"Nuclear Iran" by Victor Davis Hanson

The following is portions of a speech that Dr. Hanson delivered on February 13, 2007 in Fort Myers Florida at the Hillsdale College National Leadership seminar on "National Security: Short-and Long-Term Assessments.

“The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map.” So rants Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

It is understandable why Ahmadinejad might want an arsenal of nuclear missiles. It would allow him to shake down a constant stream of rich European emissaries, pressure the Arab Gulf states to lower oil production, pose as the Persian and Shiite messianic leader of Islamic terrorists, neutralize the influence of the United States in the region—and, of course, destroy Israel. Let no one doubt that a nuclear Iran would end the entire notion of peaceful global adjudication of nuclear proliferation and pose an unending threat to civilization itself.

In all his crazed pronouncements, Ahmadinejad reflects an end-of-days view: History is coming to its grand finale under his aegis. In his mind, he entrances even foreign audiences into stupor with his rhetoric. Of his recent United Nations speech he boasted, “I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink.” The name of Ahmadinejad, he supposes, will live for the ages if he takes out the “crusader” interloper in Jerusalem. As the Great Mahdi come back to life, he can do something for the devout not seen since the days of Saladin.

For now, however, Ahmadinejad faces two hurdles: He must get the bomb, and he must create the psychological landscape whereby the world will shrug at Israel’s demise.

Oddly, the first obstacle may not be the hardest. An impoverished Pakistan and North Korea pulled it off. China and Russia will likely sell Tehran anything it cannot get from rogue regimes. The European Union is Iran’s largest trading partner and ships it everything from sophisticated machine tools to sniper rifles, while impotent European diplomats continue “ruling out force” to stop the Iranian nuclear industry. Meanwhile, Moscow and Beijing, for all their expressed concern, will probably veto any serious punitive action by the United Nations.

As for the United States, it has 180,000 troops attempting to establish some sort of democratic stability in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention a growing anti-war movement at home. An unpredictable President Bush has less than two years left in the White House, with a majority opposition in Congress that is calling for direct talks with Ahmadinejad and urging congressional restraints on the possible use of force against Iran. It is no surprise that so many in Iran see no barrier to obtaining the bomb.

But the second obstacle—preparing the world for the end of the Jewish state—is trickier.

Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust
True, the Middle East’s secular gospel is anti-Semitism. State-run media in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan broadcast endless ugly sermons about Jews as “pigs and apes.” Nor do Russia and China much care what happens to Israel, as long as its demise does not affect business. But the West is a different matter. There the history of anti-Semitism looms large, framed by the Holocaust that nearly destroyed European Jewry. Thus the Holocaust is now Ahmadinejad’s target just as much as downtown Tel Aviv.

Holocaust denial is a tired game, but Ahmadinejad’s approach is slightly new and different. He has studied the Western postmodern mind and has devised a strategy based on its unholy trinity of multiculturalism, moral equivalence and cultural relativism. As a third world populist, he expects that his own fascism will escape proper scrutiny if he can recite often enough the past sins of the West. He also understands the appeal of victimology in the West these days. So he knows that to destroy the Israelis, he, not they, must become the victim, and Westerners the aggressors who forced his hand. “So we ask you,” he said recently, “if you indeed committed this great crime, why should the oppressed people of Palestine be punished for it? If you committed a crime, you yourselves should pay for it.”

Ahmadinejad also grasps that there are millions of highly educated but cynical Westerners who see nothing exceptional about their own culture. So if democratic America has nuclear weapons, he asks, why not theocratic Iran? “Your arsenals are full to the brim, yet when it’s the turn of a nation such as mine to develop peaceful nuclear technology, you object and resort to threats.”

Moreover, he knows how Western relativism works. Who is to say what are facts or what is true, given the tendency of the powerful to “construct” their own narratives and call the result “history”? So he says that the Holocaust was exaggerated, or perhaps even fabricated, as mere jails became “death camps” through a trick of language in order to persecute the poor Palestinians. We laugh at all this as absurd. We should not.

Money, oil and threats have gotten the Iranian theocrats to the very threshold of a nuclear arsenal. Their uncanny diagnosis of Western malaise has now convinced them that they can carefully fabricate a Holocaust-free reality in which Muslims are the victims and Jews the aggressors, setting the stage for Ahmadinejad’s “righteously” aggrieved Iran, after “hundreds of years of war,” to set things right.

In the midst of all this passive-aggressive noisemaking, the Iranian government pushes insidiously forward with nuclear development—perhaps pausing when it has gone too far in order to allow some negotiations, but then getting right back at it. Nuclear acquisition for Ahmadinejad is a win/win proposition. If he obtains nuclear weapons and restores lost Persian grandeur, it will remind a restless Iranian populace how the theocrats are nationalists after all, not just pan-Islamic provocateurs. And a nuclear Iran could create all sorts of mini-crises in the region in order to spike oil prices, given world demand for oil.

The Islamic world and the front line enemies of Israel lost their Middle Eastern nuclear deterrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union; no surprise, then, that we have not seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel ever since. But with a nuclear Iran, the mullahs can puff themselves up with a guarantee that a new coalition against Israel would not be humiliated or annihilated when it lost—since the Iranians could always, Soviet-like, threaten to go nuclear. And there are always enough crazies in Arab capitals to imagine that at last the combined armies of the Middle East could defeat Israel, with the knowledge that in case of failure, they could recede safely back under an Islamic nuclear umbrella.

Reasons for Action
How many times have we heard the following arguments?

“Israel has nuclear weapons, so why single out Iran?”
“Pakistan got nukes and we lived with it.”
“Who is to say the United States or Russia should have the bomb and not other countries?”
“Iran has promised to use its reactors for peaceful purposes, so why demonize the regime?”
In fact, the United States has at least six reasons for singling out Iran to halt its nuclear development program—and it is past time that we spell them out to the world at large.

First, any country that seeks “peaceful” nuclear power at the same time it is completely self-sufficient in energy production is de facto suspect. Iran has enough natural gas to meet its clean electrical generation needs for two centuries. The only rationale for its multi-billion-dollar program of building nuclear reactors—and for its spending billions more to hide and decentralize them—is to obtain weapons.

Second, we cannot excuse Iran by acknowledging that the Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea and Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons. In each of these cases, anti-liberal regimes gained stature and advantage by the ability to destroy Western cities. But past moral failures are not corrected by allowing history to repeat itself.

The logic of this excuse would lead to a nuclearized globe in which wars from Darfur to the Middle East would all assume the potential to go nuclear. In contrast, the fewer the nuclear players, the more likely deterrence can play some role. And if Iran were to go nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and other Arab autocracies would follow suit in order to preserve the prestige and security of largely Arab Sunni nations. That would ensure, again, that almost any Middle East dispute involving Shiite-Sunni tension, from Lebanon to Iraq, might escalate to a nuclear confrontation.

Third, it is simply a fact that full-fledged democracies are less likely to attack one another. Although they are prone to frequent fighting—imperial Athens and republican Venice, for instance, were in some sort of war about three out of every four years during the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century, respectively—consensual governments are not so ready to fight each other. Thus today there is no chance whatsoever that an anti-American France and an increasingly anti-French America would, as nuclear democracies, go to war. Likewise Russia, following the fall of communism and its partial evolution to an elected government, poses less of a threat to the United States than before.

It would be regrettable should Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or Germany go nuclear—but not nearly as catastrophic as when Pakistan did so, which is what allows it today to give sanctuary to bin Laden and the planners of 9/11 with impunity. The former governments operate with a free press, open elections and free speech, and thus their warmaking is subject to a series of checks and balances. Pakistan is a strongman’s heartbeat away from becoming an Islamic theocracy. And while democratic India is often volatile in relations with its Islamic neighbor, the world is not nearly as worried about its nuclear arsenal as it is about autocratic Pakistan’s.

