Waiting for Achilles Godot

Erasmus somehow saved a fragment from Aeschyus' Mymidones, a play now lost that deals with Achilles' bodyguards in the war against Troy, known to us as Turkey, a few lines from a Libyan saying about an eagle seeing itself impaled by an arrow:

"Thus not by others, but with our own feathers/ are we undone."

Aeschylus, The Myrmidones.


It's a mad, mad, Mad magazine world. What? Me worry? The only problem is Christians and other rightwing bigots, the racists, the conservatives, the pick your imaginary villain. The problem is whatever is not the problem. That settles it. Everything else is fine and improving. Thank the gods for the government. This is the best in the best of all possible worlds and the government is making everything better. Jihad? It's a spiritual striving, only turned against Western Arrogance when we deserve to be punished for past transgressions, slavery and the CIA over-throw of the Iranian Communists in the 1950s, and so on. If there are any problems in the world, then we are responsible for them, and if we are nicer people, we can change all that so everyone loves us. Jihad? What? Me worry?

"Normalcy bias."

The normalcy bias refers to an extreme mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

Glazov interviews some folks below to see if there is a Muslim/World problem we aren't facing honestly. I think "Normalcy bias." O.K., I think that when I'm on a date. Maybe I worry too much. But what if Geert Wilders is right, that Islam is a serious danger to the world as a place of freedom and safety and relative affluence? What if our intelligentsia comprises fools who are dangerous to us as individuals and nations?

Jamie Glazov, "Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right," Front Page Magazine. 9 July 2010

FP: Roger Simon, Robert Spencer and Kevin Levin, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Today we witness the blatant desperation in our culture and media for a “moderate Islam” — an Islam that many non-Muslims vehemently insist exists, but that mysteriously eludes them. This moderate Islam will make everything better, we are told, once the “extremists,” who are the “minority” in Islam, will be sedated. This sedation will be most easily achieved, the argument continues, when the Islamophobes stop blaming Islam after Islamic terrorists point to Islamic scriptures in explaining what inspired them to perpetrate their terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, in terms of the planet that we happen to be occupying, a “moderate Islam” is nowhere to be found; no school of Islamic jurisprudence exists that counsels Muslims to renounce the Qur’an’s teachings on Islamic supremacism and the obligation of violent jihad. And yet, to suggest the truth of this reality in our culture gets one only the accusation of being a racist and an “Islamophobe.”

Roger Simon, let me begin with you. What do you think of this phenomenon? You recently wrote a profound piece at Pajamas that touched on one of its crucial foundations. In analyzing why the likes of Glenn Beck and Charles Krauthammer have attacked Geert Wilders, you interpreted that these conservative individuals, from whom we might have expected something different on this score, are, what it all comes down to it, rejecting Wilders because they are afraid that he might be right....

Simon: [...]

Islam is an almost unsolvable conundrum. How do you deal with a religion with a billion adherents that is expansionist in ideology and threatens to kill its apostates? How do you get a reformation of that religion when its holy book, from which those dictums come, is reputed to be dictated verbatim by God and is therefore immutable? Talk about “inconvenient truths,” these are about as inconvenient as they get. No wonder they are buried from the discussion and ignored. We in the West live in a society that cannot even begin to wrap its mind around that. I know – it’s hard for me.

So where does that leave Wilders? I believe that consciously or unconsciously those who brand him as excessive, or even racist, are living in fear that he may be right. They have to hate Wilders, because if he is correct, their whole world disintegrates. Who would want that?

He and the small group like him have therefore morphed into our clearest contemporary examples of those poor Greek messengers to be killed for bringing the bad news. A salient recent example is Nicholas Kristof’s unhinged attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the New York Times Book Review – a supposed liberal going off on a woman who had a cliterodectomy for daring to dwell on how women were oppressed in the Islamic world. It’s almost pathological. Another recent example are the similarly unhinged attacks on Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident while completely ignoring vastly more horrific acts occurring in the Muslim world on an almost daily basis. We dare not insult them lest they go mad.

It’s almost as if the world has become a giant dysfunctional family, enabling their huge Muslim branch to remain besotted – or drugged out – on sub-Medieval ideology. And the situation is getting worse. The principle bastion of hope of reformation of the Islamic world – Turkey – made its turn back toward fundamentalism years ago now.

So again, where does that leave Wilders? One lonely canary. We have to support him, but I’m not optimistic. I hope my colleagues are.

FP: Thank you Roger Simon.

Kenneth Levin your thoughts? A species of the Oslo syndrome is involved in this phenomenon right?

Levin: I do see a form of the Oslo Syndrome operating here. [...]

The perpetrators of 9/11 and their myriad supporters quickly made clear their objective of imposing their Islamist rule worldwide and their comprehension of doing so as a religious duty. Yet many in America sought, and continue to seek, to recast the threat, to rationalize it, and to urge policies aimed at appeasing Islamist leaders and followers in the delusional hope of thereby extricating the nation from the dangers it faces.

Geert Wilders argues that Islamofascism derives directly from Islamic teachings, including Koranic exhortations. His movie, Fitna, advancing this argument, is unimpeachable in its citations of Islamic scripture and in its images of Islamofascism on the march. That those who oppose him are motivated in large part by a wish to appease the purveyors of the Islamist threat is indicated by the fact that the negative responses to Wilders have focused not on rebutting his arguments but on demonizing him and using anti-democratic means to silence him. As Roger Simon suggests, they are compelled to hate Wilders because they so want to cling to their delusional denial of the threat.

The ugly, perverse, self-destructive nature of the assault on Wilders, and the necessity to defend him, have been articulated by many. ...

Beyond the unconscionable attempts to silence Wilders, there are other indications, both in Europe and America, that the hostility directed against him is motivated primarily by a wish to deny the threats we face and to appease its agents. Thus, in both Europe and the U.S., we have a huge chorus of officials insisting Islam is a religion of peace, They insist that Islamist forces pursuing a war of world conquest have “hijacked” the religion and that the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving and tolerant. Yet these same officials give virtually no public support to those - too few - Muslims within their nations who at once declare themselves to be believing Muslims and do speak out forcefully against Islamofascism. On the contrary, such people are typically ignored and government outreach is almost invariably directed to individuals and groups linked to Islamist, hatred-promoting agendas.

[....]

One can argue there is often a more venal motive behind this phenomenon. Saudi Arabia is the prime financier of Muslim extremism in the U.S., including of education in bigotry – particularly anti-Jewish and anti-Christian bigotry - in U.S. mosques and Islamic schools, and Saudi Arabia is pandered to because of its oil wealth and its readiness to use its prodigious financial resources to win official tolerance of its intolerant message. But if officials and others looked honestly at the existential threats we face from Islamofascism, the likelihood is they would be less inclined to politics as usual and to being swayed against defensive measures by Saudi blandishments. The impact of the Saudi role is a reflection of widespread official averting of eyes from the nature of the threat.

