor.
And the citizens of the Union now owe allegiance to that Union, and to its aims and ‘objectives’, even though no-one in the UK has any idea what these objectives may be.
But Cranmer thinks it noteworthy that the death penalty is reintroduced for political offences, even as vague and undefined as ‘unrest’, but not for serial killers, rapists, paedophiles or child murderers.
One wonders why…
posted by Cranmer at 7:23 AM
I personally am not surprised. Could this be the 4th Reich?
2010 dear readers, thats when the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified and become law.
After that, its not going to be nice for those who wont comply.
Comply, submit or die. The moslims would gladly support this.
Its for political offenses.
http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/
Monday, April 21, 2008
Lisbon Treaty introduces EU-wide death penalty
Helga Zepp-LaRouche is no-one that Cranmer has ever heard of, but she is chair(wo)man of the German political party Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo). She spoke recently on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, and drew attention by analysis by one Professor Schachtschneider, who is also not someone with whom Cranmer is acquainted.
However, it appears that the Treaty of Lisbon reintroduces the death penalty in Europe, which Helga Zepp-LaRouche thinks is ‘very important’ (just a bit), ‘in light of the fact that Italy was trying to abandon the death penalty through the United Nations, forever. And this is not in the treaty, but in a footnote, because with the European Union reform treaty, we accept also the European Union Charter, which says that there is no death penalty, and then it has a footnote, which says, "except in the case of war, riots, upheaval"—then the death penalty is possible. Schachtschneider points to the fact that this is an outrage, because they put it in a footnote of a footnote, and you have to read it, like really like a super-expert to find out!’
Cranmer has not bothered to check this footnote to a footnote, not least because, although he has never heard of Helga Zepp-LaRouche or Professor Schachtschneider, he is inclined to trust them impeccably against the scheming and manipulating liars in Brussels.
Let us not forget that the Union is acquiring the legal authority to ‘provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies’, which means raising its ‘own resources’ to finance them, which may be regarded as conferring on it revenue-raising powers, which will eventually be subject to QMV instead of unanimity. But it may also be the authority to crush any opposition, especially that which does not accord with its ‘objectives’.
The European Union not only possesses such symbols of statehood as its own flag, anthem, motto and annual official holiday. It now has its own government, with a legislature, executive and judiciary, its own President, its own citizens and citizenship, its own human and civil rights code, its own currency, economic policy and revenue, its own international treaty-making powers, foreign policy, foreign minister, diplomatic corps and United Nations voice, its own crime and justice code and Public Prosecutor.
And the citizens of the Union now owe allegiance to that Union, and to its aims and ‘objectives’, even though no-one in the UK has any idea what these objectives may be.
But Cranmer thinks it noteworthy that the death penalty is reintroduced for political offences, even as vague and undefined as ‘unrest’, but not for serial killers, rapists, paedophiles or child murderers.
One wonders why…
posted by Cranmer at 7:23 AM
I personally am not surprised. Could this be the 4th Reich?
2010 dear readers, thats when the Lisbon Treaty will be ratified and become law.
After that, its not going to be nice for those who wont comply.
Comply, submit or die. The moslims would gladly support this.
Sunday, 20 April 2008
FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3189
Forty Years On: Sleepwalking Toward the Tiber’s Edge
From the desk of A. Millar on Sun, 2008-04-20 08:35
Anyone who reads the British newspapers on a regular basis will have noticed an alarming repetition. The same few stories, with minor adjustments, seem to appear over and over again: youth violence, mass immigration, Islamic extremism, terrorists planning attacks, compensation and human rights for criminals, an apparent over-sensitivity to religious minorities and an apparent lack of sensitivity to those of the majority religion and ethnicities. Rather than telling the reader something new, news serves only to clarify what he already suspects. Persue readers’ comments and, unsurprisingly, more and more do you find expressions of genuine frustration and anger.
But these voices, which speak for so many, are not heard in parliament, nor does the public seem to make any demands on politicians. A march against war in a foreign country can amass thousands, and protests against China’s treatment of Tibet are frequent, but to defend one’s heritage or culture against erosion by political design, or to voice opposition to such a scale of immigration that one’s way of life is changed or threatened, is seen as potentially dangerous – the first step toward full-blown fascism. History repeats itself, yes; but history does not repeat itself as we might expect. Today, we are obsessively fighting the last war. Everyone’s enemy is a “racist” and a “fascist.” These terms are invoked by the far-Left, Jack Straw, David Cameron, and even the B.N.P., to describe their opponents. Yet at the same time we see an extreme ideology spilling out from politics and becoming increasing absorbed by the judiciary, police, schools, local councils, etc., all against the common sense of the public. And we also see a rapidly expanding Islamic militancy, occasionally becoming linked to public figures such as Ken Livingstone, and, consequently, accepted by the public.
Free speech – which has been so horribly eroded in Britain – was meant to guard against extremism and the persecution of both individuals and larger groups because of the establishment of some dubious ideology. Today, it would appear, that prosecutions for hate speech are based not on what is said but who is speaking. Protests in support of al-Qaeda are deemed free speech, as is downloading terrorist material and discussing the validity and possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks. Similarly, as think tanks such as the Centre for Social Cohesion and CIVITAS have said, Britain’s governmental and judicial establishments have failed to tackle honor crime, with police, councils, and teachers afraid of being branded racist if they make any attempt.
Yet such is the extreme nature of the willingness to prosecute anyone who might be suspected of racism against a non-White British person, that a Down’s Syndrome boy with the mental age of a 5 year old was recently charged by the police with “racism and assault” after he pushed a girl in a playground scuffle. The charge hung over he and his family for 7 months, before they received an apology from the courts. Again, after the English Democrats party put up posters with the slogan “save London from Labour's tartan taxes” the police received complaints that this was racist, and are currently investigating the matter. These incidences are far from unique, but merely 2 reported in the week prior to my writing this article.