Fourth, there are a number of rogue regimes that belong in a special category: North Korea, Iran, Syria and Cuba. These are tyrannies whose leaders have sought global attention and stature through sponsoring insurrection and terrorism beyond their borders. If it is frightening that Russia, China and Pakistan are now nuclear, it is terrifying that Kim Jong Il has the bomb, and that Ahmadinejad might soon. Islamic fundamentalism and North Korean Stalinism might be antithetical to scientific advancement, but they are actually conducive to nuclear politics. When such renegade regimes go nuclear, they have an added edge. In nuclear poker, the appearance of derangement is an advantage.

Fifth, Iran presents a uniquely fourfold danger: It has enough cash to buy influence and exemption from sanctions; it possesses oil reserves to blackmail a petroleum-hungry world; it sponsors terrorists who might soon be enabled to find sanctuary under a nuclear umbrella and to be armed with dirty bombs; and it has a leader who talks as if he were willing to take his entire country into paradise—or at least back to the 7th century amid the ashes of the Middle East. Just imagine the recent controversy over Danish cartoons in the context of Ahmadinejad with his finger on a half-dozen nuclear missiles pointed at Copenhagen. (Emphasis mine.)

Sixth, the West is right to take on a certain responsibility to discourage nuclear proliferation. The existence of such weapons grew entirely out of Western science and technology. In fact, the story of global nuclear proliferation is exclusively one of espionage, stealthy commerce, or American-and European-trained native engineers using their foreign-acquired expertise. Pakistan, North Korea or Iran have no ability themselves to create such weapons, any more than Russia, China or India did. And any country that cannot itself create such weapons is probably less likely to ensure the necessary protocols to guard against their misuse or theft.

What Is To Be Done?
We can argue all we want over the solution. Would it be wrong to use military force? Are air strikes feasible? Will Iranian dissidents rise up, or have most of them already been killed or exiled? Will Russia and China help us or sit back and enjoy our dilemma? Is Europe our ally in this matter, or is it simply triangulating? Will the UN ever step in, or is it more likely to condemn the United States than Tehran?

Clearly a poker-faced United States seems hesitant to act until moments before the missiles are armed. It is certainly not behaving like the hegemon or imperialist power so caricatured by Michael Moore and his ilk. Until there is firm evidence that Iran has the warheads ready, no administration will wish to relive the nightmare of the past three years, with its endless hysterical accusations of arrogant unilateralism, preemption, inaccurate or falsified intelligence, imperialism, and purported hostility towards Islam.

What, then, should the United States do, other than keep offering meaningless platitudes about “dialogue”? There are actually several measures that, taken together, might work to exploit Iran’s weaknesses and maintain a nuclear-free Gulf.

First, keep pushing international accords and doggedly work to ratchet up the watered-down United Nations sanctions. Even if they don’t do much to Iran in any significant way, the resolutions seem to enrage Ahmadinejad. And when he rages at the politically correct United Nations, he only loses further support.

Second, keep prodding the European Union, presently Iran’s chief trading partner, to apply pressure. The so-called EU3—Britain, France and Germany—failed completely in its recent attempt to stop Ahmadinejad’s nuclear plans. But out of that setback came a growing realization in Europe that a nuclear-tipped missile from theocratic Iran could hit Europe just as easily as Israel. Next, Europeans should adopt a complete trade embargo to prevent all Iranian access to precision machinery and high technology.

Third, keep encouraging Iranian dissidents. We need not ask them to go into the streets where they would be shot. Instead we should offer them media help and access to the West. Also highlight the plight of women, minorities and liberals in Iran—the groups that traditionally appeal to the Western left.

Fourth, we should announce in advance that we don’t want any bases in Iran; don’t want its oil; and won’t send American infantry there. That would preempt the tired charges of imperialism and colonialism.

Fifth, and crucially, we must complete the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing Iran wants is a democratic and prosperous Middle East surrounding its borders. The sight of Afghans, Iraqis, Kurds, Lebanese and Turks voting and speaking freely could form a critical mass of democratic reform to overwhelm the Khomeinists.

Sixth, keep reminding the Gulf monarchies that a nuclear Shiite theocracy is far more dangerous to them than to the United States or Israel—and that America’s efforts to contain Iran depend on their own to rein in Wahhabis in Iraq.

Seventh, say nothing much about the presence of two or three carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. Iran will soon grasp on its own that the build-up of such forces might presage air strikes, at which the United States excels.

Eighth, make it clear that Israel, as a sovereign nation, has a perfect right to protect itself. The United States should keep reminding Iran that 60 years after the real Holocaust, no Israeli Prime Minister will sit by idly while 7th century theocrats grandstand about wiping out the state of Israel and obtain the nuclear means to do it.

Ninth, keep the rhetoric down. Avoid threats to bomb many who could be our friends—while at the same time ignoring therapeutic pleas to talk with those who we know are our enemies.

Finally, Americans must gasify coal, diversify fuels, drill for more petroleum and invent new energy sources. Only that can collapse the world price of petroleum. At $60 a barrel for oil, Ahmadinejad is a charismatic third world benefactor who throws cash at every thug who wants a roadside bomb or shoulder-fired missile—and has plenty of money to buy Pakistani, North Korean or Russian nuclear components. But at $30 a barrel, he will be despised by his own people, who will become enraged as state-subsidized food and gas prices skyrocket, and as scarce Iranian petrodollars are wasted on Hezbollah and Hamas.

In conclusion, let me offer a more ominous note of warning. Israel is not free from its own passions, and there will be no second Holocaust. It is past time for Iranian leaders to snap out of their pseudo-trances and recognize that some Western countries are not only far more powerful than Iran, but in certain situations and under particular circumstances can be just as driven by memory, history—and, yes, a certain craziness as well.

The same goes for the United States. The Iranians, like bin Laden, imagine an antithetical caricature—which, like all caricatures, has some truth in it—whereby we materialistic Westerners love life too much to die, while the pious Islamic youths they send to kill us with suicide bombs love death too much to live. But what the Iranian theocrats, like the al-Qaedists, never fully fathom is that if the American people conclude that their freedom and existence are at stake, they are capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 7th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. The barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden and Hiroshima prove that well enough. In short, there are consequences to the rhetoric of Armageddon.

So far the Iranian leader has posed as someone 90 percent crazy and ten percent sane, hoping that in response we would fear his overt madness, grant concessions, and delicately appeal to his small reservoir of reason. But he should understand that if his Western enemies appear 90 percent of the time as children of the Enlightenment, they are still suffused with vestigial traces of the emotional and unpredictable. And military history shows that the irrational ten percent of the Western mind is a lot scarier in the end than anything Islamic fanaticism has to offer.

“Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.”

The "Mental Cage" of Islamic Women

It is not often that one learns of a person with the capacity to totally change their way of thinking, their cultural habits, their actions and their philosophy. Such a person is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author of "Infidel" and "The Caged Virgin". Her book "Infidel" is her autobiography-the history of the development of her mind. She traces for us how she was born and raised in the traditional Muslim environment, of Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya African when 2 of these countries were in civil war.

At the age of 5 she and her sister (age 4) were excised-the female version of circumcision-for details you'll have to read the gruesome part yourself. Her sister never really recovered from this trauma and as a young adult she died of mental illness. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was made of stronger stuff and survived by enveloping herself in the religion of Islam as well as in a headscarf and huge blackcloak. She assumed the role of a meek, modest lowly female. But her destiny changed when in her early twenties she was on her way to Canada to a forced marriage.