One can also argue that much of the Western accommodationist reaction to the Islamist threat, and desire to silence Wilders’ message, are a product of Western leftist orthodoxy. The combination of hostility towards the West, moral relativism, and boosterism regarding virtually anything non-Western or anti-Western – all seminal doctrines of the contemporary leftist catechism – inevitably leads to denial of, or excuses for, or even defense of, the Islamist challenge.

But even among those whose ideological allegiances weigh against looking honestly at the nature of the threat, there were many individuals who responded to 9/11, and the additional terror that followed on the atrocities of that day, and the declarations of Islamofascism’s leaders and minions, by reevaluating their leftist ideology and abandoning their old verities for a saner comprehension of the realities we face. Those who continue day after day to cling to their delusions regarding the nature of the threat do so by persisting, day after day – out of a desperate desire to believe reality to be otherwise, to believe the threat can be wished away or rationalized away or appeased away – to continue averting their eyes from the nature of the challenge.

FP: Robert Spencer, your thoughts on the need to hate Wilders so one can cling to one’s delusional denial of the threat we face? What do you think of Roger Simon’s and Kenneth Levin’s perspectives?

[....]

Spencer: Jamie, Roger Simon is quite right that those who call Wilders “excessive, or even racist…have to hate Wilders, because if he is correct, their whole world disintegrates.” [I]’ve encountered this phenomenon many times: people essentially admitting that they don’t want to face up to the truths that Wilders and others enunciate because they believe the implications of those truths are simply too terrible to contemplate. I was told several years ago that the editorial board of a major American publication, when asked to do a profile on me and feature my writing, turned down the proposal because if what I was saying were true, “the U.S. would find itself at war with every Muslim country in the world.”

I don’t accept that as a natural outcome of what I say, but I find interesting the open avowal of the idea that what I say about Islam and jihad simply cannot be true, because if it were, the implications would be too disturbing to contemplate – and so therefore it must be false, or at least should be ignored! I encountered this again in a debate with a professor of Islamic studies at a significant American university, whose opening gambit in response to my initial presentation was to tell the audience that if what I said were true, it would be very depressing – as if that were sufficient to establish its falsity.

Contributing to the persistence of this unreality is something that Kenneth Levin alludes to – the fact that “the negative responses to Wilders have focused not on rebutting his arguments but on demonizing him and using anti-democratic means to silence him.” That demonization is a tested and true weapon in the Islamic supremacist arsenal, as well as that of the Left, ... and it is so frequently employed because it is so very effective. There are so many spineless conformists on the Right in America – they are very easily cowed by charges that someone is a “racist,” or a “bigot,” or even worse, an “Islamophobe,” and maybe even a secret “neo-Nazi.”

It doesn’t matter if there is absolutely nothing to these charges (and in the case of Wilders and others thus charged and shunned, including my colleague and coauthor Pamela Geller and myself, there isn’t); for many prominent mainstream “conservatives,” the charges themselves are enough. They will shun any contact or association with people who have been thus tarred. They are thoughtless and cowardly enough to run in the other direction at the mere suggestion of a taint, often without even investigating the case themselves. They don’t seem to realize that by doing this they’re playing the Leftist/Islamic supremacist game — effectively allowing the opposition to define the terms of the debate, choose the playing field, and make the rules. And that, it goes without saying, is a sure path to defeat.

More at: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/07/09/symposium-the-fear-that-wilders-is-right/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=806d38e0e6-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

That's four guys in agreement talking to each other. Leftards aren't going to give up their religion due to that. They cling to their 'normal' and resent any disruptions, sometimes hysterically. Normalcy bias is probably lovely for those attached to it. It isn't, as I know from having seen vivid examples in life, but what the hey? Let's look at it further and see what we can. It won't change the minds of the biased, but for some it might clarify the situation, giving us confidence in our understandings, firming us up, as it were, in this battle against the disaster that is Left dhimmi fascism in practice in our Modern world.

Richard Landes, "The Hidden Costs of Jew-Baiting in England," Pajamas Media. 10 July 2010

London is an amazing place, full of vitality, intensity, foreign tourists and residents, a patchwork of pluralism. Talk to the average person, and nothing seems amiss: this cab driver, having driven in London for 40 years, sees no significant change in the neighborhoods he travels through; this financier sees no signs of intimidation; this shopper, this tavern-hopper, this man on the bus, lives in an interesting and relatively normal world. A superficial walk through the [Regent’s] park gives the distinct sense of normality.

But talk to the Jews, and you get a different story. The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held a conference here this week. The topic: Democratic and Legal Norms in an Age of Terror. Panels discussed everything from the Goldstone Report, to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, to “universal jurisdiction” (lawfare against Israelis brought in foreign courts). Here, in the Khalili Lecture Theatre of the SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies), Jewish lawyers discussed a grim reality whose only public appearance on an everyday basis is the drumbeat of calumny that a boisterous elite — NGOs, journalists, academics — rain down on Israel.

Perhaps the most startling of the sessions concerned the BDS movement. Jonathan Rynhold, from the BESA Center at Bar Ilan, and Anthony Julius, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, both presented a picture of British anti-Zionist activity whose intellectual and moral foundations were profoundly irrational, a dogmatic will to stigmatize and destroy Israel that responded to no argument about proportion (what about other places?) or reason (you make no moral demands of the Palestinians). And behind that lies a much weightier volume of negative feeling, a kind of unthinking animosity that expressed itself in its most banal form when a woman explained to Julius: “We all know why the Jews are hated: you marry among yourselves and live in ghettos like Golders Green and Vienna [sic].” In so doing, she put her finger on the most widespread subtext for hostility to Jews – “they think they’re the chosen people.”

Daniel Eilon, an English barrister, explained to me one of the mechanisms. It isn’t real anti-Semitism. In fact, most of the stuff that comes out against Israel is intellectually hopeless — phony narratives based on fantasy “facts.” This is really just good old-fashioned Jew-baiting. It’s saying things in all righteous innocence that you know will hurt the Jews to whom you address the criticism. The problem for the Brits (and the Europeans in general), he pointed out, is that historically, there’s never been a particularly high price to pay for Jew-baiting. Now there is.

What my friend referred to with this last remark is lucidly analyzed by Robin Shepherd in his recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel. The elephant in the room, of course, is radical Islam — the people who interpret being “chosen” by Allah as a charter to dominate the world and submit everyone, willingly or not, to Islam. They’re the people no one dares bait; and they’re the folks who take full advantage of every deference to press for more. Daily aggressions from violent gangs constantly expand the territories where the Queen’s writ does not run. In tempo with the retreat of British law and enforcement, Sharia advances from internal community affairs (explicitly on the model of Jewish religious courts) towards the policing of community boundaries and claims on the state for special treatment. The British — like so many other Western nations –mainstream the extremists and marginalize the moderates. As Nick Cohen put it: “The world faces a psychotic movement and won’t admit it to themselves.”

A documentary filmmaker reveals a double assault on freedom of speech: on the one hand, everyone is terrified of peers calling them Islamophobes; and on the other, anyone who does something negative on Islam puts his or her life in danger. When I respond animatedly to her point, she looks around nervously and signals for me to lower my voice. How often did my British informants tell me in hushed tones about being intimidated!