The effect is stifling. The accusation or even the mere faint suspicion of racism has silenced debate and even the voicing of discontent about mass immigration, discrimination against Whites in employment by the government or government-sponsored institutions, or the rise of Islamic extremism. When, in 2001, Lady Thatcher said she, “had not heard enough condemnation from Muslim priests,” of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., her Conservative Party publicly rebuked her. When Margaret Hodge suggested that British people had valid concerns over housing, considering the level of immigration, her fellow Labour M.P.s accused her of “using the language of the B.N.P.” When Lady Warsi (a Conservative M.P. and a moderate Muslim) suggested that people had legitimate concerns over immigration she was accused of supporting the B.N.P., and, again, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown dared to utter the words “British jobs for British workers,” members of his Labour Party were “appalled” and accused him airing a policy of the B.N.P.
With problems so glaring to the ordinary man and so thoroughly repressed by the main political parties, Enoch Powell – M.P., philosopher, poet, man of the people, and visionary – is being rehabilitated, and not just here on The Brussels Journal. Simon Heffer in The Telegraph has said recently that, “Powell was the greatest Conservative thinker in political life in living memory. He foresaw what were then unimaginable tensions caused by forcibly altering the character of a country.” Looking at the visible characters of today’s Conservative Party one could be forgiven for thinking that Powell was the only Conservative intellectual of our time. The Conservative Party seems to have no real vision for the future, and no real appreciation for the past. But, in such an oppressive atmosphere of “political correctness,” and, indeed, political fear, no intellectual development can occur within popular party politics. As such, we are unlikely to see any solutions to growing problems originating with political parties themselves. It is true, of course, that the B.N.P. is the one party that unceasingly opposes political correctness, “Islamification,” etc., but it has yet to transform itself into an intellectual party, and remains one for which the issue of race is central.
Today we are faced with a “multiculturalism” that has eroded British culture and the constant drumbeat of racial “equality” that treats people not as human beings but mere racial blocks. As Rageh Omaar has said in an op-ed piece on Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech for The Daily Mail, “Instead of multi-culturalism, we are getting tribalisation,” – a point I made some time ago here. When this is applied to voting and politics it is especially alarming, yet Equalities Minister Harriet Harman, has recently proposed that all-Black shortlists of parliamentary candidates be drawn up, to increase the number of Black and Asian M.P.s – a proposal rejected as “colonial” by those it was designed to promote. Likewise, the Conservative Party now has its own Muslim Forum and the current mayor, Ken Livingstone, is supported by Muslims 4 Ken, while his main rival, Boris Johnson, has also been careful to let his Muslim heritage be known. Again, we have seen the B.N.P. attacked in the last few weeks by Operation Black Vote (which aims to promote, within government, the supposed needs of Blacks and Asians), but on what grounds? Racial exclusivity?
We have reached a point, then, at which racially or culturally distinct ghettos – the unfortunate results of long-term multiculturalism – are mirrored at both lower and higher levels of government and party politics. Moreover, if some young Muslims are surfing the net, and finding inspiration in al-Qaeda and websites peddling Islamic radicalism, so too do we see a similar phenomenon at government level, with, for example, Livingstone now having gained the support of suicide bombing apologist Dr Azzam Tamimi – which he has not rejected. It is remarkable to think that not only Muslims, but Muslim extremists, are now playing an important, if not decisive, role in British politics. Yet, it is not difficult to imagine that Britain fifty years from now will have a political reality not entirely unlike that of Lebanon’s today. We must hope that it does not take the same sort of upheaval – such as Powell predicted for a multicultural Britain – to get there, but such a hope seems to be fading. Two thirds of the residents of Britain now believe immigration will lead to violence.
The last words are Powell’s:
For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
Forty Years On: Sleepwalking Toward the Tiber’s Edge
From the desk of A. Millar on Sun, 2008-04-20 08:35
Anyone who reads the British newspapers on a regular basis will have noticed an alarming repetition. The same few stories, with minor adjustments, seem to appear over and over again: youth violence, mass immigration, Islamic extremism, terrorists planning attacks, compensation and human rights for criminals, an apparent over-sensitivity to religious minorities and an apparent lack of sensitivity to those of the majority religion and ethnicities. Rather than telling the reader something new, news serves only to clarify what he already suspects. Persue readers’ comments and, unsurprisingly, more and more do you find expressions of genuine frustration and anger.
But these voices, which speak for so many, are not heard in parliament, nor does the public seem to make any demands on politicians. A march against war in a foreign country can amass thousands, and protests against China’s treatment of Tibet are frequent, but to defend one’s heritage or culture against erosion by political design, or to voice opposition to such a scale of immigration that one’s way of life is changed or threatened, is seen as potentially dangerous – the first step toward full-blown fascism. History repeats itself, yes; but history does not repeat itself as we might expect. Today, we are obsessively fighting the last war. Everyone’s enemy is a “racist” and a “fascist.” These terms are invoked by the far-Left, Jack Straw, David Cameron, and even the B.N.P., to describe their opponents. Yet at the same time we see an extreme ideology spilling out from politics and becoming increasing absorbed by the judiciary, police, schools, local councils, etc., all against the common sense of the public. And we also see a rapidly expanding Islamic militancy, occasionally becoming linked to public figures such as Ken Livingstone, and, consequently, accepted by the public.