The book is filled with first hand observations of life in a Western world and we can follow her transformation from submission to the tribe to indiviualism. For example newly arrived in Frankfurt she observes that white men and women "were sitting together, not at bars but with easy familiarity, as if they were equal. They held hands in broad daylight, not hiding from anyone, and everyone else seemed to find this completely normal".

After a while she takes off her big coat so as not to stick out so much and she felt anonymous. There was no "social control" and as she puts it: "no eyes silently accused me of being a whore." In the rigid Muslim nations of the world women are always suspect of being whores and therefore must be covered up to avoid tempting males. Even if she is raped it is not the man's fault but the woman just for being female. It's in the Quoran.

Ayaan continues in "Infidel" marvelling at the city she has fled to.

"I walked till my feet hurt. Everything was so well kept. The grooves between the cobbles on the street were clean. The shopfronts gleamed. I remember thinking, "This is amazing, how can it be so?" I was used to heaps of stinking rubbish and streets pockmarked with huge potholes, where the dirt comes at you and nothing ever stays clean. In Nairobi, apart from a few wealthy enclaves reseved for the super rich government officials and millionaire businessmen, people live on top of each other, in slum houses made of bare cinder block or cardboard and metal sheets. There are beggars and bag snatchers and orphans living on rubbish heaps; ...I felt as though I had been thrown in to another world, calm and orderly, as in the novels I'd read and certain films, but somehow I had never really believed them before."

Ah, the novels. Even as she "studied and practiced to submit" there was "a spark of will" inside her She was an avid reader of western novels. She read anything she could get her hands on as she was growing up. Sexy, Romance Novels, Thrillers, Nancy Drew novels, 1984, Huckleberry Finn, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Wuthering Heights, Cry the Beloved Country, Valley of the Dolls etc. "All these books, even trashy ones, carried with them ideas-races were equal, women were equal to men-and concepts of freedom, struggle, and adventure that were new to me. Even our plain old biology and science textbooks seemed to follow a powerful narrative: you went out with knowledge and sought to advance humanity."

If you want to catch a glimpse of the horror that is Islam read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book "Infidel". Then you will also glimpse the mindset of a thousand years ago still alive and well today for women in the Muslim world - that of a "caged virgin" which is just as much a mental cage as a physical cage.

Protesting The Creeping Putin Dictatorship

I've been wondering for a while now how is it that the Russians are so complacent in the face of the mounting dictatorial behavior of Mr. Putin. Finally some news that there is a small group willing to take to the streets in protest to Putin policy. One of these protesters on Saturday was Garry Kasparov a former chess champion. The following is how the New York Times reported the event in today's newpaper.

"The rally, the third so-called Dissenters’ March held by a loose antigovernment coalition known as Other Russia, was noteworthy because authorities aggressively pursued the organizers, including President Vladimir V. Putin’s former prime minister, Mikhail M. Kasyanov, whom the police jostled but did not arrest. Mr. Kasparov was later fined and released.

"The rally was principally supported by Mr. Kasyanov and Mr. Kasparov, who leads a group here called the United Civil Front.

"Essentially barred from access to television, members of Other Russia have embraced street protests as the only platform to voice their opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March. Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov’s and Mr. Kasparov’s Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.

"The marches have become a test both of the determination of the opposition and the willingness of the government to use force to prevent it from gaining traction in street politics in the big cities.

"...Mr. Kasparov said: “Today the regime showed its true colors, its true face. I believe this was a great victory for the opposition because people got through and the march happened.”" (Read)

Pelosi's Shame for all Seasons

Has this woman no shame! Has she no love of country! How dare she go about parading around in a garish head cover kowtowing to the likes of the Syrian dictator! The American people did not elect her to be our representative abroad or to speak for us. There's already someone to do that and that is PRESIDENT BUSH. She should be labeled a traitor to our country. What else can you call having tea or whatever they drink in Syria with a dictator and supporter of terrorists.

The Savannah Morning News writes this about Pelosi's little side show. (Could she have done this because she's eyeing a run for the 2012 election?)

"HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi did Congress and the country a grave disservice this week by traveling to Damascus and meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"The Bush administration, and rightly so, has rejected direct talks with Syria. That nation has a long, bloody history of supporting terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

"Until Mr. Assad renounces these groups and takes steps to cut all ties with them, U.S. diplomats shouldn't step into Syria.

"But Ms. Pelosi apparently couldn't care less about forcing a state sponsor of terrorism to change its ways.

"Instead, this self-appointed foreign minister is taking the "Pelosi Doctrine" on the road. This doctrine calls for undercutting U.S. foreign policy and the Bush administration whenever possible.

"First, she and House Democrats approve legislation that handcuffs U.S. commanders by setting a pullout date for American troops in Iraq. Then she leaves the country and meets with a key ally of ruthless car-bombers, killers and other extremists who use violence to score political points.

"Talk about giving aid and comfort to one of the civilized world's enemies." (Read)

The Greatest Swindle - Global Warming

Recently, the news reported that due to the freeze this past week Michigan cherry, blueberry and other fruit farmers will have reduced harvests. This means fewer fruits and higher prices for our delicious cherries….bummer… meanwhile the saviors in the Michigan legislature will witness our Mayors signing the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement on April 14. With this agreement “participating cities commit to strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets by reducing carbon dioxide emissions”.

I’m so relieved that this is where our focus and energies are going because I’m so worried about all that CO2 that we exhale affecting our climate!! Thank God for these luminaries in government and especially for Al Gore. Why, who is calling him a hypocrite living in a mansion that consumes more energy in one day than a family does in one year. And all that meat he eats! I’m sure if we follow the money trail there are big bucks to be had for those who get in on the “Great Global Warming Swindle” (see this documentary put out by the BBC on Utube).

Honesty in politics and apparently in science is old fashioned. Remember that big fireball in the sky – the sun? Used to be a time when the sun was the cause of warming and cooling of our planet. Really what’s warming and cooling our planet is the amount of hot air coming out of Hollywood self-appointed know-it-alls and our corrupt politicians.

Politicians Fiddle While Iran Goes Nuclear

Please tell me if we're in some parallel universe where up is down and wrong is right. While our lovely Democrats invent issues with which to bring down our president, Iran is cooly building it's nuclear weapon of MASS DESTRUCTION! Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The total disregard for our 'clear and present danger' is simply astonishing - the hyprocisy, anti-Bush hate mongers and appeasers of the beginning of the second millenia will go down in our history books as the American evolution from a strong-willed people who fought the mighty British army and won to a lame, weak-willed and cowardly populace who refuses to face the dangers of our times.

Thankfully there are some clear-eyed leaders showing how we can deal with Iran, a country which has been a major thorn in the West's side for over twenty years. Thomas G. Mcinerney puts forth his views on how we can take down Iran in the Wall Street Journal article "Iran Escalates"(read).

"The obvious punishment for a defiant Iran could be an air strike that aims to destroy its nuclear development facilities and overt support for Iranians working to overthrow their government. This is where the discussion of taking stringent actions against Iran usually breaks down…

"This is where President Reagan in confronting the Soviets is instructive. The Gipper was elected in 1980 at a time when it appeared inevitable that the Soviet Union would dominate world affairs and just as inevitably that the U.S. was unable to do anything about it short of waging a bloody, military campaign that would have few allies in fighting and not every chance of success. In the end, as they say, Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.

"We have similar options now. One of which is to enact drastic economic sanctions that, oddly, would involve forcing a gasoline crisis in Iran. Tehran is kept afloat on oil revenues, but it has done so at the expense of its oil industry. While it exports large quantities of crude oil, Iran imports 40% of its domestically consumed gasoline, and each gallon at the pump is heavily subsidized. Shutting off or even restricting the supply of gasoline flowing into the country would put the regime in a crunch and drive up public discontent without creating a corresponding humanitarian crisis."