News agencies send their journalists to special courses in self-defense for how to deal with hostile situations. How much of this responds to the pervasive dangers of doing journalism in Muslim countries, and how often does it come up in those areas where the Queen’s writ does not run? One such journalist who works for the BBC reports that when a mob turns ugly, they are told to stand back to back, palms open, pointing down and out — a posture of non-threat, but also one of subjection.

And of course, the best protection is positive coverage. Most of the time, “but we’re from the BBC” works to allay Muslim hostility: it’s code for “we’re on your side.” But for some crowds, even that’s not enough.

The result of this pervasive intimidation that comes from both peers and enemies is a body politic that feels no pain. Like a victim of CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain), the British public receives only vague hints of the assaults on its body. A widespread omerta operates in the mainstream news media, guaranteeing that many, if not most aggressions go unreported, or in a code — Asian street gangs — that only those looking for clues will notice. Aggregator sites online offer deeply disturbing collections of news items.

As a result, Brits look away while their Muslim communities are taken over by fascist zealots who enforce dress and behavior codes, who silence dissent, and who mobilize a resentful youth with violent hatreds. For these men, infidels are by definition guilty, deserving rape and lethal assault, as part of Allah’s justice. Douglas Murray’s study of twenty-seven Muslims, targeted by zealots, reveals the workings of a community hijacked by thugs.

The trials and tribulations of Afshan Azad, the Bengali Muslim-born actress in the Harry Potter films, beaten and threatened with death by her family, illustrate the depth of the community pressures. Her brothers’ failures to bring her to heel (or kill her) endanger their lives: “We are going to get trouble from the community now. It is bad news for our safety, her safety. My younger brother is going to get harassed at college. All our family is going to be harassed by the community because of this.” The tribal community rules, even in college.

So while a large and growing population falls under the grip of a Mafioso culture with an imperialist ideology of world conquest, the British look away. The “prestigious” London School of Economics disinvited Douglas Murray from speaking, lest his presence provoke violence. Paralyzed by an inability to discuss the problem, they become a train-wreck in slow motion. The lavish expenses that the government has paid out to immigrant families, which has at once increased their numbers and stilled their rage, is now run out. Budget cuts of up to 40% across the board will only exacerbate the frictions, and if the government pours money into appeasing the Muslims, they will alienate the British working class losing their benefits.

Which brings us back to Jew-baiting. As Shepherd explains in his chapter on Islam in Europe, this is a European-wide phenomenon that is directly related to the fear of criticizing Muslims. Anti-Zionism is the key extremist discourse by which jihadis radicalize communities and mobilize warriors for Allah’s armies. The disturbing figures for how many British Muslims support terror, think Muslims did not commit either 9-11 or 7-7, think the law should punish people who insult Islam, and think that apostates from Islam should die should not be read the way we read political polls in the West. These minorities are the dominant voices in their communities, if only because they use their terror tactics against fellow Muslims far more readily than against outsiders.

So while their enemies advance, the British elites are like deer in the headlights, incapable of speaking up for even their own principles of free speech and tolerance. Intimidated into silence about Muslims, somehow, they find their voice in denouncing the “real” genocidal evil empire: Israel. Thus some wax eloquent, like the Methodists with their thinly-disguised, resentful supersessionism; and others wax violent, like the anti-Zionist vandals, who damaged hundreds of thousands of pounds of property and got off scott free to the cheers of a Green MP.

Of course, every sin these brave ideologues accuse Israel of committing is done a thousand-fold by the very people who generate their demonizing narrative — the radical Muslims. It is these zealots who interpret their chosenness as a warrant to rape and massacre, to dominate and humiliate infidels. They are the toxic communitarians who believe in their side right or wrong, to the death — not the Jews, who can’t stop publicly beating their breasts about all their sins. Indeed, one of the mysterious factors in this madness is the role played by Jewish anti-Zionists, who, in Julius’ memorable phrase, are “proud to be ashamed to be Jewish.”

Instead of taking note of such sobering perspectives, Western anti-Zionists shy away from the dangerous and painful but legitimate and necessary criticism of Muslim radicals. They prefer the easy, cost-free baiting of any Jew proud enough to feel that his or her own people deserve a state. Instead of turning to the Muslims and saying “why can’t you express a fraction of the self-criticism of the Zionists?” they prefer to repeat the most toxic accusations against the Jews and claim: “I’m not saying anything that Jews haven’t said.”

They are the true Islamophobes — afraid to criticize Islam, eager to join in its chorus of hatred.

And in this act of demission before the Islamist challenge, British opinion makers and shapers also submit to their own bullies, their own zealots who push the Jew-baiting beyond the weekend sport of the salons, into the professional arena of anti-Zionist activism. When the founders of Hamas in 1988 penned their genocidal charter that explicitly targeted all infidels, little did they suspect that within twenty years, those infidels would chant “We are Hamas!” in the streets of London. Who could hope for a more useful infidel than that?

In the European past, Jew-baiting may have seemed relatively cost-free. After all, humiliate a Jew and the worst he’ll do is hector you. Sure, sometimes the sport got out of hand, and killing Jews en masse, or forcing them to convert, or kicking them out may have deeply damaged the economy and empowered repressive forces, like the Inquisition, to go after other religious dissidents. But who really noticed?

Today, however, the situation has changed dramatically because Europe doesn’t just run the risk of internal failure, but getting vanquished by an implacable and merciless foe. By failing to denounce toxic Muslim communitarianism and instead adopting its shrill discourse of demonization about Jews, Brits feed the monster that devours them. If it continues apace, if the British do not make Muslim civility towards Jews the shibboleth of assimilation to a free and democratic culture, they risk losing that civil polity entirely. As always with real anti-Semites, the Jews are only their first target.

Can Britain wake up in time? And if and when it does, can it swallow the painful price of giving up its addiction to Jew-baiting? Or will it be, as some close observers think, the first country in Europe to succumb to Islamism? Walking through the delightful streets of London, watching a brilliant performance of Henry IV Part II at the reconstituted Globe Theatre, passing by a multi-cultural mass of dancers by the embankment at night, viewing the vibrant energy of the city, one has little clue to the problem.

Or is watching this joyful celebration akin to seeing a fat man with a serious cholesterol problem dine on his deep-fried fish-and-chips and wash down those tasty truffles of moral Schadenfreude that so grieve the Jews and comfort the resentful?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-hidden-costs-of-jew-baiting-in-england/?singlepage=true

"Normalcy bias" screams out at me here. People are terrified of being afraid. Those of us who aren't afraid of being pissed-off await our hero, which makes me think of Achilles skulking in the background, refusing to come forward to lead our army against the threat we face, the threat we must act against, normalcy bias predominant or not. It's not that jihadis are a billion strong and we can't possibly fight them without nuking the whole world. A couple of well-placed punches and Islam's rotten edifice will fall of its own corruption.