Free speech – which has been so horribly eroded in Britain – was meant to guard against extremism and the persecution of both individuals and larger groups because of the establishment of some dubious ideology. Today, it would appear, that prosecutions for hate speech are based not on what is said but who is speaking. Protests in support of al-Qaeda are deemed free speech, as is downloading terrorist material and discussing the validity and possibility of carrying out terrorist attacks. Similarly, as think tanks such as the Centre for Social Cohesion and CIVITAS have said, Britain’s governmental and judicial establishments have failed to tackle honor crime, with police, councils, and teachers afraid of being branded racist if they make any attempt.
Yet such is the extreme nature of the willingness to prosecute anyone who might be suspected of racism against a non-White British person, that a Down’s Syndrome boy with the mental age of a 5 year old was recently charged by the police with “racism and assault” after he pushed a girl in a playground scuffle. The charge hung over he and his family for 7 months, before they received an apology from the courts. Again, after the English Democrats party put up posters with the slogan “save London from Labour's tartan taxes” the police received complaints that this was racist, and are currently investigating the matter. These incidences are far from unique, but merely 2 reported in the week prior to my writing this article.
The effect is stifling. The accusation or even the mere faint suspicion of racism has silenced debate and even the voicing of discontent about mass immigration, discrimination against Whites in employment by the government or government-sponsored institutions, or the rise of Islamic extremism. When, in 2001, Lady Thatcher said she, “had not heard enough condemnation from Muslim priests,” of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C., her Conservative Party publicly rebuked her. When Margaret Hodge suggested that British people had valid concerns over housing, considering the level of immigration, her fellow Labour M.P.s accused her of “using the language of the B.N.P.” When Lady Warsi (a Conservative M.P. and a moderate Muslim) suggested that people had legitimate concerns over immigration she was accused of supporting the B.N.P., and, again, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown dared to utter the words “British jobs for British workers,” members of his Labour Party were “appalled” and accused him airing a policy of the B.N.P.
With problems so glaring to the ordinary man and so thoroughly repressed by the main political parties, Enoch Powell – M.P., philosopher, poet, man of the people, and visionary – is being rehabilitated, and not just here on The Brussels Journal. Simon Heffer in The Telegraph has said recently that, “Powell was the greatest Conservative thinker in political life in living memory. He foresaw what were then unimaginable tensions caused by forcibly altering the character of a country.” Looking at the visible characters of today’s Conservative Party one could be forgiven for thinking that Powell was the only Conservative intellectual of our time. The Conservative Party seems to have no real vision for the future, and no real appreciation for the past. But, in such an oppressive atmosphere of “political correctness,” and, indeed, political fear, no intellectual development can occur within popular party politics. As such, we are unlikely to see any solutions to growing problems originating with political parties themselves. It is true, of course, that the B.N.P. is the one party that unceasingly opposes political correctness, “Islamification,” etc., but it has yet to transform itself into an intellectual party, and remains one for which the issue of race is central.
Today we are faced with a “multiculturalism” that has eroded British culture and the constant drumbeat of racial “equality” that treats people not as human beings but mere racial blocks. As Rageh Omaar has said in an op-ed piece on Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech for The Daily Mail, “Instead of multi-culturalism, we are getting tribalisation,” – a point I made some time ago here. When this is applied to voting and politics it is especially alarming, yet Equalities Minister Harriet Harman, has recently proposed that all-Black shortlists of parliamentary candidates be drawn up, to increase the number of Black and Asian M.P.s – a proposal rejected as “colonial” by those it was designed to promote. Likewise, the Conservative Party now has its own Muslim Forum and the current mayor, Ken Livingstone, is supported by Muslims 4 Ken, while his main rival, Boris Johnson, has also been careful to let his Muslim heritage be known. Again, we have seen the B.N.P. attacked in the last few weeks by Operation Black Vote (which aims to promote, within government, the supposed needs of Blacks and Asians), but on what grounds? Racial exclusivity?
We have reached a point, then, at which racially or culturally distinct ghettos – the unfortunate results of long-term multiculturalism – are mirrored at both lower and higher levels of government and party politics. Moreover, if some young Muslims are surfing the net, and finding inspiration in al-Qaeda and websites peddling Islamic radicalism, so too do we see a similar phenomenon at government level, with, for example, Livingstone now having gained the support of suicide bombing apologist Dr Azzam Tamimi – which he has not rejected. It is remarkable to think that not only Muslims, but Muslim extremists, are now playing an important, if not decisive, role in British politics. Yet, it is not difficult to imagine that Britain fifty years from now will have a political reality not entirely unlike that of Lebanon’s today. We must hope that it does not take the same sort of upheaval – such as Powell predicted for a multicultural Britain – to get there, but such a hope seems to be fading. Two thirds of the residents of Britain now believe immigration will lead to violence.
The last words are Powell’s:
For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK, Yawnnnn.......ZZZZZZ
Maybe we would wake up if we saw how others see the situation.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/04/memo-to-europe-youre-israel.html
For every European who ever sat in snide judgment about Israel, who thought things would have been hunky dory if "that shitty country", in the words of a French ambassador, had never existed, I have bad news. You are Israel.
In the early 20th century Britain took over and began attracting large numbers of Arab laborers. A few decades later those Arabs combined with some of the existing natives had a manufactured identity as Palestinians, a flag, an anthem written for them by a Greek Communist composer, guns, bombs and Western bleeding hearts on their side. They've spent the intervening period, rioting, looting, raping and killing any way they can.
Sound familiar? It should.
Israel's Muslim problem pales by comparison to France's 5 million Muslim problem. And Britain didn't simply attract Arabs to Israel, it attracted them to the home country as well. Europe is overrun with guest laborers, con artists, smugglers, students, second wives and the whole bubbling goulash of Muslim immigrants who are reproducing in great numbers. They have held their first Intifadas, blown up buses, burned cars, built Mosques where the same flavor of hatred is preached as in Gaza or the West Bank and declared their intentions to reclaim Spain and whatever other parts of Europe the Ummah feels it has a claim on.
