Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Read Dennis Prager's "Just a Reminder About Who and Why We Are Fighting"

"Thus it is important to remind people once again about the moral world inhabited by the people we are fighting, whom President George W. Bush calls the Islamic Fascists. Societal examples:

"*The Islamic Republic of Sudan, in its attempt to force Arab/Muslim rule on the largely non- Arab and non-Muslim population of southern Sudan, has led to the killing of well above 1 million Christians and animists and black (i.e., non-Arab) Muslims, in addition to the widespread enslavement, rape and torture of those people.

"*No major international Arab or Muslim organization has condemned the Sudanese government's mass murders that border on genocide.

"*The leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and repeatedly called for the annihilation of Israel. As the 6 million Jews of Israel do not plan a mass exodus from their ancient and modern homeland, such annihilation would in fact mean another Holocaust.

"*The holy center of Islam, the Muslim country where the holiest Muslim sites are situated, is Saudi Arabia. That country bans the practice of any religion other than Islam, amputates hands of thieves, does not allow women to drive a car, mandates what women wear outside of their homes and is the only country in the world to feature a weapon on its national flag. Women were treated considerably better and had more civil rights in ancient Rome, not to mention ancient Israel, than women living in the holiest cities of Islam today.

"*Virtually every Islam-based country decrees the death penalty for any Muslim who converts to another religion.

"In other words, every country that calls itself "Islamic" is morally inferior to just about every country in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, almost every Asian country and many African countries.

"No Muslim country treats non-Muslims and their religions anywhere nearly as decently as any Western non-Muslim country (including Israel) treats Muslims. That is why tens of millions of Muslims immigrate to non-Muslim societies and virtually no non-Muslim immigrates to any Muslim society. In every Muslim country, non-Muslims are either systematically persecuted at worst or treated as inferiors at best." (Read)

Read Caroline Glick's "Terrorists Theater Tricks"

"BLOGGERS HAVE become a critical component of the free world's defense in the current war. During the Hizbullah campaign in Lebanon, bloggers scrutinized coverage of the war in a way that has never been done before. Their work has exposed the dirty secret of the Middle East that the media has hidden for so many years: The global media and the international NGO community, which profess to be neutral observers, are in fact colluding with terrorist organizations.

"The blogosphere, and particularly Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Zombietime, Michelle Malkin, and EU Referendum, have relentlessly exposed the systematic staging of news events, fabrication of attacks against relief workers, and doctoring of photographic images by Hizbullah with the active assistance of international organizations and the global media." (Read)

Monday, August 28, 2006

A postscript To Yesterdays Blog

If you still think that we don't have to get our ducks in a row regarding our enemy - Iran read this link(Our Fallout-Shelter Future).

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Differentiating Between Freedom and Democracy

"Hezbollah, which has been waging war on Israel, and America, for years is the immediate cause of the current fighting in the Middle East. The broader cause, though, is the United States government." (Peter Schwartz)

In my last post I discussed the importance of defining the objective or object and then setting the criteria for action. Two words which are used interchangably in the minds of most people are the terms democracy and freedom. These two terms desperately need to be defined and differentiated. In an Op-Ed, Peter Schwartz (The Newsletter of the Ayn Rand Institute) does just that (ari.org).

The United States government makes a hugh mistake by declaring that freedom would be advanced by allowing Hezbollah participation in the elections. Mr. Schwartz writes that we granted them "something it could never achieve on its own: moral legitimacy". Other terrorist organizations also came to power because of elections promoted by the United States: Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and theocrats in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The premise behind the Bush administration's policy is the hopeless view that tyranny is reversed by holding of elections-a premise stemming from the widespread confusion between freedom and democracy."

Mr Schwartz continues by writing that "the essence of democracy is unlimited majority rule." This means that there is no contraints on the government as long as the majority voted and will it so. The majority rule. When Arabs line up and vote into office Hezbollah party members this act of democracy does not mean they are voting for freedom they are voting for tyranny.

In contrast, what defines America is freedom. And freedom exists precisely because America has LIMITATIONS on government which is backed up by the principle of INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS. The Irans, Syrias and North Koreans of the world do not have limitations on government because they do not recognize such a principle as individual rights.