In keeping with the hero Achilles in a mad, mad, Mad Magazine world, here's a bit more to finish this off:

Ulysses:

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida.
Act 1, Scene 3, L. 133-35

Muslims driven to violence by -- whatever-- need protection from Americans

Robert Spencer, "Jihad Returns to America," FrontPageMagazine.com. June 04, 2009

Jihad came once again to American soil on Monday, when an American convert to Islam, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, began shooting at soldiers who were standing outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Muhammad murdered Pvt. William Long, 23, and gravely wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18.

Muhammad was charged with capital murder and – in a departure from authorities’ practically reflexive dismissal of terrorism as a factor in virtually any act of violence by a Muslim -- sixteen counts of committing a terrorist act. Rather curiously, Muhammad has entered a not guilty plea, despite a prosecutor’s report that he had admitted shooting Private Long, and explained that he had done so “because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.” Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said of Muhammad’s act: “We believe that it’s associated with his disagreement over the military operations.”

Apparently “they” were the United States, and Muhammad considered this random shooting of two innocent young men to be an act of defensive jihad against a force he believed to be making war against the global Islamic community. Muhammad seems to have driven up to the Army-Navy Career Center intending to kill as many American military personnel as he could. Deputy Prosecutor Scott Duncan said that Muhammad openly admitted that he “would have killed more soldiers had they been in the parking lot.”

More: http://frontpagemagazine.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35094

At least our government is taking steps to protect us.

Statement of Attorney General Eric Holder on Department of Justice’s Outreach and Enforcement Efforts to Protect American Muslims

Thursday, June 4, 2009

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement relating to President Obama’s historic speech today in Cairo, Egypt:

"The President's pledge for a new beginning between the United States and the Muslim community takes root here in the Justice Department where we are committed to using criminal and civil rights laws to protect Muslim Americans. A top priority of this Justice Department is a return to robust civil rights enforcement and outreach in defending religious freedoms and other fundamental rights of all of our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the housing market, in our schools and in the voting booth.

"There are those who will continue to want to divide by fear - to pit our national security against our civil liberties - but that is a false choice. We have a solemn responsibility to protect our people while we also protect our principles."

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090604.html

From: http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090604.html

By "us" we assume we all know that means not "them" who are us.

Collin Binkley, "Wrong place, wrong time for OSU stabbing victim," The Lantern. June 4, 2009.

A female Ohio State student was trying to catch a bus to class Tuesday afternoon when she became the victim of a random stabbing... by 34-year-old Wael W. Kalash. Witnesses said Kalash had been walking up and down the street exhibiting "bizarre" behavior before the stabbing occurred.

"There's no connection between the victim and him other than she was at the wrong place at the wrong time, it was a completely random act," said Det. Jay Fulton of the Columbus Division of Police homicide unit.

Witnesses said that Kalash... walked up to the student and stabbed her once in the abdomen...
.
[....]

Neighbors of Kalash said he has a history of "strange behavior," and Fulton said he may be mentally ill.

"He didn't make a lot of sense when we tried to talk to him," Fulton said. "He exhibited a lot of signs of some mental instability or some mental issues."

http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2009/06/04/Campus/Wrong.Place.Wrong.Time.For.Osu.Stabbing.Victim-3746031.shtml

There are Muslims who are us, and they have to be protected, because otherwise they have to kill us for being upset, which is a bad thing to do to peace loving people. We have to protect Muslims from hostility by ... I don't know, maybe killing ourselves so they don't have to do it themselves.

All swell that tell swell.

And you thought free speech was dead in Britain.

The Guardian, February 13:

When I found out that Geert Wilders was planning to come to Britain and that Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson wanted to show his film, I wrote to the Home Office, the leader of the House of Lords and Black Rod to say that his presence would lead to the incitement of religious and racial hatred, which constitutes a public order offence.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024846.php

Here's the good news for all you who had little faith:

From The Guardian, April 24, 2004:

Mr Le Pen is to be the BNP's guest of honour at a fundraising dinner in the West Midlands, where he will address a gathering of Britain's far right for the first time in more than a decade.

The details of his visit have been closely guarded in an attempt to prevent anti-racism protesters disrupting the event. But the Guardian has learned that the £50-a-head dinner is scheduled to take place tomorrow evening in Oswestry.

Earlier this week George Galloway, MP for Glasgow Kelvin, called on the government to stop Mr Le Pen entering Britain. But the home secretary said yesterday that Mr Le Pen was a French national and was therefore entitled to travel. "He is a European citizen, he has the right to travel around Europe."

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024840.php

It's all right as rain. See? A vicious racist can get into Britain to talk to vicious racists. What's the problem?

Nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed (born 1958)is a Labour member of the House of Lords, having become the United Kingdom's first Muslim life peer in 1998. Many of his political activities relate to the Islamic community both in the UK and abroad, and he has often attracted controversy. In December 2007, he was involved in a fatal road crash, and in December 2008 pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. On the 11th of February Melanie Phillips (columnist) claimed that Lord Ahmed had threatened to "bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the Lords if Wilders was allowed to speak"[1] . This claim was later denied by Lord Ahmed. [2]

[....]

On 19 June 2007 Lord Ahmed criticised the honouring of Salman Rushdie with a knighthood because of what Lord Ahmed saw as Rushdie's offensiveness to Islam.[12] He was reported to have said, "It's hypocrisy by Tony Blair who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he's honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive in community relations."[13] "This man not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people who were killed around the world. Forgiving and forgetting is one thing, but honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far." He also said on BBC Radio 4's PM programme that he had been appalled by the award to a man he accused of having 'blood on his hands'.[14][12]

[....]

On 25 December 2007, Lord Ahmed was injured in a crash on the M1 motorway near Rotherham in which Martin Gombar, 28, was killed. ...

On 1 December 2008, Lord Ahmed appeared at Sheffield Magistrates' Court in connection with a charge of dangerous driving. Lord Ahmed admitted sending and receiving five text messages on his phone while driving shortly before the crash, and pleaded guilty to the charge before him. He was banned from driving until his sentencing. On 22 December, Sheffield Magistrates' Court referred the case for sentencing at the crown court on 19 January due to its "aggravating features".[21] This was later put back until 25 February.[22] Lord Ahmed faces a maximum of two years in jail.[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Ahmed

Melanie Phillips doesn't think highly of him. Go figure. She can still write books though. But Londonistan, that she can't find a publisher for in Britain.

The British letter to Geert Wilders:

British citizens can still vote. One must wonder just how long that will remain true.

Dear Mr Wilders

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that the Secretary of State is of the view that your presence in the UK would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society. The Secretary of State is satisfied that your statements about Muslims and their beliefs, as expressed in your film Fitna and elsewhere, would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK.

You are advised that should you travel to the UK and seek admission an Immigration Officer will take into account the Secretary of State's view. If, in accordance with regulation 21 of the immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006, the Immigration Officer is statisfied that your exclusion is justified on grounds of public policy and/or public security, you will be refused admission to the UK under regulation 19. You would have a right of appeal against any refusal of admission, exercisable from outside the UK.

Yours sincerely,

Irving N. Jones

On behalf of the Secretary of State for the Home Department

Will Geert Wilders Be Arrested at Heathrow?