If Israel was supposed to be the new Europe, Europe instead is turning out to be the New Israel, saddled with defunct socialist bureaucracies and a growing Muslim terrorist threat that socialist governments do their best to whistle and pretend isn't there or try to frantically appease.
Oslo may have been the setting for Israel's Going Out of Business sale, but Norway and Sweden may well be the ones to go out of business first as even the coldest lands have filled up with the cries of Allah Akhbar, the lusty calls of newborn Muslim infants and the sobs and screams of raped Swedish women. This will make little difference in Israel or any other Western country which is on the conveyor belt to the same place, the Sharia Abattoir.
Israel's situation didn't come about because the Jews have some special quality for antagonizing perfectly peaceful people, as too many Europeans would like to believe. All it really takes to turn any European country into Israel is a few hundred thousand savages squatting on carpets, demanding their rights and grabbing the knife or the detonator if they don't get them. And the only thing that can prevent it is a good strong immigration policy and a great deal of boats to ship anyone back home who isn't happy with it.
Contrary to the endless bewailings of phony refugees in decades old refugee camps, Israel didn't expel Arabs from its territory. Instead Israel sent soldiers to reassure them that they wouldn't be harmed and to invite them back in. Madness? Yes, but a quite familiar madness to anyone who watches Prime Ministers declare that Islam is a religion of peace and welcome in more refugees and immigrants, even as the Muslims make it clear that if they had their way, the Prime Minister's head would be decorating a sharp stick outside a Mosque somewhere.
Welcoming the apocalypse may be madness but it's the madness of shortsighted politicians and like their European counterparts, the Israeli politicians were motivated only partly by soft-minded humanitarianism, in the mix too was the delectable thought of a reliable Labor voting base that could never possibly cast a vote for a conservative candidate and cheap labor too. That the voting base would wind up opening fire on their grandchildren was not a thought they took seriously, because it was an inconvenient thought.
The way things are has moved from inconvenient thought to inconvenient reality, but that has not diminished the desire of politicians, both European and Israeli, to wish it away in favor of a New Middle East, a New Britain, a New Ireland, a European Union -- some magical utopian socialist reality where college degrees are all the wealth anyone needs, where governments care for everyone and any immigrant can be assimilated no matter how many wives they have and what prophet they believe in.
The more bombs go off, the more politicians cling determinedly to their fantasy and look for some pesky reactionaries to blame for the whole thing. Israel blames the settlers. Europe blames Israel. European left wing parties blame the Right. The Right blames America. America blames Republicans. Republicans blame a tiny minority of extremists, effectively negating their own argument.
And as the fingers point, the chorus bellows, pointless propositions are put forward and struck down in favor of lunatic appeasements, the West is turning into Israel. And as far as both the Muslims and the Left are concerned, like Israel, the world would have been a better place had Western civilization never existed and they are doing their best to put theory into practice.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2008/04/memo-to-europe-youre-israel.html
For every European who ever sat in snide judgment about Israel, who thought things would have been hunky dory if "that shitty country", in the words of a French ambassador, had never existed, I have bad news. You are Israel.
In the early 20th century Britain took over and began attracting large numbers of Arab laborers. A few decades later those Arabs combined with some of the existing natives had a manufactured identity as Palestinians, a flag, an anthem written for them by a Greek Communist composer, guns, bombs and Western bleeding hearts on their side. They've spent the intervening period, rioting, looting, raping and killing any way they can.
Sound familiar? It should.
Israel's Muslim problem pales by comparison to France's 5 million Muslim problem. And Britain didn't simply attract Arabs to Israel, it attracted them to the home country as well. Europe is overrun with guest laborers, con artists, smugglers, students, second wives and the whole bubbling goulash of Muslim immigrants who are reproducing in great numbers. They have held their first Intifadas, blown up buses, burned cars, built Mosques where the same flavor of hatred is preached as in Gaza or the West Bank and declared their intentions to reclaim Spain and whatever other parts of Europe the Ummah feels it has a claim on.
If Israel was supposed to be the new Europe, Europe instead is turning out to be the New Israel, saddled with defunct socialist bureaucracies and a growing Muslim terrorist threat that socialist governments do their best to whistle and pretend isn't there or try to frantically appease.
Oslo may have been the setting for Israel's Going Out of Business sale, but Norway and Sweden may well be the ones to go out of business first as even the coldest lands have filled up with the cries of Allah Akhbar, the lusty calls of newborn Muslim infants and the sobs and screams of raped Swedish women. This will make little difference in Israel or any other Western country which is on the conveyor belt to the same place, the Sharia Abattoir.
Israel's situation didn't come about because the Jews have some special quality for antagonizing perfectly peaceful people, as too many Europeans would like to believe. All it really takes to turn any European country into Israel is a few hundred thousand savages squatting on carpets, demanding their rights and grabbing the knife or the detonator if they don't get them. And the only thing that can prevent it is a good strong immigration policy and a great deal of boats to ship anyone back home who isn't happy with it.
Contrary to the endless bewailings of phony refugees in decades old refugee camps, Israel didn't expel Arabs from its territory. Instead Israel sent soldiers to reassure them that they wouldn't be harmed and to invite them back in. Madness? Yes, but a quite familiar madness to anyone who watches Prime Ministers declare that Islam is a religion of peace and welcome in more refugees and immigrants, even as the Muslims make it clear that if they had their way, the Prime Minister's head would be decorating a sharp stick outside a Mosque somewhere.