So just because a whopping number of people line up to vote and a theocratic dictator is given power does not mean it is legitimate or moral or that the people are free! In fact, by obfuscating the meaning of freedom with democracy we make the world a more dangerous place to live in and it prolongs the job of fighting evil.

Our politicians must be clear on what freedom and democracy mean or we will continue to make costly political decisions regarding The Middle East and its terrorists who want to rule and those that already do.

With nuclear weapons becoming more and more available to every wanna be dictator The West must understand what our Founding Fathers were attempting to do. They were trying to prevent tyranny in government. Their crowning achievment was writing a constitution that limited government action to protecting the rights of the individual. When voting our objective should be to vote for those politicians who are promoting and defending the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Do you see this in the Middle East?


Saturday, August 26, 2006

The Criteria For Going to War Must Be Set

It occurred to me that the the debate among astronomers this week concerning the reclassification and redefinition of the planet Pluto is a good example of what our politicians in the US and Irsrael (forget about Europe they are beyond hope) ought to be doing regarding this eternal war with the irrational Middle East. Here was a congress of scientists who decided that it was time to update their definition of what constitutes a planet.

"…After years of wrangling and a week of debate, astronomers voted for a sweeping reclassification of the solar system. In what many of them described as a triumph of science over sentiment, Pluto was demoted to the status of a “dwarf planet.” ...

"Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, who discovered UB 313 three years ago and so had the most to lose personally from the downgrading of Pluto and Xena, said he was relieved.

“ 'Through this whole crazy circuslike procedure, somehow the right answer was stumbled on,' Dr. Brown said. “It’s been a long time coming. Science is self-correcting eventually, even when strong emotions are involved.”...

"Under the new rules, a planet must meet three criteria: it must orbit the Sun, it must be big enough for gravity to squash it into a round ball, and it must have cleared other things out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. The last of these criteria knocks out Pluto and Xena, which orbit among the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt, and Ceres, which is in the asteroid belt." (Pluto)

In order to make decisions about anything from classifying an object in space to what vacation to take this year you have to define the objective or object and then set the criteria for action. For example if I want to go on vacation I have to define what constitutes a vacation for me. Do I like to visit exotic places or do I like to engage in physical sports adventures like white water rafting. Once I have defined what is a vacation then I set the criteria for taking one away from home such as how much money can I spend, how far away can I go, do I have someone to take care of the house and pets etc.

Well I think it's time to make a decision about whether we are at war or not and if the answer is yes then we should set the criteria necessary for winning it. Anything else would be called suicide.

Monday, August 21, 2006

Olmert Is the Wrong Man for Israel

Unfortunately, we all found out that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was not made of the stuff that makes a great leader. He is no Sharon. Caroline B. Glick has a strong and courageous article in the Jewish World Review (Read) that says it like it is and current leadership had better heed her call for upping the ante in the terrible confrontation that will inevitably face the West.

"Behind the Palestinians and the Syrians lies Iran, the guiding light behind the present jihad. Iran, with its burgeoning nuclear weapons program is the single greatest danger to international security. It is the single greatest danger to Israel's survival. To date, Iran has sufficed to fighting Israel through its proxies, to great advantage. But Iran has made it absolutely clear that it intends to join the fray directly — when it is good and ready. And of course it will be good and ready when it has nuclear weapons.

"…As all of Israel's leaders have been quick to point out over the years, the threat of a nuclear armed Iran is not just dangerous for Israel but for the entire world. Iran has its Persian Gulf neighbors in its gun sites. It has directly threatened the US and Europe.

"…In the not so distant future, we will find ourselves at war with Iran. Today, the choice of whether we fight that was in our own time, and before Iran gets nuclear weapons is in our hands. If we hesitate, if we and the rest of the free world waste precious time with worthless diplomatic wrangling with the ayatollahs, war will come to us, but on the enemy's terms. And we will have only ourselves to blame.

"…Militarily, we must not relent in targeting our enemies. The IDF must target every Palestinian terrorist. It must reassert control over the international border between Gaza and Egypt. Israel must accept the reality that the PA is a terrorist organization not a legitimate regime and stop viewing Abbas and his associates in Fatah as potential peace partners. Obviously, Israel must give up the idea of transferring Judea and Samaria to Palestinian control and take all necessary measures to stabilize the situation on the ground in a manner that neutralizes the threat of Palestinian jihad.