From the desk of Thomas Landen on Tue, 2009-02-10 17:57

This morning Lord Malcolm Pearson, a member of the British House of Lords, announced that he has invited Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch Parliament, to show the movie Fitna (see it here) in a committee room of the House of Lords next Thursday (12 February). Mr. Wilders has been asked to address a private meeting with members of the British Parliament, explaining to the Peers and MPs why he made Fitna and to engage in an open and frank discussion with them.

This afternoon Mr. Wilders received a letter from the British Embassy in The Hague [see below] saying that he is a "persona non grata" in the United Kingdom. The ambassador told Mr. Wilders that he is a threat to public security and public harmony because of the controversy created by Fitna. Mr. Wilders intends to go to London anyway. "Let them arrest me in Heathrow," he says.

If Mr. Wilders is denied entry to the United Kingdom, it will be the first time that Britain refuses entry to an elected politician from another member state of the European Union. The Dutch government has protested to the British government over the unprecedented barring of an EU parliamentarian by another EU country.

The meeting of Mr. Wilders and members of the British Parliament had originally been planned for 29 January, but was postponed. Lord Nazir Ahmed, a Muslim member of the House of Lords (Labour), had threatened to mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr. Wilders from entering the British Parliament. Lord Ahmed boasted in the Pakistani press that the cancellation of Mr. Wilders' visit was "a victory for the Muslim community."

Full story at: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3793

U B U 2 U

Even now in the middle of a very long and eccentric life I find myself sometimes wincing and grimacing over the rise of unbidden memories from random experiences that just won't go away in spite of whatever discipline I use to keep them away. Some ugly memories are scars that won't fade. One such nasty memory is of a repulsive young woman at a dance hall whose tee-shirt bore the caption: "I wouldn't wanna be you."

I can appreciate the idea of not wanting to be you. Regardless of who I might be, I'd rather be me than not. I don't want to be you. Fair enough. But I don't want you not to be you. Islam, for all its obvious faults, at least understands that no one is ever going to be the Perfect Man, he being, according to Islam, Mohammed, not to be repeated, only imitated. Islam, for all its totalitarianism, doesn't attempt to make anyone into the kind of person "we all should be." Islam settles for orthopraxy, for outward ritual behaviour. For the totalitarian Leftist, this is not enough. He not only rejects you as you but demands that you conform to his vision of the Ideal Man as you. It's one thing not to want to be me; but it is something creepy to not want me to be me. That's me The Individualist writing. I value Privacy. Muslims and the Left value Publicity. No, I wouldn't want to be you, but that's not a problem for me. It is a problem for the communitarian.

For the communitarian, the idea of Another not being a conformist in all ways, body, mind and soul, is an outrage against Nature. Communitarians, Statists, Muslims, collectivists of all sorts, they hate individuals and individualism. Usually this is of no concern to most of us. Unfortunately, there is a growing movement of middle-aged hippies in government and areas of social control, e.g our universities, who are fanatical in their drive to make all others "not themselves." We must all be One.
I'm rereading Matthew Arnold today. I read Arnold as a young man, ( not, at the time, realizing that in the doing I was preparing myself for marriage in middle-age,) from a sense of duty rather than passion. Today, for me, he raises the question of the benefits of Culture, by which he means High Culture of the mid-Victorian era. He writes of others as in need of the education they lack, an education which makes their philistine lives "hole and corner." Like most people, he doesn't like people not like himself. He writes of others: "Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come from their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?"1.

Good grief! Would I want to be a man like him? Not for all the money on Earth. Wouldn't even want to be Elvis. Nor does Arnold, for all his obnoxious snobbery, intend anyone to think others should be him or like him. In that he is ultimately far superior to the average Leftist. Arnold's snobbery begins and ends with himself. He did not kill anyone in a futile and hubristic attempt to make a New Man. Such cannot be said of the Death Hippies who today rule our many nations of Modernity, lands of Sweetness and Light, where ignorant Leftards clash on sight.

Who then is the Humanist? He who doesn't want to be you is probably fine with not being you. He who doesn't like you is probably fine with that too. It is he who doesn't want you to be you who is the man we must not tolerate. I wouldn't be someone else for all the money on Earth. Nor would I want to make another not himself even if that someone is someone I'd gladly hang from a lamp-post. People have rights, innately, and the most basic right is to be their own Lords. Sometimes others are so disgusting I can't shake the horror of the vision of them; but that's my problem, not theirs. I can live with it. Can our collectivist Culture Curators? Can we live with them?

1. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1869; rpt. revised 1933 and19 50; p. 52.

The best laid plans

If I were a smart guy I woulda saved myself lotsa time and money and skipped the book in favor of the cartoons.
Hit the links while you still can:
http://mises.org/books/TRTS/

Smart people are economical with their time and their money, so I'm told.

What is Left dhimmi Fascism?

"Wilders expects to be sent to prison"

[....]

A member of parliament in the Netherlands who has been charged with "insulting" Muslims says he fears he will be found guilty and sent to prison in only a few months.

[....]

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024529.php

Grand Wizards of Oz

A picture of a few words is worth a ... well, a lot. Thanks to Gramfan at JihadWatch.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/nazis_needed/

The eliminationist agenda

15 000 expected to march tomorrow in Toronto under the banner of "Israel Must Not Exist Any Longer" (and we don't care how many martyrs we have to have to promote and realize our fantasy: we can imagine no other world). (SDA)

How many Muslim-Canadians will sign off on what is for many a matter of divinely-ordained hate mongering? How many of the marchers will be left dhimmi fascist non-Muslims? One of the positives of actions such as Israel's attack on Hamas is that it allows us to gather such necessary intelligence, that we might build up our defences in the fight for modernity in Canada. There will be a lot of Muslims, one expects. And if this observation of Rene Girard's is right, there will be a lot of ldf nincompoops out to prove their multiculti embrace of the Other/other in order to validate themselves as the righteous not clouded in ethnocentrism. We might see them differently however:

We are so ethnocentric, says Girard, that we think that only others can be in the right when claiming the superiority of their own religion:

"Islam maintains a relationship with death that convinces me that this religion absolutely fails to engage with ancient myths. Islam's mystic relationship with death makes death even more mysterious. Islam is a religion of sacrifice. The Christian, however, doesn't die to be imitated. We have to remember the words of Christ to Paul: 'Why are you persecuting me?' In Christianity, which destroys every mythology, there is a constant dialectic between the victim and the persecutor; in Islam, this does not exist. Islam eliminates the problematic victim. In this sense, there has always been a conflict between Christianity and Islam. In Islam, the most important thing is missing: a Cross. As in Christianity, Islam rehabilitates the innocent victim, but it does so in a militant way. The Cross, on the contrary, puts an end to the ancient and violent myths. The Cross is the symbol of the inversion of violence, of the resistance to lynching. Today the Cross opposes the Dionysian sacrifice of the new myths. Christianity, differing from Islam, prohibits sacrifice."