Welcoming the apocalypse may be madness but it's the madness of shortsighted politicians and like their European counterparts, the Israeli politicians were motivated only partly by soft-minded humanitarianism, in the mix too was the delectable thought of a reliable Labor voting base that could never possibly cast a vote for a conservative candidate and cheap labor too. That the voting base would wind up opening fire on their grandchildren was not a thought they took seriously, because it was an inconvenient thought.
The way things are has moved from inconvenient thought to inconvenient reality, but that has not diminished the desire of politicians, both European and Israeli, to wish it away in favor of a New Middle East, a New Britain, a New Ireland, a European Union -- some magical utopian socialist reality where college degrees are all the wealth anyone needs, where governments care for everyone and any immigrant can be assimilated no matter how many wives they have and what prophet they believe in.
The more bombs go off, the more politicians cling determinedly to their fantasy and look for some pesky reactionaries to blame for the whole thing. Israel blames the settlers. Europe blames Israel. European left wing parties blame the Right. The Right blames America. America blames Republicans. Republicans blame a tiny minority of extremists, effectively negating their own argument.
And as the fingers point, the chorus bellows, pointless propositions are put forward and struck down in favor of lunatic appeasements, the West is turning into Israel. And as far as both the Muslims and the Left are concerned, like Israel, the world would have been a better place had Western civilization never existed and they are doing their best to put theory into practice.
THE FORGOTTEN HEROS
The forgotten heros, This lot never got recognition.
Britains secret army
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Auxiliary Units or British Resistance Organisation in World War 2 - 1940-1944.
"Auxiliary Units" was the innocuous codename given to a force of civilian volunteers intended to carry out sabotage, guerrilla warfare and spying from behind the enemy lines in the event of a successful German invasion of the British Isles during World War 2.
They are also connected with the only MI (once up to 20 MI branches now only MI5 and MI6 are commonly remembered) branch not to be designated by a number refered to as MI (R). More and more info is coming to light about these unknown warriors who, often, met with dirision being fit men, capable of being called up but forced to stay at home carring out mundane tasks - even the bovvy boys (conscripted miners) had more kudos!!!
Following the fall of France in May 1940, Winston Churchill ordered Colonel Colin Gubbins (later to "set Europe ablaze" in SOE) to create a force of civilian volunteers, recruited primarily from the ablest Home Guard personnel, to operate from secret underground bases located behind the enemy lines of occupation.
Initially, Gubbins was aided in this by a few "Intelligence Officers" responsible for setting up fighting patrols of six to eight men, led by a Sergeant and co-ordinated by a local commander, usually a Lieutenant or Captain, in their designated regions.
The organisation consisted of 3 main groups Fighting Patrols, Special Duties and Signals.
Ideal recruits were countrymen, farmers, foresters and gamekeepers although eventually all occupations, factory and office workers and students were represented. The main requirements were fitness, knowledge of their own areas and an ability to be trained in the necessary skills for guerrilla warfare.
Volunteers were uniformed for cover as "Home Guard", latterly being absorbed into one of three "GHQ Special Reserve Battalions" with the distinctive numbers of 201 (Scotland and the North) 202 (The Midlands) and 203 (Southern Counties)
Final numbers were in excess of 3000, located mainly in coastal areas but covering the whole of the British Isles.
They created underground O.Bs (Operational Bases or bunkers) from which to carry out attacks and acts of sabotage against enemy targets (supply dumps, railway lines, convoys and enemy occupied airfields) in the event of over run. Their stores were also kept in such bunkers.
In 1940, Britain was at her most vulnerable, and a successful German invasion at that time was considered highly likely.
The Regular Forces, depleted in men and equipment after Dunkirk, may not have withstood an attack on the South Coast and would have withdrawn to the so-called "G.H.Q.Line" just south of London. The Auxiliary Units were intended to harry and disrupt the enemy supply and lines of communication to relieve some of the pressure on the opposing forces.
Operational stores and rations were sufficient for 14 days only - the anticipated useful life of the fighting patrols. Those auxiliers who survived this period would have reverted to their civilian occupations in the hope and anticipation of a successful British counter attack.
The Operational Bases were built, either by the Royal Engineers or by civilian contractors. They, and any curious locals were told that these were to be emergency food stores. Situated usually in dense woodland, these O'Bs were constructed of pre-formed corrugated iron segments, sunk into the ground with concrete pipe access and escape tunnels.
Ingenious methods were used to camouflage and operate the entrance trap doors. Accommodation included wooden bunks for the patrol members, heating, ventilation and ration and water stores. Explosives and ammunition were stored separately.
Most O.B's were destroyed at the end of the war, although the remains of many still exist throughout the country and have been identified by the "Defence of Britain" project.
Formed in May 1940 they were maintained until Stand Down in November 1944, despite the receding risk of invasion. Before D Day, additional Auxunits were deployed on the Isle of Wight in the event of a German counter invasion against the Overlord ports.
At the time of Stand Down, volunteers were told that "no public recognition would be possible due to the secret nature of their duties" and that, since no written records of service had been kept, they were not eligible for the Defence Medal. Subsequent events have shown this latter statement to be false and belated awards have been made to some auxiliers.
Concurrently, but entirely separate from the Fighting Patrols were the Special Duties personnel, men and women recruited secretly and intended to provide an intelligence gathering service, spying on and observing enemy formations and troop movements. They were provided with insignia recognition information and individual "Dead Letter" drops from which their intelligence reports would be collected.
A network of underground radio stations was established which, following a successful invasion would have been manned by men and women of the Royal Signals, who would transmit the intelligence gathered by the Special Duties to the Headquarters of the opposing forces.
Their operational bases were similar in construction to those of the Auxunits, with the addition of electricity generators for their radio equipment.
Highworths' Fertilizers catalogues
do their stuff unseen - until you see results!