The question is what can we do as citizens of the United States to demand the likes of Pelosi and Reid to stop fiddling with sideshows, to try to contain their hatred of our President and to get down to the task at hand and the reason why we have a government - They need to be reminded that their primary mandate is - TO DEFEND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS CITIZENS.

Global Warming- "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong"

Before it was snails and whales that were the big preocupation of the left. They lost that battle - remember the one where the fight was about the destruction of Gaia? Now the left has adopted a new strategy - one that is difficult to follow and fight against because it is so complex. The theory for the past couple of decades is that humans are causing change in the climate. (Let's forget about that big fireball up in the sky - THE SUN). But finally people are actually starting to stand up to the nonsense and life destroying idea of "Global Warming". The following are some excerpts which were originally compiled by Robert Tracinski of The Intellectual Activist.

"As the House Energy and Commerce Committee prepares to question former Vice President Al Gore tomorrow morning about global warming, Czech President Vaclav Klaus is warning congressmen that environmental extremism is the modern equivalent of communism.

"Responding yesterday to U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and former House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., the Czech leader said: "It becomes evident that while discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment, but a clash of views about human freedom."

" As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants," said Klaus, responding to questions posed by the two lawmakers. "Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism." (Read)

Martin Durkin produced an excellent documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (view) for Daily Telegraph on March 17.

"On March 8, Channel 4 broadcast my programme. Since then, supporters of the theory of man-made global warming have published frothing criticism. I am attacked for using an "old" graph depicting temperature over the past 1,000 years. They say I should have used a "new" graph—one used by Al Gore, known as the "hockey stick," because it looks like one.

"But the hockey stick has been utterly discredited. The computer programme used to generate it was found to produce hockey-stick shapes even when fed random data (I refer readers to the work of McIntyre & McKitrick and to the Wegman Report, all available on the internet). Other than the discredited hockey stick, the graph used by us (and published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is the standard, accepted record of temperature in this period….

"The remarkable thing is not that I was attacked. But that the attacks have been so feeble. The ice-core data was the jewel in the global-warming crown, cited again and again as evidence that carbon dioxide "drives" the earth's climate. In fact, as its advocates have been forced to admit, the ice-core data says the opposite. Temperature change always precedes changes in CO2 by several hundred years. Temperature drives CO2, not the other way round. The global-warmers do not deny this. They cannot….

"Too many journalists and scientists have built their careers on the global-warming alarm. Certain newspapers have staked their reputation on it. The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong.""

Global warming is wrong, wrong wrong - but we better get it right because if we don't we will be paying higher taxes and become poorer- all for what?

"Never Bother to Examine a Folly; Only Ask What it Accomplishes"

(Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead.)

It occurred to me on this beautiful Sunday that the two greatest evils of our time are both based on irrational ideas layered on a melting foundation of lies, evasions, half-truths. Their ultimate goal being: control and power (which loosely translated means: money).

Environmentalists want to foist a bizarre idea on us that the earth is warming due to man's activities. For the past 40 years they have not been able to convince most regular people that living in an airconditioned house, driving a gas fueled car and pumping oil out of the ground is bad for us. Why? because we can obviously see that it is not true. We all live longer, healthier and wealthier lives because of inventions and discoveries made by smart people.

In the 1970 the scare tactic was that the earth was entering into a "Global Cooling" era. Since the 1990's it's fashionable among our elite to believe in the religion of Global Warming. So in a span of just thirty years, the mainstream consensus shifted from one theory to its complete opposite. But we all know (I hope) that CONSENSUS IS NOT SCIENCE. You need evidence to prove your point. Also, of great interest and very under-reported in our lovely news media is the fact that important weather scientists have spoken out against this theory of the man-made global warming.

A super interesting documentary (see here) on U-tube called THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE explains everything you ever wanted to know about this movement. It is very well done and understandable to even the most non-scientific of minds. The short of it is that Global Warming is one of the biggest hoaxes ever put over on mankind. I just hope it's not too late to reverse all the damage it has done to world economies.

So what is it that these global warming types want to accomplish? There's a pot of gold out there for anyone who jumps on the bandwagon of global warming. Al Gore (read) and scientists looking to fund their research comes to mind. Yes there are even hypocrits among scientists.

If you truly want to understand what is going on with the less than 1 degree rise in temperature that is affecting our planet then watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

Ali Hirsi - A Woman Fighting against Evil Ideas

Ali Hirsi, we all now who she is by now, is alone crying in the dark; a soft spoken, yet utterly courageous woman who is fighting alone the evil that is Islam. She is the warrior, pitted against a world filled with men who blow themselves up for their "prophet", weakling politicians cowering behind bland statements afraid to utter the idea that another culture is bad, and a Western population unable to confront the fact the this is yet one more momentous occasion when another evil must be stopped before it's too late.

Mr. Rago at the Wall Street Jr. points out many of her statements where she relentlessly tries to convince us that the Islam religion is the backbone of the Islamo terrorists. 'Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous." '

'The Muslim faith has many variations, but Ms. Hirsi Ali contends that the unities are of greater significance. "Islam has a very consistent doctrine," she says, "and I define Islam as I was taught to define it: submission to the will of Allah. His will is written in the Quran, and in the hadith and Sunna. What we are all taught is that when you want to make a distinction between right and wrong, you follow the prophet. Muhammad is the model guide for every Muslim through time, throughout history." '

' "You start by scrutinizing the morality of the prophet," and then ask: "Are you prepared to follow the morality of the prophet in a society such as this one?" She draws a connection between Mohammed's taking of child brides and modern sexual oppressions--what she calls "this imprisonment of women." '

'This worldview has led certain critics to dismiss Ms. Hirsi Ali as a secular extremist. "I have my ideas and my views," she says, "and I want to argue them. It is our obligation to look at things critically." As to the charges that she is an "Enlightenment fundamentalist," she points out, rightly, that people who live in democratic societies are not supposed to settle their disagreements by killing one another.'

'And yet contemporary democracies, she says, accommodate the incitement of such behavior: "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place." '


'She says the West must begin to think long term about its relationship with Islam--because the Islamists are. Ms. Hirsi Ali notes Muslim birth rates are vastly outstripping those elsewhere (particularly in Western Europe) and believes this is a conscious attempt to extend the faith. Muslims, she says, treat women as "these baby-machines, these son-factories. . . . We need to compete with this," she goes on. "It is a totalitarian method. The Nazis tried it using women as incubators, literally to give birth to soldiers. Islam is now doing it. . . It is a very effective and very frightening way of dealing with human beings." '(read).

Ancient Lies No Basis for a Policy by Jonathan S. Tobin

Two seemingly unrelated events in the waning days and hours of 2006 pretty much summed up everything you need to know about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Their meaning can be characterized simply: The Arab world's obsession with eradicating the State of Israel and the West's willingness to deceive itself about the character of Arab leaders and their intentions both are based on lies.

The more famous of the two events was the hanging of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In his final moments before he got his just desserts, the doomed Iraqi once again played the card that he and other Arab despots have always used with impunity: Israel.

Thus, among his final comments on the gallows came this declaration: "Palestine is Arab!"

Why invoke this cause with his last breath? Because even at that moment he still thought it worth a try to deflect discussion of his comeuppance to that of the conflict with Israel.

All-Purpose Excuse
The Arab world has used the fight against Zionism as an excuse for every problem that exists within its societies. Whether it is the domination of tyrants like Saddam or the lack of economic progress and the rest of the standards by which they lag behind the West, the answer is always the same: It would be different if only there were no Israel.
Saddam Hussein

That this thesis is nonsense has been no deterrent to its frequent use. This diversionary tactic is so deeply ingrained in the culture of the Arab world that it is routinely repeated not just by spokesmen for the regimes that run roughshod over their own people but also by their intellectuals and would-be reformers who ought to know better.