On Energy and Philobarbarism

I'm one of that kind of person who, when confronted with two four letter words, has a math-anxiety attack. There's a bit of math involved below that shouldn't hinder anyone's understanding of the proposition. The question is one of energy consumption, and to a lesser extent, energy exhaust; but most importantly, it's a matter of attitude toward energy in Human society. What is good and useful energy, and how much should we consume? To what purpose?

It seems to be a rite of passage into adulthood in the West in recent generations to come to the realization that one hates multi-national corporations; and more than any other kind among them, one must hate those that deal in energy, whether Coca Cola or Nestles or The Oil Companies. Corporately manufactured energy is seemingly bad. More specifically, energy alienated from the end-user is, to varying degrees, bad. Thus, walking is good in that one is not alienated from ones own energy. Riding a bike is good in that one uses a machine but still uses ones own energy to propel the machine. A bicycle, a corporately manufactured machine, is better still if it's as old and clunky and "non-corporate" as one can find. Low-tech is ideal in that it is also "low-profit." There is a comparable decrease in ones alienation and a corresponding decrease in ones collusion with "consumption." To use "recycled" material, e.g. hemp shoes for walking, or a bike salvaged from dumpsters is energy-friendly. One then has extra cash for other goods and services such as ethical investments and organic, locally produced food, for example. For those communal projects that require more energy than one can produce oneself, natural energy is preferable: solar or wind power, for example. Unalienated from Nature, to an extent, one still might use solar panel and windmills, but the lowest tech possible is preferable. It is a high ideal to corporate hate energy. It is a sign of adult maturity in Modernity.

A large proportion of post-Modernists seem to think it is a good thing to indulge in expressions of sympathy for philobarbarism. Primitive cultures are, expressly, low-tech or even no-tech, using natural power exclusively. Those who are pastoralists or nomads, using animal power, are lauded as "in touch with nature." In Modernity's heart, the homeless are equally lauded as "non-consumers" of non-renewable resources. For the post-Modernist, it is a matter of morality. The higher ones energy consumption, the lower ones personal morality. And conversely.

Immediately below is a selection from Wikipedia on the Kardashev Scale, followed by some short selections from an essay by popular writer Michael Crichton on energy use.

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement. The scale is only theoretical and in terms of an actual civilization highly speculative; however, it puts energy consumption of an entire civilization in a cosmic perspective. It was first proposed in 1964 by the Soviet Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. The scale has three designated categories called Type I, II, and III. These are based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal, and the degree of space colonization. In general terms, a Type I civilization has achieved mastery of the resources of its home planet, Type II of its solar system, and Type III of its galaxy.[1]

Energy is a static quantity and is denoted in joules. Power is a measure of energy over time, and is denoted in watts (joules per second). The three levels of the Kardashev Scale can be quantified in units of power (watts) and plotted on an increasing logarithmic scale.

• Type I — a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet — has approximately 10¹⁶ or 10¹⁷ W available.^[2] Earth specifically has an available power of 1.74 ×10¹⁷ W (174 petawatts, see Earth's energy budget). Kardashev's original definition was 4 ×10¹² W — a "technological level close to the level presently attained on earth" (presently meaning 1964).^[3]

[....]

Using nuclear explosion tests as a perspective, Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, released an estimated 57 megaton yield; even a Type I civilization makes use of roughly 25 megatons of TNT equivalent a second. A Type II civilization consumes 4 × 109 times more energy (4 billion hydrogen bombs per second), and a type III 1011 times more yet.

Current human civilization has a Kardashev value of about 0.7. However, the Kardashev scale was not developed to model a specific civilization. It's primarily used by SETI researchers, science fiction authors, and futurists as a theoretical framework.

Human civilization is currently somewhere below Type I, as it is able to harness only a portion of the energy that is available on Earth. The current state of human civilization has thus been named Type 0. Although intermediate values were not discussed in Kardashev's original proposal, Carl Sagan argued that they could easily be defined by interpolating and extrapolating the values given above. In 1973, he calculated humanity's civilization type to be 0.7, in relationship to Kardashev's model for Types 0 and I.[4]

Sagan used the formula:

Value K is a civilization's Kardashev rating and W is its power output in watts. Sagan used 10 TW as value W, which was considerably higher than present data suggests.^[5] Sagan's overestimation makes little difference in regards to human civilization's K rating, effecting only a difference of 1% in the value of K (See Table Below). International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook (2005)^[5] and section 7 of Key World Energy Statistics^[6] project values for planetary power production yielding these corresponding Kardashev scale estimates:

[....]

Methods by which a civilization could feasibly advance to Type I:

Large scale application of fusion power. Type I implies the generation of about 5 kg of energy per second. This can be achieved by fusing about 1,000 kg of hydrogen into helium each second, a rate of about 3 × 1010 kg/year. A cubic km of water contains about 1011 kg of hydrogen, and the Earth's oceans contain about 1.3 × 109 cubic km of water. So this rate of production can be sustained over geological time scales.

Anti-matter production is still beyond our civilization's ability to utilize as a power source,[10] but any civilization with the technological ability to produce or collect anti-matter[11] in large quantities cheaply, would have a mechanism to produce power on a scale several factors above our current level of technology. In antimatter-matter collisions, the entire rest mass of the particles is converted to kinetic energy. The energy per unit mass is about 10 orders of magnitude greater than chemical energy (compared to TNT), about 4 orders of magnitude greater than the energy that humans liberated today using nuclear fission, and about 2 orders of magnitude greater than the best possible from fusion.[12] The reaction of 1 kg of anti-matter with 1 kg of matter would produce 1.8 × 1017 J (180 petajoules) of energy (by the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc²), or roughly the equivalent of 47 megatons of TNT. For energy comparisons see anti-matter as a fuel source.

Solar energy — converting sunlight into electricity by either solar cells or indirectly through wind and hydroelectric power. Currently, there is no known way for human civilization to successfully utilize the equivalent of the Earth's total absorbed solar energy without completely coating the surface with man-made structures, which is presently not feasible. However, if a civilization constructed very large space-based power satellites, Type I power levels might be achievable.

Full essay at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

It is a certain goal among many post-Modernists to decrease energy use. It is, for them, a religio-philosophical position, and it is a religion per se for many.

Michael Crichton, "Environmentalism as Religion."

Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

[....]

There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?

And what about indigenous peoples, living in a state of harmony with the Eden-like environment? Well, they never did. On this continent, the newly arrived people who crossed the land bridge almost immediately set about wiping out hundreds of species of large animals, and they did this several thousand years before the white man showed up, to accelerate the process. And what was the condition of life? Loving, peaceful, harmonious? Hardly: the early peoples of the New World lived in a state of constant warfare. Generations of hatred, tribal hatreds, constant battles. The warlike tribes of this continent are famous: the Comanche, Sioux, Apache, Mohawk, Aztecs, Toltec, Incas. Some of them practiced infanticide, and human sacrifice. And those tribes that were not fiercely warlike were exterminated, or learned to build their villages high in the cliffs to attain some measure of safety.

How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.

There was even an academic movement, during the latter 20th century, that claimed that cannibalism was a white man's invention to demonize the indigenous peoples. (Only academics could fight such a battle.) It was some thirty years before professors finally agreed that yes, cannibalism does indeed occur among human beings. Meanwhile, all during this time New Guinea highlanders in the 20th century continued to eat the brains of their enemies until they were finally made to understand that they risked kuru, a fatal neurological disease, when they did so.