This was printed on a booklet resembling an agricultural catalogue, issued to all Auxunit volunteers. Its innocent title covered a handbook on explosives, timing devices and suitable sabotage targets. Selected recruits would be sent to Highworth, Wilts, where, after reporting to the then Postmistress, they would be collected and taken to nearby Coleshill House, their secret H.Q. for a weekends training in fieldcraft, sabotage and unarmed combat, before returning to their patrols to pass on this training.
A museum situated in Parham, Suffolk, where a group of enthusiasts have set up a museum dedicated to the 390th. Bomber Group, U.S. Air Force that operated there during the war. The land is owned by the Kindred family, who were members of an Auxunit patrol in the area, and an adjoining museum has now been created to honour the British Resistance Organisation. This contains many artefacts relating to the Auxiliary Units and has an extensive amount of archive material. A replica Operational Bases is under construction. The museum collection is superior to that in the Special Forces section of the Imperial War Museum.
Most of the above taken from http://www.warlinks.com/pages/auxiliary.html
Britains secret army
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Auxiliary Units or British Resistance Organisation in World War 2 - 1940-1944.
"Auxiliary Units" was the innocuous codename given to a force of civilian volunteers intended to carry out sabotage, guerrilla warfare and spying from behind the enemy lines in the event of a successful German invasion of the British Isles during World War 2.
They are also connected with the only MI (once up to 20 MI branches now only MI5 and MI6 are commonly remembered) branch not to be designated by a number refered to as MI (R). More and more info is coming to light about these unknown warriors who, often, met with dirision being fit men, capable of being called up but forced to stay at home carring out mundane tasks - even the bovvy boys (conscripted miners) had more kudos!!!
Following the fall of France in May 1940, Winston Churchill ordered Colonel Colin Gubbins (later to "set Europe ablaze" in SOE) to create a force of civilian volunteers, recruited primarily from the ablest Home Guard personnel, to operate from secret underground bases located behind the enemy lines of occupation.
Initially, Gubbins was aided in this by a few "Intelligence Officers" responsible for setting up fighting patrols of six to eight men, led by a Sergeant and co-ordinated by a local commander, usually a Lieutenant or Captain, in their designated regions.
The organisation consisted of 3 main groups Fighting Patrols, Special Duties and Signals.
Ideal recruits were countrymen, farmers, foresters and gamekeepers although eventually all occupations, factory and office workers and students were represented. The main requirements were fitness, knowledge of their own areas and an ability to be trained in the necessary skills for guerrilla warfare.
Volunteers were uniformed for cover as "Home Guard", latterly being absorbed into one of three "GHQ Special Reserve Battalions" with the distinctive numbers of 201 (Scotland and the North) 202 (The Midlands) and 203 (Southern Counties)
Final numbers were in excess of 3000, located mainly in coastal areas but covering the whole of the British Isles.
They created underground O.Bs (Operational Bases or bunkers) from which to carry out attacks and acts of sabotage against enemy targets (supply dumps, railway lines, convoys and enemy occupied airfields) in the event of over run. Their stores were also kept in such bunkers.
In 1940, Britain was at her most vulnerable, and a successful German invasion at that time was considered highly likely.
The Regular Forces, depleted in men and equipment after Dunkirk, may not have withstood an attack on the South Coast and would have withdrawn to the so-called "G.H.Q.Line" just south of London. The Auxiliary Units were intended to harry and disrupt the enemy supply and lines of communication to relieve some of the pressure on the opposing forces.
Operational stores and rations were sufficient for 14 days only - the anticipated useful life of the fighting patrols. Those auxiliers who survived this period would have reverted to their civilian occupations in the hope and anticipation of a successful British counter attack.
The Operational Bases were built, either by the Royal Engineers or by civilian contractors. They, and any curious locals were told that these were to be emergency food stores. Situated usually in dense woodland, these O'Bs were constructed of pre-formed corrugated iron segments, sunk into the ground with concrete pipe access and escape tunnels.
Ingenious methods were used to camouflage and operate the entrance trap doors. Accommodation included wooden bunks for the patrol members, heating, ventilation and ration and water stores. Explosives and ammunition were stored separately.
Most O.B's were destroyed at the end of the war, although the remains of many still exist throughout the country and have been identified by the "Defence of Britain" project.
Formed in May 1940 they were maintained until Stand Down in November 1944, despite the receding risk of invasion. Before D Day, additional Auxunits were deployed on the Isle of Wight in the event of a German counter invasion against the Overlord ports.
At the time of Stand Down, volunteers were told that "no public recognition would be possible due to the secret nature of their duties" and that, since no written records of service had been kept, they were not eligible for the Defence Medal. Subsequent events have shown this latter statement to be false and belated awards have been made to some auxiliers.
Concurrently, but entirely separate from the Fighting Patrols were the Special Duties personnel, men and women recruited secretly and intended to provide an intelligence gathering service, spying on and observing enemy formations and troop movements. They were provided with insignia recognition information and individual "Dead Letter" drops from which their intelligence reports would be collected.
A network of underground radio stations was established which, following a successful invasion would have been manned by men and women of the Royal Signals, who would transmit the intelligence gathered by the Special Duties to the Headquarters of the opposing forces.
Their operational bases were similar in construction to those of the Auxunits, with the addition of electricity generators for their radio equipment.
Highworths' Fertilizers catalogues
do their stuff unseen - until you see results!
This was printed on a booklet resembling an agricultural catalogue, issued to all Auxunit volunteers. Its innocent title covered a handbook on explosives, timing devices and suitable sabotage targets. Selected recruits would be sent to Highworth, Wilts, where, after reporting to the then Postmistress, they would be collected and taken to nearby Coleshill House, their secret H.Q. for a weekends training in fieldcraft, sabotage and unarmed combat, before returning to their patrols to pass on this training.