By focusing on the external enemy -- and a state ruled by a despised minority of dhimmi Jews at that -- the Arabs have given themselves as well as their leaders a ready-made excuse for all of their failures.

Though he spent his career terrorizing his own people, Saddam was always careful to pose as a pan-Arab anti-Zionist. When his troops were evicted from Kuwait in 1991 with little resistance on the part of his army, it was no surprise that he used his SCUD missiles to attack Israel. Though Israel had nothing to do with Saddam's looting of Kuwait and was excluded from the international coalition organized to oppose him by the first President Bush, it was imperative for him to make it appear as if Israel was actually a belligerent in that war.

This earned him the cheers of Palestinians, who took to their rooftops to cheer the missiles headed for Tel Aviv. He reinforced that impression with his subsequent payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

But this was, like everything else he did, a lie. Like the rest of the Arab world, Iraq did nothing useful for the Palestinians other than to encourage them to continue in a pointless war. But by doing so, he deflected criticism from Muslims who still prefer to embrace canards about the Jews rather than to examine their own faults. And by saying "Palestine" before the trap door opened, Saddam gave Arabs another excuse to ignore the truth about the campaign to remove his regime.

All this also helps to feed the fallacy -- still widely believed in the West -- that the Arab-Israeli dispute is the source of all the region's problems. But as Saddam's life and death proved, intra-Arab warfare and atrocities have little to do with the Jews.

Another event that was received with far less fanfare took place only days before Hussein's death. It was the release of a 33-year-old classified document by the United States State Department. It confirmed what had long been rumored: that the late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat personally ordered the murders of two kidnapped American diplomats in March 1973.

Members of a PLO-front group called "Black September" gunned down the two, Cleo Noel, U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and the embassy's Charge d'Affaires George Moore, along with Guy Eid, a Belgian envoy, in cold blood. The supposed separate identity of the group -- which was also responsible for the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich -- from that of Arafat's Fatah was a cover story intended to separate the Palestinian mainstream from its more egregious crimes.

Arafat denied any role in these murders to the day of his own death in 2004. Though he was the godfather of modern terror, he sought to burnish his mythical image as a statesman to the West. But this was nothing compared to the self-deception of Western governments who knew better, particularly the employers of Noel and Moore, the United States State Department.

Though the Sudan murders were invoked by critics of America's policy of engagement of Arafat throughout the era of the Oslo peace process, the State Department always denied there was any proof of Arafat's direct involvement. But, as the document released late last month proved, this denial was as brazen a falsehood as any ever uttered by the Palestinians. In fact, the National Security Agency had intercepted a transmission from Arafat's headquarters in Beirut to Khartoum, Sudan, ordering the murders of the Americans.

Evidence of Murder
Thus, even though the United States had in its possession direct evidence of his responsibility for the murder of twoo f its diplomats, Arafat not only was never charged with these crimes but also enjoyed the hospitality of the White House more than any other foreign leader during the Clinton administration.

Yet with Arafat now as dead as Noel and Moore, is there any point in rehearsing this sorry chapter of history? Yes, because the State Department cover-up of this crime (a whitewash that ought to have prompted at least a fraction of the outrage that the contemporaneous Watergate cover-up did) was an act of policy.

It was important to generations of American diplomats and their political masters not to publish the truth about Arafat because they believed making deals with him was more important than combating terror. Their subversion of the truth was for a cause they thought to be nobler than justice for slain Americans -- peace. And in the name of this illusion a long list of cabinet secretaries and a president of the United States willfully ignored not only the lies that Arafat told during peace talks but abandoned their duty to apprehend and punish a terrorist.

Hussein's last words and the Arafat transcript both illustrate how lies told by Arab despots have been abetted by the lies of their willing dupes. Those willing to embrace future deceptions, whether on the part of "moderates" such as Mahmoud Abbas (Arafat's longtime deputy) or his "extremist" Hamas rivals, would do well to study both incidents and realize that peace will never be built upon falsehoods.

This article was first published in www.jewishexponent.com on 04January07.

Contact Jonathan S. Tobin via e-mail at: jtobin@jewishexponent.com.

"There is No Clash of Civilizations but a Clash between the Mentality of the Middle Ages and That of the 21st Century"

There is at least one person from the Middle East who is willing to take a stand about Islam and call it like it is. Wafa Sultan is that woman - courageous and inspiring. Let's hope that others in the Muslim world take courage as well and stand up against an evil religion that has caused them so much harm, death and destruction.

Following are excerpts from an interview with Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan. The interview was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006.


Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete. (For the rest of the interview go to read and enter Wafa Sultan in the search box.)

When Your Purpose in LIFE is to DIE

What is wrong with the Muslims? Why can't they live a normal life - one filled with goals for a better life for their children? Robert Tracinski reminds us that these people, perhaps best exemplified by the Palestinians, are not like the rest of Humanity that have ever lived on the face of this earth.

"Our enemies, as I keep saying, have problems of their own. For example, imagine yourself in the shoes of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, stopped at the border of Gaza by the Israelis, who want you to relinquish the $35 million in Iranian cash that you need to keep your supporters fed—but also knowing that the longer you stay out of Gaza, the more a civil war between your faction and Fatah escalates outside of your control. Then you enter Gaza, only to have Fatah try to shoot you.
"Haniyeh's problem is the problem of the Palestinians: they have so thoroughly embraced the morality of sacrifice that they worship blood, death, and the suicide bomber—and so they will pass up no opportunity to sacrifice themselves, even when it means systematically destroying their own society.
"There have been countries where millions have been massacred and economies have been plunged into subsistence-level poverty by the arrogance and power-lust of a ruling clique. But I don't know if there has ever been a society that has pursued its own destruction as a matter of broad-based, decentralized popular will. That is the distinction of the Palestinians." (read).

Oil and Gas-We Have It, Let's Use It

American consumption of gasoline is up, so is China's which is fueled by their incredible growth. In fact the whole world's need for oil is rising. So what should Americans do about our growing need for more oil? Should we bury our heads and become anti-growth and deny future generations the comforts, inventions and medicines brought about by a booming economy fueled by energy as the environmentalists would have us do? Makuben T. Owens writing for the Ashbrook Center (read) asks the same question and then answers it with the obvious - WE HAVE OIL ON AMERICAN LAND!!! LET'S USE IT!!!

"What can we do? Conservation—like the improved fuel efficiency so beloved by environmentalists and politicians—can get us only so far. We need to tap our domestic supplies, too. This will not only offset price hikes caused by ever-growing global demand, it will reduce our dependence on imported oil and gas—a boost to national security. "

"The U.S. Minerals Management Service (a branch of the Interior Department) estimates 102 billion barrels of oil and 635 trillion cubic feet of gas beneath federal lands and coastal waters. By way of comparison, the reserves lying beneath the North Sea, a major source of oil for Europe, are believed to contain a total of 18 billion barrels of oil.

"Geologists estimate that another 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and 50 billion barrels of oil are waiting, yet to be discovered, off the "Lower 48" states. The American Petroleum Institute (API) notes that this is enough oil to replace current imports from the Persian Gulf for 59 years.

"Overall, experts estimate that the undiscovered resources on the federal Outer Continental Shelf that could be recovered with today’s technology are some 420 trillion cubic feet of gas and 77 billion barrels of oil—as much oil as Canada and Mexico combined, and almost three times their gas resources. (Generally, the OCS begins three to nine nautical miles from shore, depending on the state, and extends 200 nautical miles outward.)

