MUMBAI & DEMOCRACY: Dismembering the political turkey before the public's eyes!

What's the recipe for preparing and dismembering the bird of an opposing political view?

1. Sprinkle generously with a choice word here and a choice word there (planting seeds of doubt; e.g., change, right-wing, hope, fascist, Nazi, right ... as in a "right" to this and a "right" to that)
2. Rub vigorously with twists of meaning here and twists of meaning there (raising suspicions concerning motivations leading to distrust of the opposition; e.g., pro-"choice", "separation" of church and state, constitutional "right," as well as "the era of hope," "eight more years," "politics of hate")
3. Bake slowly under the watchful eye of cultural elites, academics, and a biased press (keeping the dumb-downed public's focus from real issues and the facts; e.g., immigration policy, radical Islam, government by entitlement, defense vis a vis economy)
4. Maintain temperature high enough to keep the hungry at a distance (socialists don't want the public to see the cooking bird is not really a turkey ... rather it's the democratic eagle)
5. When done, take a sledgehammer to the sucker and smash it to smithereens.

The remains will usually feed as many of the ignorant masses who want to pack their gullets with their dying liberties, freedoms, and participatory politics.

I bring this culinary delight to you as the result of seeing Martin Sullivan's all too transparent application of this recipe to Martin Wingfield's 11/28/08 post concerning the obvious ties between Islam and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. (See Atlas Shrugs for antisemitic tie.)

Sullivan is the principal contributor for Islamophobia Watch, an Islamic apologetics collective and news site purporting to expose Western Islamophobia.

Does he comment on the content of the post? No! Does he exposit the article with critical comment? No! Does he excise the falsehoods and present evidence of their falsity? No! Does he point to an alternate explanation or facts unavailable to or ignored by Wingfield? No! Not a word.

So what does he do? He does what all of us do when we blog, he selects what he feels are money quotes from the article and publishes those for his readers. Okay, so if we all do that, what has he done wrong?

He takes the anti-democracy recipe and applies it in his title: "Fascist draws lessons from the Mumbai terrorist attacks."

Dear reader, do you know if Wingfield is a fascist? No! But the first word off Sullivan's keyboard warns you he can't be trusted. Who would trust a fascist after all? No one in their right minds would, now would they?

Have your read Wingfield's entire post? Go there and look for misstatements of fact or distortion of the news. Enthusiasm for his viewpoint? Yes! Hyperbole? Yes!

Sullivan also adds one sweet spice to his title, the choice word "lessons." Sullivan knows that in our modern Western culture no reader wants to receive a "lesson" from a news source. That's anathema!

The only crime Wingfield has committed is that he has used what remains of Britain's freedom of speech to speak his mind.

It is true that he is a member of the dreaded BNP (British National Party), a party branded as fascist by radical Muslims throughout Europe and enabled in doing so by leftist elites, academics, and press.

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TERRORISM: Sir Paul McCartney targeted by whacko Muslims!

Sir Paul: Terror target | Sunday Express
HT - SIR PAUL: TERROR TARGET | BLACK KETTLE

Way to go Paul ... I'm not sure John Lennon would be pleased but this John is ...

Sir Paul McCartney has been threatened that he will be the target of suicide bombers unless he abandons plans to play his first concert in Israel.

Self-styled preacher of hate Omar Bakri claimed the former Beatle’s decision to take part in the Jewish state’s 60th anniversary celebrations had made him an enemy of all Muslims.

Sources said Sir Paul was shocked but refused to be intimidated.

In an interview with Israeli media yesterday he said: “I was approached by different groups and political bodies who asked me not to come here. I refused. I do what I think and I have many friends who support Israel.”

Beatles, Israel, Paul McCartney,
Muslims, Terrorism

FREEDOM: Love it and defend it ... or this!

Internet Head murdered by Russian police - WSJ.com

If it hadn't been in the WSJ I would have doubted this story ...

Police arrested and shot to death Sunday the head of an Internet news service who had been critical of authorities in the volatile Caucasus province of Ingushetia.

The death of Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the Web site Ingushetiya.ru, is certain to further ratchet up tensions in the region which, along with the neighboring province of Chechnya, has been a haven for militant opponents to Kremlin authority. In recent weeks, the Kremlin has tightened security in Ingushetia, apparently fearing Russia's enemies may stir up trouble there while its troops have been occupied in Georgia.

The story is incomplete in the linked page because it i's a teaser to a WSJ subscription page.

However, other news services are reporting the same story; being unsuccessful with democracy the Soviets have indeed returned to their old tricks.