A museum situated in Parham, Suffolk, where a group of enthusiasts have set up a museum dedicated to the 390th. Bomber Group, U.S. Air Force that operated there during the war. The land is owned by the Kindred family, who were members of an Auxunit patrol in the area, and an adjoining museum has now been created to honour the British Resistance Organisation. This contains many artefacts relating to the Auxiliary Units and has an extensive amount of archive material. A replica Operational Bases is under construction. The museum collection is superior to that in the Special Forces section of the Imperial War Museum.
Most of the above taken from http://www.warlinks.com/pages/auxiliary.html
WHERE AM I ?
I nicked this piece from Peter Hitchens,
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
It is still just possible to imagine that this is a normal country, if you don't pay too much attention.
But the story of the couple who were spied on in case they were cheating to get their child into a popular school shows just how strange and alien Britain has become.
Usually when I say I feel I am living in a foreign land, my enemies accuse me of making some veiled remark about immigration. But that's not what I mean at all.
Immigration is a problem, sure enough, but if I want to talk about it, I'll make it clear that's what I'm doing. I'm not ashamed of being against mass immigration on its current absurd scale.
I feel no need to disguise my views.
What bothers me just as much is the sense of being transported, when I wasn't looking, into a very bad dream from which there is no waking up.
When exactly did it happen? When did my town hall change from being a friendly, efficient place into a headquarters of fussy political correctness where I feel like an unwanted interloper?
When did the BBC news become a shameless propaganda show, instead of a discreet one?
When did my GP surgery start asking me for my ethnic origin? Worse, when did they start treating parents as guilty suspects if they bring a child into hospital after a fall?
When did it become impossible ever to speak to anyone who will take responsibility for anything?
When did I start getting the feeling, as one of these episodes begins, that there is absolutely no point in complaining or resisting, because if I don't accept this, sooner or later, 'security' is going to be called and I will be worse off than I was before.
It was not always like this. I know it wasn't. I can remember when it wasn't. What I cannot remember is, at any stage, asking for the changes that have happened, or being asked if I wanted them.
They just happened, and now they're here.
And, while there will be some outrage in the newspapers about the spying episode – since newspapers are one of the last places where common sense survives – nothing will change.
Other couples will be spied on in the same way, under the same law, which will not be changed.
So let us look at this case and see why it happened. First of all, the spying. Authority is immensely powerful in this country now.
It has hidden itself in a tangle of quangos and interlocking authorities, effectively nationalised and often Europeanised, too, run by people whose names we can never find out.
There's no scrutiny. The main political parties are dead things, job creation schemes for people who couldn't make it anywhere else, where independence is punished.
The law is beyond the reach of most of us, unless we want to use ambulance-chasing lawyers to make grotesque claims for damages.
Then there's the question of the school. Everyone knows that the official propaganda about education is a lie. We do not have a comprehensive school system, as we pretend, but a viciously unequal selective system which fails hundreds of thousands of children from the beginning.
Selection is done by money and influence. And people try to cheat, by singing hymns and saying prayers they don't believe, by renting flats in catchment areas or lying about their circumstances.
Replacing this with a just system based on merit is ruled to be 'politically impossible' and 'cruel' – so the unfairness has to be maintained, and policed by snooping.
This has happened for years. I know of head teachers who have done it personally.
If only they'd realised that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act allowed them to use taxpayers' money to stake out people's homes and follow them about.
So there it is. Lies, unaccountable authority and the seeds of a secret police force – checking today on school catchment areas, and tomorrow on what? One thing's for sure. You'll find out too late.
Charlton knew it: The bad guys will always have guns
Charlton Heston was a good and decent man, as well as a fine actor and a brave one, who did his own stunts.
Some people can't work out how the same person courageously went on civil rights demonstrations long before it was fashionable, and equally courageously opposed the authoritarian, futile silliness of 'gun control' when that cause wasn't fashionable either.
The two things are completely linked. Both are causes of liberty and justice, and both got him into trouble with received opinion.
Gun control, much imposed by dictatorships, restricts gun ownership to the State, to criminals and (in this country) certain officially approved terrorists.
It bans law-abiding people from defending themselves, even where the State is not doing its job.
As Mafia turncoat Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano once said: "Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters.
"I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun.'
Boys in blue, but not ours
Funny, in a way, to see China taking over from the USA as the world's most-protested-against country.
Peking will be a lot less relaxed than Washington about having its flag burned all over the place, but it is a sign of being a real superpower.
So expect more men in blue tracksuits who, by the way, were not the first example of an aggressive approach to protecting China's fragile image abroad.
In 1999, British police took placards from demonstrators during a State visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
They later admitted they were wrong, to avoid court action. That's why they couldn't use quite such heavy-handed tactics to protect the Olympic flame, and presumably that was why the Chinese supplied the mysterious tracksuited men.
_______________________________________________
Amazingly fast, the world we knew is slipping away from us. Britain's seat on the UN Security Council – and so its veto – is now under direct threat.
I wonder how long it will be before serious moves are made to indict Anthony Blair for war crimes – it is only leaders of weak nations who need to face this sort of thing.
_______________________________________________
TV executives tell me that no mainstream channel can now show old episodes of The Sweeney because they are considered too violent. Interesting how tastes change.
Last week the BBC's supposedly gentle, quirky comedy Love Soup showed a suicide in which a woman's body thudded into the pavement and oozed blood and, shortly afterwards, a scene in which a dog has sex with a woman.
When did the taboos against such things dissolve, exactly?
How come this seriously strange programme has one of the most enviable slots on licence-funded terrestrial TV?