"Yet almost 90 percent of the OCS acreage is off-limits to production—on essentially spurious environmental grounds. With a peak output of 6 million barrels of oil a day in 1999, North Sea production has not caused environmental degradation; there is no reason to believe that OCS production would be any more environmentally damaging. "

The environmentalists have a history of wanting to take us back to the Pleistocene (pleistocene). It is time we take them forward to the 21st century

Immigrants Today are Still the Immigrants of Yesteryear

Today's "Review and Outlook" section of the Wall Street Journal, Immigrant Entreprenuer, deserves a read. The anti-immigration hysteria whipped up by our politicians deserves nothing but derisive laughter and calling these fools for what they are. Imposters. The fact that the history of the United States is based on immigration and immigrants building this country seems to slip their hypocritical brains.

"Everyone knows that Intel, Yahoo, Google, eBay and Sun Microsystems are wildly successful U.S. technology companies. Less well known is that immigrant entrepreneurs played a role in founding each one -- and a whole lot of others."

"Titled "American Made: The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on U.S. Competitiveness," the report found that "Over the past 15 years, immigrants have started 25 percent of U.S. public companies that were venture-backed." These businesses employ some 220,000 people in the U.S. and have a current market capitalization that "exceeds $500 billion, adding significant value to the American economy."

"The authors surveyed smaller, private venture-backed companies as well and discovered that nearly half of the founders also were immigrants. Protectionists insist that immigrants "steal" jobs from native workers, but this survey found evidence that these newcomers are more likely to expand the job pool. "[A]lmost two-thirds (66 percent) of the immigrant founders of privately held venture-backed companies have started or intend to start more companies in the United States," according to the report.

"Despite these contributions, and the potential for more, U.S. policies today have made it increasingly difficult for foreigners to come here and start businesses...

"The U.S. currently grants just 65,000 visas annually to foreign professionals in certain fields, such as computer science and biotechnology. This year, as in nine of the past 11, the cap was reached well before the beginning of the fiscal year in which the visas can be used. Earlier this year, Republican Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona introduced a measure that raises the limit and allows it to fluctuate with market demand. The Shadegg bill also would shorten the average wait for a green card, which is currently between five and seven years and a disincentive for these skilled workers to stay in the U.S."

We don't need less immigration - we need more of these hard working people who have what too many Americans don't often have anymore: the yearning for a better life or as Robert Tracinski puts it in his article (TIA) a "normal life".

In nations struggling for liberty, and especially for those struggling to acquire the last institution of a free society, representative government, I found this yearning expressed in an unexpected form: young people talk about their longing to live a "normal life." ...What seems to be contained in the phrase "a normal life" is not the details of what constitutes a free society, but rather a vision of what kind of life is possible to man when he lives in such a society: prosperity; a profusion of opportunities for education , for expression, for advancement; a life free of physical fear.

Temples of Learning

Schools are not places for indoctrination. That's better left to indoctrination camps and at the discretion of the parent. What our schools should be are temples of learning - a place where the student is made aware of the chronological order of knowledge that is, how knowledge has been painstakingly gained during mankind's existence on earth and the major discoveries made along the way that led us to where we are today. Learning the story of the history of knowledge is crucial for a child in order that he may understand how one goes from the particular to the abstract or from observation to a principle.

But today's schools are not much more than babysitting centers that basically throw a massive text book at the kid and command them to study and regurgitate. Today there is an added twist. Students must sit there and listen to their teacher's political diatribes and rantings.

Thomas Sowell in an article written on March 13, 2006 pointed out this disturbing trend.

"Governor Bill Owens of Colorado has cut through the cant about "free speech" and come to the defense of a 16-year-old high school student who tape-recorded his geography teacher using class time to rant against President Bush and compare him to Hitler….

"Unfortunately, there is much confusion about both free speech and academic freedom. At too many schools and colleges across the country, teachers feel free to use a captive audience to vent their politics when they are supposed to be teaching geography or math or other subjects.

"The public occasionally hears about weird rantings by some teacher or professor, what seldom gets any media attention is the far more pervasive classroom brainwashing by people whose views may not be so extreme, but are no less irrelevant to what they are being paid to teach. …

"Nowhere else do people think that it is OK to engage in politics instead of doing the job for which they are being paid. When you hire a plumber to fix a leak, you don't want to find your home being flooded while he whiles away the hours talking about Congressional elections or foreign policy." (Read)

Indeed I don't. I want my children to LEARN HOW TO THINK. I want them to know the history of man's challenge to know the world around them and the discoveries the great men of the past made to tame it. For that you have to have teachers who KNOW HOW TO TEACH, in a chronological and orderly fashion, the big ideas that were discovered in the past in such areas as physics, biology, math, history and art.

Our schools today are nothing more than holding grounds or prisons...prisons of the mind...for our children where their potential is stunted by the unbearable boredom of listening to "teachers" who don't know how to teach. VanDamme Academy seems to be a school where the mind is considered sacred and to be carefully nurtured and developed through a rational curriculum. Certainly, I've never heard of a school taking this approach to learning. (View) Maybe there's hope for a better school.

The "Kerry Soul" of a Politician

I will not write a long piece on the lightweight John Kerry - he isn't worth my time or effort. But his latest gaffe proves that the Swiftboat veterans who battled against him during the 2004 Presidential elections were right about his phoniness. Kerry is a man of little substance. At his core there is not much there and as such he truly symbolizes many of today's politicians.

"John Kerry stands alone, to be judged by his words. He has given us the rare opportunity to look into the soul of a politician, and he has shown himself wanting, especially in view of the fact that he asked us to allow him the honor and privilege of leading our gallant military at a time of war. It is rare in life to be able to know the consequences of both sides of a decision. Mr. Kerry has clearly demonstrated what manner of president he would have been. Fortunately the American electorate denied him that high honor." (read)

This excerpt by the father of a young soldier killed in Irak says it all. This is the "Kerry Soul" - the soul of a shallow, unthinking, unprincipled politician.

United States Creationists Spread Seductive Lies

The United States doesn't just export good ideas like freedom of speech, religion and good government. It also exports fraud. In a little reported story, it appears that we also export Creationism to countries all over the world (Creationism).

"Creationism is a worldwide phenomenon, in which antievolutionary materials produced by the centers of creationism in the United States are exported overseas, either wholesale or with modifications to suit the local milieu; often there is reimportation, as creationists overseas become major players in their own right and are then welcomed by the legions of creationists in the United States. (The young-earth creationist ministry Answers in Genesis is a case in point: based in Florence, Kentucky, its chief executive officer is the Australian Ken Ham.) Perhaps owing to the spate of media coverage of recent defeats for creationism in the United States -- the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover in December 2005, the Ohio state board of education's removal of the "critical analysis of education" lesson plan in February 2006, and the primary election results for the Kansas state board of education in August 2006 -- stories about evolution education and attempts to compromise it have been in the news around the world.

"In Canada, the Quebec Ministry of Education is launching a crackdown on unlicensed evangelical schools, following a complaint from Pierre Daoust, director-general of the Commission Scolaire au Coeur-des-Vallees in Thurso, Quebec, about the failure of such schools to follow the provincial curriculum.

" In neighboring Ontario, the National Post reported, independent schools are not required to teach either evolution or sex education."

There are a multitude of "creation stories" around the world - mankinds early attempts at trying to understand their place in the universe. (Stories)

Now I have no beef with our early ancestors who were trying to make SENSE of the hostile world around them in order to survive - they did not have the benefits yet of science and logic. But today? What excuse have we today with all the knowledge gained by the keen insights and hard work of our great men of science and philosophy? Are we still to believe that we were spontaneously created by a supreme being (who never seems to be there when you need him).

Maybe, mentally we're still psychologicaly underdeveloped - in that we just cannot stand to look at the fact that each one of us exists for a short time and after that one IS no longer. And it sure doesn't help that our disgraceful public schools do not do a decent enough job to teach us about the nature of nature and man with all that it entails - the teaching of evolution and how Darwin's discoveries explain why we are on earth. The seductive lies of Creationism are appealing - but the truth of Evolution will always be there regardless of what tricks our mind wants to play.

chinese soldiers shooting tibetan pilgrims at mount everest

This is an amazing and horrifying video of murdering innocent pilgrims.