In Moscow, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said in a statement that Yevloyev was detained by police and died in an "incident" while being taken to police headquarters for an interrogation. Markin did not elaborate, saying that a check to clarify the circumstances of Yevloyev's death had begun. The committee is under the Prosecutor General's office.

Yevloyev has angered regional authorities with bold criticism of police treatment of civilians in the region. A court in June ordered him to shut his site on charges of spreading "extremist" statements, but it reappeared under a different name. [elpasotimes.com]

I'm thinking - with recent geopolitical developments in mind, who do I really want to see in the White House next year?

Freedom, Internet, Palin,
Politics, Russia

GEORGIA: What to do now that we've revealed no trump?

Duly Noted: Slogans Distort Reality | The Brussels Journal

George Handlery's twelve comments in his "the week that was" are right on concerning the West's squeamish reaction to Russia's invasion of its sovereign neighbor Georgia ...

3. Discreetly, it is being suggested that counter-measures and reactions to Georgia are to be of a sort that will not anger Russia. Absurdly, this self-created inhibition implies that strong aggressors (real or alleged) should only be criticized with their consent.

Concurrently, this kind of squeamishness teaches the aggressor that he is to claim early, possibly before the fact, the status of the insulted party.

It creates a welcome opportunity to become confused in the case of those who do not like clear-cut cases if these result in tough going. Thereby the claimed victim status becomes protection against having to impose effective sanctions on the impostor.

[...]

5. Reacting to Russia’s handling of Georgia sheds light on another inhibition. Suggestively we are asked, “are we overreacting to the crisis?” The question is made to imply that the dangerous error of exaggeration is being committed.

No, in fact we are systematically under reacting. Here we should realize that it is exactly this manicured response that is the most dangerous one among our alternatives.

How come that the mistake which we love to make is our typical response? The case is similar to the abuse of cold medicine that combats symptoms. We search for palliatives to counter-act an event that is firmly embedded in an unfolding reality.

6. Moscow’s hegemonial action in Georgia sent a message. Indeed, the message was intended and calculated by Moscow. The question is what we will learn from the un-coded smoke signals we have seen rising.

This is classic championship chess only in the deadly game of geopolitical oneupmanship ... our opponent makes his move and slaps the switch on the game clock, only the West is not aware the clock is ticking. In this case Russia takes our non-response response as weakness and confusion.

Sadly, that is exactly what it is! The world's bleeding heart do-gooders have defeated us before we can even get our of the gate!

11. A crucial detail of the “Georgia business” tends to get lost in the selective reporting of the event.

Not accidentally, this writer is alert to the matter that is easily repressed by most of us. The reason has to do with the conditioning that [normal] backgrounds can give us.

A policy of systematic atrocities against conquered enemy populations is part of the way some countries fight their wars. Russia is one of them. Mass rape, looting, the destruction of property can uproot conquered populations that are located in disputed territory. Well-planned spontaneous indiscriminate violence, if applied with stern vigor, produces high returns. [HT: Pankukas] It might make the victims submissive, demoralized and ultimately acquiescent when the conqueror imposes his system upon them.

Woe to those whose courage fails them when a clear and present threat is pointed at their hearts!

Geopolitics, Georgia, Russia

CENSORSHIP: There is a difference!

UPDATE: FoxNews.com reports on the "self-censorship" and the cowardly ethics of Random House publishers, giving in to intimidation. How, I ask you, HOW can we combat an insidious evil if those around us run at every shadow and capitulate at every threat?

Click here to read Prologue to The Jewel of Medina.

**** ****

Muslims Offended Again. Publisher Takes “Firm Stand” | Brussels Journal

See also my earlier post and link ...

SHARIA: Arriving on your doorstep soon! | SHEEP'S CRIB - ISSUES

The only difference between the things which offend Muslims and the things which offend Christians is the potential.

With Muslims you might get a riot or two with a few hundred burned cars, or perhaps a homicide bomber in one of your grocery stores or in the lobby of one of your police academies; with Christians you get thousands of emails, hundreds of letters, and dozens of phone calls, or perhaps you might get a line of pickets or a boycott.

This bigoted disparity seems to be missed by those who continue to produce material offensive to Christians: for TV {e.g., the visual trash known as Swingtown (on CBS) and Kath & Kim (on NBC}, for the theater (e.g., Sex and the City from New Line Cinema/TimeWarner), for the bookshelf (e.g., Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Hitchens' God Is Not Great) and for the public square (e.g., queer parades in Boston and San Francisco).

If you can find the time, count for me the number of deaths, the number of bombs, and the value of property damaged by Christians as a result of any of the above.