Still, at least we know that the central character, played by Tamsin Greig, is an OK person because she is shown reading The Guardian on her day off from her job as boss of a cosmetics counter.
_______________________________________________
A jury of adults, after listening to great mounds of evidence that Princess Diana died in a car accident, concludes that it was 'unlawful killing'.
With this level of stupidity stalking the country, how much longer can democracy survive?
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
It is still just possible to imagine that this is a normal country, if you don't pay too much attention.
But the story of the couple who were spied on in case they were cheating to get their child into a popular school shows just how strange and alien Britain has become.
Usually when I say I feel I am living in a foreign land, my enemies accuse me of making some veiled remark about immigration. But that's not what I mean at all.
Immigration is a problem, sure enough, but if I want to talk about it, I'll make it clear that's what I'm doing. I'm not ashamed of being against mass immigration on its current absurd scale.
I feel no need to disguise my views.
What bothers me just as much is the sense of being transported, when I wasn't looking, into a very bad dream from which there is no waking up.
When exactly did it happen? When did my town hall change from being a friendly, efficient place into a headquarters of fussy political correctness where I feel like an unwanted interloper?
When did the BBC news become a shameless propaganda show, instead of a discreet one?
When did my GP surgery start asking me for my ethnic origin? Worse, when did they start treating parents as guilty suspects if they bring a child into hospital after a fall?
When did it become impossible ever to speak to anyone who will take responsibility for anything?
When did I start getting the feeling, as one of these episodes begins, that there is absolutely no point in complaining or resisting, because if I don't accept this, sooner or later, 'security' is going to be called and I will be worse off than I was before.
It was not always like this. I know it wasn't. I can remember when it wasn't. What I cannot remember is, at any stage, asking for the changes that have happened, or being asked if I wanted them.
They just happened, and now they're here.
And, while there will be some outrage in the newspapers about the spying episode – since newspapers are one of the last places where common sense survives – nothing will change.
Other couples will be spied on in the same way, under the same law, which will not be changed.
So let us look at this case and see why it happened. First of all, the spying. Authority is immensely powerful in this country now.
It has hidden itself in a tangle of quangos and interlocking authorities, effectively nationalised and often Europeanised, too, run by people whose names we can never find out.
There's no scrutiny. The main political parties are dead things, job creation schemes for people who couldn't make it anywhere else, where independence is punished.
The law is beyond the reach of most of us, unless we want to use ambulance-chasing lawyers to make grotesque claims for damages.
Then there's the question of the school. Everyone knows that the official propaganda about education is a lie. We do not have a comprehensive school system, as we pretend, but a viciously unequal selective system which fails hundreds of thousands of children from the beginning.
Selection is done by money and influence. And people try to cheat, by singing hymns and saying prayers they don't believe, by renting flats in catchment areas or lying about their circumstances.
Replacing this with a just system based on merit is ruled to be 'politically impossible' and 'cruel' – so the unfairness has to be maintained, and policed by snooping.
This has happened for years. I know of head teachers who have done it personally.
If only they'd realised that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act allowed them to use taxpayers' money to stake out people's homes and follow them about.
So there it is. Lies, unaccountable authority and the seeds of a secret police force – checking today on school catchment areas, and tomorrow on what? One thing's for sure. You'll find out too late.
Charlton knew it: The bad guys will always have guns
Charlton Heston was a good and decent man, as well as a fine actor and a brave one, who did his own stunts.
Some people can't work out how the same person courageously went on civil rights demonstrations long before it was fashionable, and equally courageously opposed the authoritarian, futile silliness of 'gun control' when that cause wasn't fashionable either.
The two things are completely linked. Both are causes of liberty and justice, and both got him into trouble with received opinion.
Gun control, much imposed by dictatorships, restricts gun ownership to the State, to criminals and (in this country) certain officially approved terrorists.
It bans law-abiding people from defending themselves, even where the State is not doing its job.
As Mafia turncoat Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano once said: "Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters.
"I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun.'
Boys in blue, but not ours
Funny, in a way, to see China taking over from the USA as the world's most-protested-against country.
Peking will be a lot less relaxed than Washington about having its flag burned all over the place, but it is a sign of being a real superpower.
So expect more men in blue tracksuits who, by the way, were not the first example of an aggressive approach to protecting China's fragile image abroad.
In 1999, British police took placards from demonstrators during a State visit by Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
They later admitted they were wrong, to avoid court action. That's why they couldn't use quite such heavy-handed tactics to protect the Olympic flame, and presumably that was why the Chinese supplied the mysterious tracksuited men.
_______________________________________________
Amazingly fast, the world we knew is slipping away from us. Britain's seat on the UN Security Council – and so its veto – is now under direct threat.
I wonder how long it will be before serious moves are made to indict Anthony Blair for war crimes – it is only leaders of weak nations who need to face this sort of thing.
_______________________________________________
TV executives tell me that no mainstream channel can now show old episodes of The Sweeney because they are considered too violent. Interesting how tastes change.
Last week the BBC's supposedly gentle, quirky comedy Love Soup showed a suicide in which a woman's body thudded into the pavement and oozed blood and, shortly afterwards, a scene in which a dog has sex with a woman.
When did the taboos against such things dissolve, exactly?
How come this seriously strange programme has one of the most enviable slots on licence-funded terrestrial TV?
Still, at least we know that the central character, played by Tamsin Greig, is an OK person because she is shown reading The Guardian on her day off from her job as boss of a cosmetics counter.
_______________________________________________
A jury of adults, after listening to great mounds of evidence that Princess Diana died in a car accident, concludes that it was 'unlawful killing'.
With this level of stupidity stalking the country, how much longer can democracy survive?
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