Chinese Soldiers Shooting Tibetan Pilgrims at Mount Everest

View this amazing and horrifying video shot by some mountain climbers. (watch)

"cameraman, Sergiu Matei, offers an exclusive interview to www.protv.ro about what happened on September 30, the day of the tragic event, when a Tibetan was killed in cold blood by the Chinese border soldiers. His body was then abandoned in the snow. ... (more) "

Of Bees, Mice and Terrorists

Sometimes when you read the news stark reality hits you hard between the eyes and you see before you the basic live or die truth about man - the fact that he possesses the choice between good and evil. While some people on this earth choose to blow themselves and other innocent bystanders up in a grasp for the unreal world of the "afterlife", others choose to study the world around them - the real world of the here and now and to make life better for man.

Two very interesting scientific breakthroughs were announced on October 25: the unraveling of the Honey Bee and mice genomes. A research group supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute announced that the western honey bee's genome was more similar to humans than any insect sequenced thus far(Read), while other researchers announced that they now have the DNA sequences of 15 mouse strains most commonly used in biomedical research (read).

"The honey bee's social behavior makes it an important model for understanding how genes regulate behavior through the development of the brain and central nervous system. That may lead to important insights into common mental and brain disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia or Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, the bee genome may also provide an important window into immunity and aging."

" 'Comparing the genome of the honey bee with other species separated over evolutionary time from humans has provided us with powerful insights into the complex biological processes that have evolved over hundreds of millions of years,' said NHGRI Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. 'The genome of the honey bee has been added to a growing list of organisms whose sequence can be compared side by side to better understand the structure and functions of our own genes. And that will help speed our understanding of how genes contribute to health and what goes wrong in illness.' "

"After assembly of the genome at the BCM-HGSC, the center led an analysis team of more than 170 investigators representing nearly 100 research groups from 16 countries."

When your focus is on using reason and objectivity for discovery and advancing the frontiers of knowledge then you cooperate with people from all over the world and use proof as your argument. When your focus is religion and mysticism to attain a "better" after-life then you destroy, terrorise, maim and subjugate in order to force people into accepting your view.

Why study the mouse genome?

“Making this wealth of data freely available to the research community is a significant milestone,” said David A. Schwartz. M.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the research. “Each mouse strain is genetically unique. Now that we know the DNA variations for these mouse strains, we can compare the genetic makeup of one strain that acquires a certain disease to another strain that does not get the same disease. In this way researchers gain insight into the same processes that may cause one human to get a disease while another human in the same environment remains disease-free.”

When you use reason to solve problems you discover the secrets of the universe and solve problems facing man. This approach to life necessarily leads to cooperation among men. When you use force to solve problems and abandon reason you discover only death and destruction. This approach to life necessarily leads to antagonism among men.

This is the choice facing humanity today: the choice between the scientist and the terrorist-between good and evil. If we choose the scientist then we have to decide to do what it takes to rid ourselves of the terrorist scourge that has afflicted us for far too long.

Rooney Musings

Andy Rooney said on "60 Minutes" a few weeks back:

>>I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers.
The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try to have things like the UnitedCaucasianCollege Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what happens...Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.

>>Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

>>I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, that is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU LISTENING >MARTHA>BURKE?

>>I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion. I have the right "NOT" to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off.

>>When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling, it is the Law of Probability.

>>I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen, you should have to speak English!

>>My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.

>>I think the police should have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can't understand the word freeze" or "stop" in English, see the above lines.

>>I don't think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business.

>>We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document; and open to their interpretations.

>>I don't hate the rich I don't pity the poor.

>>I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That doesn't stop you from watching them.

>>I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that's better, and put your name on the building.

>>It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does >take a>parent to stand up to the kid; and smack their little behinds when necessary and say "NO!"

>>I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don't pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals. I don't want to look at your ugly infected mouth >as you>serve me French fries!

>>I am sick of "Political Correctness." I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa; so how can they be African-Americans"? Besides,Africa is a continent. I don't go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, >great, great>grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from America and >nowhere else>>And if you don't like my point of view, tough...

Interview with Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan

"There is No Clash of Civilizations but a Clash between the Mentality of the Middle Ages and That of the 21st Century."

Following are excerpts from an interview with Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan. The interview was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006.

Wafa Sultan: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
[...]
Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?
Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.
[...]
Host: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind...

Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?

Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...

Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them. (Read)

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)

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).

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?

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.

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."

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.

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."

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)

James Bond Where Are You?

It is frustrating to venture into the surreal landscape of politics where up is down and what is black and white is turned into grey. The world we live in today is one where the initiator of a war does not have to bear the consequences of his "raison d'etre", i.e. to kill Jews and Westerners. Instead, the victim - Israel - is accused by most of the mealy mouthed European leaders and sundry Arab dictatorships of "disproportionate self-defense". But to hear the leader of the greatest nation on earth talk the talk but not walk the walk is truly disheartening and bodes ill for the future of the Western world. James Bond where are you when we need you?

Danielle Pletka at the American Policy Institute for Public Policy Research writes this:

"Throughout the Middle East, American priorities have lost steam. Mr Bush's signature issue democracy promotion has been thrust aside by resurgent dictators, with few real consequences. Egypt's abrogation of municipal elections and a brutal crackdown on civil rights and press freedoms, for example, brought a threat from the US Congress to cut Egyptian aid but little more than limp language from the administration.

"When America is perceived as weak, challengers will not hesitate to take up arms. Can US capitulation to Iran and to North Korea have been far from the minds of extremists in both Hamas and Hizbollah when they chose to escalate conflict in the Middle East? Will al-Qaeda be far behind?

"So what accounts for the "kinder, gentler" Bush administration? The fighting in Iraq has certainly wearied both the administration and Congress; it could be that there is little stomach for further confrontation. Or, America's mid-term elections are approaching and the administration does not need a new crisis to worry the voting public. Or perhaps a new foreign policy team at the state department simply prefers a pre-September 11 2001 approach?

"No one knows for sure. Without doubt, alienating allies for the sheer pleasure of it offers little reward for the US. Yet embracing allies without achieving results is hardly better. Similarly, plain speaking and diplomacy are almost always preferable to sanctions and war, but only if diplomacy yields a real outcome. The goal in the case of both North Korea and Iran is to end their nuclear weapons and missile programmes. It is not to keep the parties talking while Pyongyang and Tehran continue to develop weapons of mass destruction.

"At the end of the day, Mr Bush may revert to his cowboy roots and exert American power to deny our enemies the weapons they long for. But, statecraft is not poker and pretending to have no cards to play can lead to dangerous misjudgments by friends and enemies alike.
(Read)

An opportunity has been afforded to the West to finally confront the backers of Hizbollah - Iran and Syria. The question is why is Bush throwing this away to continue with diplomatic mumbo jumbo?

1. Hizbollah initiated a daring and incontrovertible act of war against Israel.

2. It is common knowledge that Hizbollah and Hamas are tools for Iran and Syria.

3. We are supposedly determined to crush Islamist fascists - wasn't that our goal?

I believe most of us yearn for a real hero larger than life. We are tired of slimey appeasers everywhere we turn from the United Nations greatest appeaser of them all Kofi Annan to our our own two bit politicians in Washington looking for the next vote. A James Bond right now would do just fine - thank you.

"... James Bond's popularity is rooted in the fact that he is on a crusade for the good in a morally gray world. The world of James Bond is the stalemated battle of the Cold War. Many of its elements are morally gray, filled with glad-handing politicians and dyspeptic bureaucrats - but the stakes are not. They are black and white - and Bond acts to make sure that good overcomes evil, usually on his terms, alone, with only his wits to carry the day.