What troubles me is the aggravating absence of voices from the left, crying censorship. Clearly, if Christians so much as blink at something that is offensive to them, lefties flood the streets with deafening cries of censorship.

Mark my words, if and when Obama loses the 2008 presidential election, lefties in this country will raise a whirlwind of accusations about de facto racism, which is just another way of saying the whities of America censored their man due to his skin color.

It wouldn't occur to black-America that they in fact did censor John McCain because of his skin color.

Censorship, Christianity, Election,
Islam, Muslims, Religion

QUESTIONS: A few must be asked and answered?

Duly Noted: The Old Russia Is Back | The Brussels Journal

So, tell me,

Where was the intel that Russia was about to invade a sovereign neighbor?

Where were British, NATO, and American spy agencies? (At Muslim sensitivity training seminars in the Barbados I suppose!)

What did China know and when did she know it?

What did A'ma-n-eeda-job know and when did he know it?

Where are the anti-American voices in the UN today? Huh?

Where are all the leftists anti-war protesters now ... has anyone seen Cindy or Murtha?

What are the goals of the reconstituted Soviets? (Clearly the two breakaways were not their strategic objectives?)

Cold War II, Georgia,
Russia, WWIII

SHARIA: Arriving on your doorstep soon!

Sharia Law at Random House | Brain Terminal

This is the kind of subtle change that is taking place all over the Western landscape, as Islam continues to find lackeys and capitulators among the leftists of the world.

We can look but we will not find any academics or activists crying "censorship" here (see also here).

Censorship, Christianity, Islam,
Muslims, Religion, Sharia

MUSLIMS: They can't be appeased once they're offended!

Kashmiris [Muslims] say protests a 'wake-up' call for India - Yahoo! News

A new wave of deadly unrest in Indian Kashmir is a reminder that a peace process between India and Pakistan has failed to alleviate the frustrations of the region's Muslims ... .

Therein lies the problem! Using simple observation and anyone's general history of Islam, we must conclude Muslim "frustrations" can't be alleviated until everything is going their way, and only their way.

Apparently, once Muslim have been "offended," they've no mechanism in their teachings to consider the interests of others as more important than their own. Nor do they have any teaching to love their neighbors as themselves.

Their only observable teaching in these cases is thuggery and butchery.

The greatest commandment in Judaism and Christianity is to love God with your all in all ... Muslims loudly profess they love their Allah with all their being, even to the point of death, but fail miserably when it comes to the second greatest command: to love their neighbors ... even Muslim neighbors.

To Jews and Christians, this is supposed to be our second most important commandment from God.

This is a dangerous situation for the world ... what with Muslim unrest from the Philippines to Spain, from Denmark to Morocco, from Georgia to Sudan, and Western China to Kashmir.

If the followers of Islam continue on this path, the global community will rise up against the threat and stop it ... I hope, maybe, perhaps, possibly ... well maybe the recent global reaction to Russia's invasion of Georgia tells a different story.

Christianity, Islam,
Kashmir, Muslims, Religion

JUDICIAL TERRORISM: The rising tide of anti-American "lawfare"!

Foreign Courts Take Aim at Our Free Speech |- WSJ.com

Sens. Arlen Spector and Joe LIbermann have teamed up to bring legislation before the Congress that needs our support.

In today's Wall Street Journal's Op Ed page is a marvelously encouraging summary of "the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008."

Our bill bars U.S. courts from enforcing libel judgments issued in foreign courts against U.S. residents, if the speech would not be libelous under American law. The bill also permits American authors and publishers to countersue if the material is protected by the First Amendment. If a jury finds that the foreign suit is part of a scheme to suppress free speech rights, it may award treble damages.

This is much needed legislation ...

Our Constitution is one of our greatest assets in the fight against terrorism. A free-flowing marketplace of ideas, protected by the First Amendment, enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers.

HT: Black Kettle

Let's contact our senators and congressmen and put our support where it is needed. This one area of a free press I can get behind.

Anti-Americanism, Free Press,
Free Speech, International Courts, Terrorism, WOT

ISLAM: The making of strange bedfellows!

Diane West, NRO, has written ...

I have come to believe that the Western way of life – which I’ll define in brief as life lived according to Judeo-Christian-evolved morality and liberty – is imperiled by the demographic spread and influence of Islamic ideology and laws.

[...]