"…Finally, Israel needs a political leadership that will be capable of telling the Israeli public the truth that has been ignored for the past decade and a half. We are not a "normal" nation and we are not going get peace in the coming years. We are an abnormal nation in our neighborhood and in the world and will always remain so, as is our right. Our people must be ready to sacrifice for the survival of the state and the defense of our freedom to be abnormal. We need leadership that will tell the Israeli people that a struggle awaits us but that our democracy, our freedom, and our values give us the power of creative thought that will allow us to beat the dull forces of jihad that surround us."

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Faking Reality by The first Wall against Tyranny

Thanks to websites like LittleGreenFootballs a hugh scandal has been uncovered during the past few weeks involving fake and posed photos from Lebanon depicting dead children and the use of props in bombed out buildings to elicit sympathy from Westerners for Hizbollah and rage against the Israelis (Read). One picture of billowing smoke from bombs dropped by Israel jets apparantly wasn't bad enough, so it was edited by adding more smoke to the image creating the impression that the bombing was worse than it really was.

Then you have the "green helmet guy", apparently a wanna be screen director anxious to get his day in the sun. He is seen in various footage posing a dead child for the camaras. This video footage by the "green helmet guy" is particulary disgusting (Read).

David Perlmutter, a professor of Journalism concludes correctly: "The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them. And what of future victims of war? Will the public deny them their sorrows because we will dismiss all smoking rubble and dead children as mere digital propaganda? Photojournalism must live, but not if its practitioners and owners are determined to jump into the abyss" (read).

A famous philosopher once wrote - "The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles".

Ayn Rand wrote this during the last century but her words will always ring with truth. The basic principles today are man has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom. Israel is a nation who respects these principles. Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iran (especially Iran), Egypt do not. Israel is constantly being attacked precisely because it is an oasis of Western values in a cesspool of evil. But it may lose the battle because we, the West, are constantly compromising our values in order to appease the purveyors of evil.

Your know we have lost our rudder when the news establishment publishes doctored up pictures. Maybe this will be the last straw that the West will take before it decides to really confront evil. Maybe the West will say enough of lies, murder and mayhem by these Islamic terrorists. The Western news outlets form the first wall against evil and tyranny. Israel was right in retaliating against an act of war started by the kidapping of two of their soldiers by Hizbollah which everyone knows is backed by Iran and Syria. Maybe it's time the West didn't botch every effort at vanquishing this relentless evil that is in our midst.

Maybe it's time to do something really simple - think, decide who is the evil and who is the good and then act accordingly without cowardice and without appeasement. We need people who can see through the fog of lies and misinformation not just by our enemies but by our own western news outlets.

We need people who are brave in the face of incredible assault on the truth. We need Churchill not Chamberlain in order to win this World War.

Friday, August 18, 2006

To Kill An American - by an Australian Dentist

"You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So an Australian dentist wrote an editorial the following day to let everyone know what an American is. So they would know when they found one. (Good one, mate!!!!)"

"An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Cuban, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani or Afghan or any other. An American may also be a Comanche, Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans. An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

"An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.An American is generous.

"Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. When Afghanistan was over-run by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country! As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan. Americans welcome the best of everything...the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services. But they also welcome the least. The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty , welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America.

"Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. It's been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 different countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American."

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

V-J Day by Kurt Wiehle

Since this event will most likely go unreported, I thought I'd point out that in the United States, August 14 is V-J day. Sixty-one years ago Monday, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender.

Thus, the world's bloodiest conflict was brought to an end; 62.5 million people died during WWII. Including the Holocaust victims, 38.1 million of those who died were civilians.
While Germany and Japan had a very real chance at world domination, the Islamic fascist enemies we are fighting in the Middle East today have no chance in hell of achieving their own obvious desires of world domination.

Iran and its minions have brought war to our front door. The longer the West continues its policy of dithering and appeasement, the greater the chance that more blood will be spilled.
It is unfortunate, but inevitable, that men, women, and children will die in the current conflict.

But the only way to lower the number of casualties in the long run is to prosecute war against Iran and its allies sooner rather than later—time will only allow for a greater military buildup on their part and more opportunities for them to wreak destruction.

We need to take a lesson from our fathers and grandfathers and ruthlessly eradicate our enemy until he surrenders unconditionally. (read)