More recently still the gentle Tasaday of the Philippines turned out to be a publicity stunt, a nonexistent tribe. And African pygmies have one of the highest murder rates on the planet.

In short, the romantic view of the natural world as a blissful Eden is only held by people who have no actual experience of nature. People who live in nature are not romantic about it at all. They may hold spiritual beliefs about the world around them, they may have a sense of the unity of nature or the aliveness of all things, but they still kill the animals and uproot the plants in order to eat, to live. If they don't, they will die.

And if you, even now, put yourself in nature even for a matter of days, you will quickly be disabused of all your romantic fantasies. Take a trek through the jungles of Borneo, and in short order you will have festering sores on your skin, you'll have bugs all over your body, biting in your hair, crawling up your nose and into your ears, you'll have infections and sickness and if you're not with somebody who knows what they're doing, you'll quickly starve to death. But chances are that even in the jungles of Borneo you won't experience nature so directly, because you will have covered your entire body with DEET and you will be doing everything you can to keep those bugs off you.

The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk-and as the years go on, and the world population grows increasingly urban, it's uninformed talk. Farmers know what they're talking about. City people don't. It's all fantasy.
[....]

Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge.

[....]

http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html

Energy production and consumption are "Progress." Those who indulge in philobarbarism and philistine Romance are condemning the world to a life, as Hobbes described it, as one "nasty, brutish, and short. A prime example today, Zimbabwe. It's an attitude and a religion. Philobarbarism is the life of the mind of a Death Hippie. It is an expression of Povertarianism. There is a price to pay for it. That price is the death of Civilization. It's a price many spoiled adults think they want to pay for the sake of a moralistic pose to impress their fellows. They will find few friends in the world of poverty, would that they would go and find out.

To deny energy use to others is to deny them life, the ultimate alienation from authenticity. To what purpose?

Red Tape Worms.

I went to the supermarket this evening and got a load of groceries. At the check-out I told the girl I didn't have to pay because I'm a victim of the capitalist system. She said it doesn't make any difference, I pay like anyone else. I called her a racist. I told her I'm a Black freedom fighter. She said I look like a White guy. Well, so what, it's my narrative, man. I mean, what is truth but a lie told to the mass-holes too stupid to "get it"? You know what I'm sayin?

OK, so I made the whole thing up. Here's the real world:

The cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe which has left hundreds dead was caused by the UK, an ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said.

Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu described the outbreak as a "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British".

On Thursday, Mr Mugabe said the spread of cholera had been halted.

But aid workers warned that the situation was worsening and the outbreak could last for months.

In his comments to media in Harare, Mr Ndlovu likened the appearance of cholera in Zimbabwe to a "serious biological chemical weapon" used by the British.

There's more if you care to bother. And why not? It's his narrative, man.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7780728.stm.

Big Boom Bombay

I often can't tell the difference between David Duke of Stormfront and his evil twin, the former mayor of London, Red Ken Livingstone. Here I face the same problem looking at the works and wonders of "anti-war" Leftist, Justin Raimondo and a gaggle of Muslims. You tell me.

Justin Raimondo, "The Meaning of Mumbai: South Asia, the new arena." Behind the Headlines. 3 Dec. 2008

More at No Dhimmitude.

Plato: Biggest Scammer in History.

Neil Postman rightly refers to Plato as the world's first systematic fascist. Making mention of that usually raises the ire of those who don't have any idea of Plato's philosophies. Most people seem to highly regard the name "Plato," though they can't really say why. They defend him with no knowledge of what Plato was about. Some, such as that utter fool, I.F. Stone, confuse Plato with Socrates, and not only don't know there is the one and there is the other, but argue that Socrates is Plato. Stupidity knows no bounds, especially among our intelligentsia. Some thinkers, real thinkers, as opposed to the Conformity Hippies who rule the Academy these days as well, real thinkers such as Ernest Gellner, know Plato very well. Gellner, writing after Karl Popper, who wrote on Plato, The Open Society and its Enemies, puts Plato on the table for a nifty dissection, briefly thus:

"The profound paradox of Platonism proper is that it preached a return to, or a fortification of, the closed communally organized society: but it did so by means which themselves illustrated, highlighted, and sprang from that liberation from traditional ritualism and communalism. Plato represented dogmatism pursued by liberal means, an authoritarianism with a rational face." Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword and Book. London: Collins Harvill: 1998; pp. 84-85.

Taken in, that's what too many of our intellectuals have been are to this day and beyond. We'll see one of them below. And a shameful example of a typical intellectual conformist he is. There is no excuse for an expert in the field to be so wrong on the facts as is the writer below. But if he were merely a fool, and a sloppy one at that, who would care? No, dear reader, it's far worse than that. The writer below is a danger to human freedom and to free people everywhere. We must confront him and those like him, stop them by making known the realities of history and literature from the texts as they are, not as one thinks they must be or should be, or should be thought so by the "average" man.

Kimon Valaskakis, "Media-enhanced 'dumb democracy' is the fastest road to totalitarianism." Globe and Mail; October 13, 2008.

It's shortly after this that I begin to lose my temper. The whole thing is here.

Election Night of the Living Dead

"I don't get how people can not vote for Obama. He's so inspiring. Every time I see him I think of the Foo Fighters song, "There goes my hero". That's pretty much because Obama is my hero.

I think he will make this world a better place. I'm pretty sure he will end world hunger and probably AIDS too. I just know he can do all this cause when I hear him speak I get excited on the inside."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081014094746AAd2S8M

I quoted the genius above recently for the sake of the shock value; but I didn't realize then, which I certainly do now, that the shock's on me. Unlike the thrill of the Night of the Living Dead, I'm not enjoying this zombie take-over of the land. In fact, this horror-show is really scaring me. I don't mind being scared, as a rule. I live a pretty rough life, and part of the reason I do so is because it's so scary. But that's my personal life. The nation, that's a different story. That's something far more interesting and important than my own petty doing, no matter how important my petty doings might be to me. Unfortunately, many, maybe more than half of Americans, don't see that their petty doings are no more important to the nation than mine. They seem to think they actually matter to everyone. Sorry, but no one is that important. Nope. Not me, not even you, and especially not that f*****g weasel Obama. The beauty of knowing ones one relative unimportance is in the knowing that none are much different, and that we must all go our own ways as well as we can without recourse to demagogues and demiurges. A nation of ordinary folks doing their own thing is what makes the nation so great. That's America. What we see below is from one of Dante's middling circles of Hell. Which one? Maybe the one for the self-obsessed, for gluttons and sloths and card-cheats. Here's our America. Look out, here come the zombies!

Rick Moran, "Meet the people who are going to put Obama in office." American Thinker. 15 Oct. 2008

This is really incredible. It stunned Ben Smith over at Politico where I got these quotes. It floored a GOP consultant who conducted the focus group where the people were quoted.