In the cause of not-giving-offense – the highest cause of Westerners-turned-multiculturalists – we have prevented ourselves from undertaking a hard-eyed appraisal of Islamic ideology as a whole, jihadism included, and engaging in a serious discussion of how to contain it. [HT: Brussels Journal]

She says what many have realized for some time: we're our own worst enemies, preventing "ourselves from undertaking a hard-eyed appraisal of Islamic ideology ... and engaging in a serious discussion of ... it."

Recently I've found well-reasoned, anti-Islam apologetics available to the public both online and off-line. The above is an example; found this morning as I prepared to publish the following.

****

The thoughts and opinions of internationally acclaimed novelist Ian McEwan have encouraged my hope that it is not too late to stop the global, Muslim tsunami; McEwan ... in defense of a friend under attack as an Islamophobe ... told reporters ...

He was glad to leap to the defence of his old friend Martin Amis [CRIB link] when the latter's attacks on Muslims brought down charges of racism on his head. He made an exception of the Islamic issue out of friendship to Amis, and because he shares the latter's strong opinions.

"A dear friend had been called a racist," he said. "As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist. This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable."

A few days ago I realize how often I felt like Diogenes, yet instead of looking for a man of honesty, I'm looking for men of honesty whose honesty results in courage and conviction. Perhaps I've found one in David Thompson, who wrote in a recent post ...

Last year, I wrote a short post titled It’s Okay to Dislike Islam. In it, I argued:

One of the creeping, unanalysed [sic] myths of our time is that it is somehow wrong to dislike Islam, or any part thereof, and wrong to take a dim view of its tenets and demands, and wrong to take a still dimmer view of the figure who founded it. I can practically hear the distant tutting and grunts of disapproval. Poor Islam. Poor Muslims. Their beliefs are being mocked. How hurtful. How “racist”. How terribly unfair.

No. It's not unfair at all. What’s unfair is a demand for unearned deference and a unilateral exemption from the testing of ideas. What’s unfair, indeed despicable, are efforts by Islamic groups to cow dissent and stifle criticism with a well-rehearsed pantomime of victimhood and the projection of false motives. Pretending to be hurt in order to assert one’s will over others [CRIB link], or to gain unreciprocated favours, or to exert control over what others may say and think, is cowardly and malign. Let me say that once again. It’s cowardly and malign.

At the time, I feared I might be stating the blindingly obvious.

I like that: "unearned deference" and "unilateral exemption";

the first being the expectation of social profit without incurring any expense for that status, and,

the second, being the expectation one is free to do to others what one will not tolerate in return from those same others (again without cost for that freedom).

That the inmates have taken over the asylum is evidenced in worldwide capitulation to both expectations by individuals, groups, corporations, governments, NGOs, religious personalities (also here), and agencies of governments.

That the line between peaceful Joe Muslims and authoritarian fanatic Muslims has been blurred is no secret, but to blame those in the West for the blurring is cowardly. I'll no more accept the blame for this blurring than a Muslim should for the blurring of the line between myself and Fred Phelps as Baptist preachers; that blurring began in my backyard.

Muslims chant "unfair, unfair"; but as Thompson points out, criticism of Islam is not unfair:

What’s unfair, indeed despicable, are efforts by Islamic groups to cow dissent and stifle criticism with a well-rehearsed pantomime of victimhood and the projection of false motives.

The West has been found standing on the road, showing their support for the poor Muslim victims, when in fact they've been trooping by naked as Jaybirds:

It is a widespread notion that deeply held convictions are at least entitled to respect - when in reality there is no “at least” about it, and no entitlement either. The challenging of beliefs is an often brutal business, but the ensuing and almost inevitable hurt is emotional and not physical. There is nothing wrong in this; it is how knowledge advances. [Oliver Kamm; HT - David Thompson]

What concerns me about my joy at finding fellow travelers on this road is that one is pro-homosexual and anti-religious and another is as liberal as liberal can be. Who knows where the others stand?

For all I know McEwan would despise the society I would like to see and Thompson would consider me a religious sycophant. But on the issue of Islam and its demands on the world today we're in agreement and that is all that truly matters at this juncture.

Muslims, their supporters, and those who believe there is a politically correct way to live life have, sans debate, foisted the lie that ALL people and ALL ideas deserve respect upon the world. Governments, especially leftist/socialist entities (read EU and UN), have likewise come to believe it is their job to ensure such respect is forthcoming from those with whom they disagree.

Ideas have no claim on our respect; they earn respect to the extent that they are able to withstand criticism. [quote by Kamm]

Our litigious society is the direct result of the convergence of two social pressures:

first, the insatiable appetite of the legal community to attain ever greater altitudes of legal gobbledygook and the servile response of justices to such attainments and,

second, a permissive, egalitarian mindset that informs bad behavior such behavior is the fault of any number of others, each of which needs to be sued ... but under no circumstance must the actor to take responsibility for his or her actions.