"Even though the war Bond fought is long over, and we now know the outcome was assured all along, in this age of new threats and new wars, Bond serves as a symbol that great evil can be overcome by one rational man acting morally." (The Real James Bond by C.A. Wolski in the June 2003 issue of The Intellectual Activist).

The West is the good. Fanatical, tyrannical muslims and the states that sponser them - Iran and Syria - are the evil. Mr. Bush is the leader of the West which means he is the leader of Western Civilization. It is time for him to step up to the plate and do what should have been done by Reagan, Carter, Bush Sr., and Clinton. If we value life, freedom and the future then the hard decisions must be made and the people of the west must put up or shut up. If we put up we have a resplendant future ahead. If we shut up then only death and destruction awaits us.

"The Bill of No Rights"

This famed "Bill of No Rights" was written in 1993 by Lewis Napper, a self-described amateur philosopher and from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000 as a Libertarian. It still rings true today (Read)

"We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden, delusional, and other bed-wetters.
We hold these truths to be self evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they r equire a Bill of NON-Rights.

"ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.

ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone -- not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is full of idiots, and probably always will be.

ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful . D o not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.

ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.

ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing , we're just not interested in public health care.

ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim , or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair.

ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure.

ARTICLE VIII: You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training aid before you to make yourself useful.

ARTICLE IX: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness which, by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an over abundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

ARTICLE X: This is an English speaking country. We don't care where you are from, English is our language Learn it or go back to wherever you came from!(Lastly....)A

ARTICLE XI: You do not have the right to change our country's history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history and if you are uncomfortable with it, TOUGH!!!!

(NOTE: We should not have the phrase In God We Trust - it is irrational and a leftover from our past of mystism, it has no place in the modern world. The Muslim terrorists trust in God and look where we are today! Sarita...)

If you agree, share this with a friend. No, you don't have to, and nothing tragic will befall you if you don't. I just think it's about time common sense is allowed to flourish.Sensible people of the United States speak out because if you don't, insensible people will.

The Indispensable Condition of Peace in the Middle East by Onkar Ghate

"As Israeli soldiers reenter Gaza and bomb Lebanon, and Israeli citizens seek shelter from Hezbollah's missiles, the world despairingly wonders whether peace between Israel and its neighbors can ever take root. It can--but only if America reverses course.

"To achieve peace in the Middle East, as in any region, there is a necessary principle that every party must learn: the initiation of force is evil. And the indispensable means of teaching it is to ensure that the initiating side is defeated and punished. Decisive retaliatory force must be wielded against the aggressor. So long as one side has reason to think it will benefit from initiating force against its neighbors, war must result. Yet this is precisely what America's immoral foreign policy gives the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Hezbollah reason to think.

"Israel is a free country, which recognizes the rights of its citizens, whatever their race or religion, and which prospers through business and trade. It has no use for war and no interest in conquest. But for years, Arafat and the Palestinian authorities, with the aid of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other states, sought not to learn the conditions of freedom, but to annihilate the only free nation in their midst: Israel. Did the United States demand that the Palestinian leadership be destroyed?

"No. Clinton invited Arafat to dine at the White House and Bush declared that peace requires Israel to give in to its aggressor's insistence on a state." (Read)

Thinking with Memory

"Tel Aviv may be the economic and cultural capital of Israel, Jerusalem its political and symbolic capital. But the Galilee is where Israelis come to play, the forested and breezy getaway from the sweltering coast and the incessant dramas of everyday life in this region. Israelis were prepared to give up sandy Gaza and might also have been prepared to do the same with the rocky West Bank, if only the Palestinians would behave themselves. Yet places make a nation as much as principles do, and the Galilee was one place no Israeli could part with if his country was still going to be worth living in.

"So even as terror-stricken residents of the north flee, the rest of the country is prepared to fight, whatever the cost: A recent poll found that 80% of Israelis support the present military operations, and three-quarters of those would be prepared to launch a full-scale invasion of Lebanon if that is what it takes to defeat Hezbollah. No similar consensus has existed among Israelis since the 1967 Six Day War.

"Up in his winery, Mr. Dalton fears that if the war continues, he will have no one to tend the vines and take in the harvest, and an entire season's worth of business will be ruined. Yet as we stand beside one of his fields, watching an Apache helicopter fire missiles at a Lebanese village visible in the far distance, he muses on what his decision to remain here means. "Being here is part of defending the country. If Hezbollah wins this, the terrorists win this war, and not just against us but against the free world. You think I'm coming down from here? Never" (Brett Stevens - Read)

"Imagine what the U.S. would do if, on its northern border, a terror state-within-a-state pledged to its destruction was established from which flurries of missiles were fired at Chicago, its third-largest city. With that in mind, to suggest, as some have, that Israel is not acting with restraint is preposterous. Unlike Hezbollah, which is indiscriminately launching hundreds of missiles at Israeli cities and towns to kill as many civilians as possible, Israel is using only a fraction of its firepower and is in fact acting with great care to minimize harm to civilians. But because Hezbollah not only targets civilians but also uses them as human shields by hiding its missile launchers in population centers, Hezbollah has deliberately placed innocent Lebanese civilians in harm's way." (Benjamin Netanyahu Read )

We all know how Winston Churchill warned of Hitler's rising power and the danger it posed to Europe. But today as in the 1930's most are blinded by the philosophy of appeasement and inertia. In a speech given by Enoch Powell in 1988 he describes Churchill: "It was not so much the triumph of distant deductive reasoning as the long vista of historical and personal memory which, when others were still blind, revealed to him the nature and inevitable outcome of the resurgent German empire. He was a man who thought with his memory." Read

Just as "talking" to Hitler to dissuade him from his irrational dreams of "empire" was useless so are we beyond the point of "talking", "negotiating" and mostly appeasing fanatical lunatics who crave for death and destruction. A lesson must be taught and it must be taught with infinite finality now before we too have to fight a "WWII" and lose millions of people in the process. These terrorists are serious with their designs of annhilating the west. We should be serious too about utterly defeating them. But for that we need leaders who think with memory.

The Self-Interest of Survival

"Israel's military invasion and naval blockade of Lebanon is being denounced in European capitals and at the United Nations as a "disproportionate" response to the kidnapping this week of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah. Israel's decision late last month to invade Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of another soldier by Hamas was also condemned as lacking in proportion. So here's a question for our global solons: Since hostage-taking is universally regarded as an act of war, what "proportionate" action do they propose for Israel?" (read)

How is it disproportionate to attack a country who foments acts of war against another country? Is constantly sending rockets into Israeli territory to be sloughed off? Is kidnapping Israeli soldiers to be shrugged at? How much terrorism and how many acts of war is enough before a country attacks its enemy? Is evil to be allowed to persist just because one side has overwhelming military capabilities? Is no one ever to call a spade is a spade but rather we must all cover our eyes and ears to the fact of Islamist evil?

Evil cannot be evaded by saying the "correct thing" or accepting humility as our only way to reconciliation. Evil must be confronted everywhere and anywhere and at any time. Although we live in a relativistic world that says modern art is just as good as representational art, that a malaria ridden country full of thugs is equal to a western country, that being poor and illiterate is just as good as being rich and that Islam is just as good a religion as Christianity - in the real world we don't live in a sea of relativity. Every second of every day an individual as well as a nation must make honest assessments of life as he encounters it. There are some things that are bad and some that are good and some that are neutral but a judgement is made about everything whether you want to admit it or not because it's a matter of survival.

Israel made a judgement call: They had enough of attacks and they decided to retaliate in their own self-interest. I applaud them for it.