Modern Islam has exploited these pressures well, using our laws and courts to prove just how well.

Someday a generation will exist to judge this generation. I wish to be counted as one who stood up to the inmates and tried earnestly to recapture the keys to the control room. Though the following was written on the subject of abortion, I found it germane to this post:

Future generations may well condemn our society's countenance of abortion in the same way we look back in wonder and revulsion at those who defended slavery. Men such as William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln are rightly revered today for their opposition to that peculiar institution -- but we must recall that they were outnumbered and reviled in their time.

Indeed, both men were stretched to the limit of their political skills, and their lives, to obtain justice. The nobility of their cause, though clear to us, was nowhere near apparent to their contemporaries. Then, as now, the most dreadful things can become convention if enough folks go along. [Theo Caldwell, National Post; HT: The Black Kettle]

As author McEwan told the NYT last year ...

"All religions make very big claims about the world, and it should be possible in an open society to dispute them. It should be possible to say, 'I find some ideas in Islam questionable' without being called a racist."

Notice McEwan's prerequisite: "an open society." Islam will not tolerate an open society in their totalitarian world; even if a "peaceful" Islam exists and wants such a society, Islam's leaders will not allow it!

Let's put a stop to this for the sake of generations to come!

Islam, Muslims, Religion,
Respect, Victimhood

FREEDOM OF SPEECH: I don't get it?

Sensible Canadians (yes, there are many) are fighting to preserve freedom of speech in the frozen land north of us; the details of which are voluminous; too much for my humble blog. You can get excellent background here (Ezra Levant), here (Mark Steyn), both great communicators and commenters, and here (Blogging Tories).

However, a relatively new target (of the Canadian thought police) is the not so funny comedian Guy Earle. Guy's crime, it seems, was rebuking a drunk Lesbian heckler during his time on stage at a gay night club.

The charges of un-funniness -- which the B.C. Human Rights Code calls "discriminatory publication" -- came after Earle's rough response to some drunk, rude hecklers in a Vancouver night club last year. The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled that there was enough substance to the charges that Earle must stand trial. [Levant]

What I don't get is this: if Earle's crime was offending the Dike for being a Dike, why can't Earle file a complaint with the same commission (HRC) about her offending (heckling while working is always offensive) him as a comedian? After all, it was his employment she went after? Clearly, I'm missing something.

Each of the free speech cases I look at seems to have the same character: the complainant accuses someone of a "hate crime" and the thought police go after him for offending sensibilities ... those of both the complainant and the public. Yet the vitriol in the complainant's complaint is ignored.

The offended are evidently free to say any offensive thing that comes to mind about the defendant, his family, his occupation, his religion, his race, his nationality, etc. ... even call him names, publicly.

Sorry! I just don't get that kind of law!

Canada, Freedom of speech,
Human rights

JIHADI ROULETTE: Deadly Gamesmanship in US Defense Department!

With imbeciles like this in our defense bureaucracy, the United States doesn't have a chance of surviving this century ... maybe not the next decade.

this month, [Washington Time]'s Bill Gertz reported on ... the termination of Maj. Stephen Coughlin (USAR). Mr. Coughlin, a lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer, has been the Pentagon's sole specialist on Islamic law charged with lecturing senior officers on jihad doctrine — military leaders who have been fighting the so-called war on terror for years without an inkling of Islamic ideology. His contract with the Joint Staff will end in March, Mr. Gertz wrote, because Mr. Coughlin "had run afoul of a key aide" to the Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England.

I know mushrooms grow in moist, hot, smelly, dark places but where do this idiots come from???

It's amazing to see our own leaders betraying us to a bunch of backward fanatics ... greatest country in the history of mankind falling to a people without a nation to call their own, and who have not contributed anything to the betterment of man for centuries.

Yes, Virginia, there is a God! And He is very upset with America!

HT: Black Kettle

BLOGGERS BLOGGING:

Cannoneer
Infidels R Cool
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Counterterrorism, Defense Department,
Islam, Jihad, Military, Muslims, WOT

ISLAM: The Jewish Reality!

So you think the holocaust could not happen again? Read this FoxNews.com report and then this brief report as well then - guess again! No one near a Muslim enclave is safe.

The brain-challenged leaders of Iran are on a path to repeat the worst period of human history ever.

Anne Frank, Fascists, Holocaust, Iran,
Israel, Jews, Middle East, Terrorists