And it is perhaps the single most depressing thing I've read this entire campaign season:

The GOP consultant emailed Smith about a focus group he just finished conducting. Evidently, he showed a hard hitting ad on Ayers to the group and this was the email he sent:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

For the first time, I really feel scared about the future. These people are like the Germans in the election of 1933. They know what's coming but they don't care. Back then, all they cared about was that Hitler was going to give them a job and keep their lunch pails full. And stick it to the Jews. And restore Germany's "rightful place" in the world. They knew full well that Hitler would destroy the independent unions, crack down on dissent, and turn Germany from a very free country into a fascist dictatorship.

Part of this is McCain's fault. He bought into that populist crap about greedy Wall Street. Well, so as ye sow, so shall ye reap. And we're about to reap the whirlwind.

In this kind of atmosphere any kind of a government is possible. And I don't know if Obama can resist the kind of raw power these nincompoops are willing to give him. Who could?

You need a license to own a dog but any fool can vote.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/meet_the_people_who_are_going.html

I'm keen of Godwin's Law, i.e. that to call an opponent a Nazi is to lose the argument. I'm not calling Osama Barka supporters Nazis. I refer to them instead a Death Hippies, Conformity Hippies, Povertarians, Irrationalists, Communitarians, and nutters. Many of the intelligentsia in support of Osama are Left dhimmi fascists. Few are going to be Nazis. But many of the above are going to feel emotionally right at home living the nightmare that was Nazi Germany.

First they'll come for Truepeers, then they'll come for Charles-- by which point I hope to be long gone outta here, maybe in some mountain hide-away in the jungles of Paraguay, formerly but seemingly not for much longer, "The Last Place on Earth for the Worst people in the World."

****

What about Sarah Palin? She spoke to Rush Limbaugh [transcript]. Of him I know nothing. Of Sarah Palin I know this:

"So, you know, I’m going out there and I’m just simply speaking. So be it that I’m a simple talker, but I’m just going out there and letting people know the differences and how absolutely paramount it is that voters are paying attention and that voters are understanding candidates’ records, their associations, their plans for the future; instead of being kind of wrapped up into all this rhetoric of Obama’s and buying into it and not holding him accountable for the things that he’s done, the things that he’s said, his associates, and where he wants to take America."

Left Fascist Control-freaks Want More Power Still: In Your Kitchen

Left religious fanatics want to control what and how much you eat, and they aren't going to be satisfied with merely lecturing you and demanding you conform to their dietary restrictions and food taboos: they want the government to control you at dinner time. The Left fascism extends this far so far, and tomorrow it will go further. There will be no end to the totalitarian longings of these people. They will devour the Earth and all its people in their rampage for the purity of poverty:

People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns.

The report, by the Food Climate Research Network, based at the University of Surrey, also says total food consumption should be reduced, especially "low nutritional value" treats such as alcohol, sweets and chocolates.

It urges people to return to habits their mothers or grandmothers would have been familiar with: buying locally in-season products, cooking in bulk and in pots with lids or pressure cookers, avoiding waste and walking to the shops - alongside more modern tips such as using the microwave and internet shopping.

The report goes much further than any previous advice after mounting concern about the impact of the livestock industry on greenhouse gases and rising food prices. It follows a four-year study of the impact of food on climate change and is thought to be the most thorough study of its kind.

Tara Garnett, the report's author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. "Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences," the report says. "Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes."

[....]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving

This is what we're up against. Sweet Reason? Maybe that won't be allowed under the new food regime.

Coming soon to a nation near you....

How crazy is Britain? Fjordman suggests that Britain is going to be the first of many scenes of civil war over the Islamization of Europe. Here is one example of why he can come to that conclusion:

Woman arrested over 'golly' doll

Dean Kirby and Rob Dawson
17/ 9/2008

A MUM claims she was arrested and had her DNA and fingerprints taken by police because she had a `golly' doll in the window of her home.

Amanda Schofield, 38, was quizzed by police on suspicion of racially-aggravated public order.

She claims the doll was put in the window by her young daughter, who found it in a bag of toys.

But police say she was arrested after a series of complaints of alleged racially-aggravated behaviour were made against her.

She was released without charge after being questioned.

Amanda, from Borrowdale Road, Heavily, Stockport, said she has been forced to sell the toy because of the incident.

Amanda said: "I feel like a criminal for something my daughter did. I just can't believe that I got arrested for a petty thing like that."

She added: "I know that some people don't like the toys, which is why I took it off the window sill, but I don't think they are offensive. It's just a toy. My daughter is really upset that I had to sell it."

Amanda claims she removed the toy from the window after noticing it while putting her daughter to bed, only to be visited by police later that evening and notified of the complaint from a neighbour. She says she received a phone call nine days later asking her to attend Cheadle Heath Police Station, where she was arrested. She has since been informed that no further action will be taken by police.

Gollies are highly collectable. Badges used by jam company James Robertson and Sons, which featured a character called Golly, can sell for more than £1,000.However, the figure has increasingly been seen as a racially offensive symbol and Robertson's dropped Golly in 2001.Last year, a shop owner in Wrightington, near Wigan, faced prosecution and a £1,000 fine after a customer complained about the golly dolls and keyrings on sale. Police confiscated a doll and a keyring, but the complaint was not taken any further and the items were put back on sale.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "Police received a report that an item deemed to be offensive was placed in the window of a house on Borrowdale Road.

"It is believed that the incident was the latest in a number of previous incidents that the victim perceived to be race-related. A 38-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of a racially-aggravated public order offence.

"The woman was released without charge."

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1067036_woman_arrested_over_golly_doll

h.t. Fjordman.

There is still a great deal of time till anything like civil war becomes inevitable in Europe; but when we see that in Cologne nationalist speakers were prevented from addressing the public in the town square, 5,000 anti-free-speech demonstrators called out by the mayor of the city threatening violence against them, and the police refusing to maintain order on the behalf of the speakers, then one must wonder if that day is coming sooner than we might expect.

And what of Canada? While Heather Mallick is given space to rant against Sarah Palin at the CBC, paid for by the taxpayer, however unwillingly, we see the Canadian Human Rights Commission hoping to ban library books, and the American Left going berserk even at places such as [redacted] Time Magazine, accusing Palin of breaking the law by using yahoo email for state business, never mind that her email is hacked by a Tennessee Democratic senator's son. It's a mad world, and people are rightly getting mad about it. There's very little civility in a civil war. Time to put a stop to the rumblings before we get that unwelcome visit.

CBC's Heather Mallick Hates You, too.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation, (CBC) has the following editorial posted-- so far --on the Internet. Canadians are forced to pay for the CBC.It's the law. This is what they pay for:

Heather Mallick, "A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention."

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am.

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest. Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.

I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to, but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in the Paddy Wagon?

Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it a flashback to the Kingston Trio?

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.

Lie works for Palin

But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?

Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical notes.

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience.

American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said aptly. Time to start again.

Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html

As I post this, the original story has over 200 comments, most from Canadians, and of the dozen or so comments in favor of the piece, they all get rating of under ten, while the roughly 200 comments expressing everything from disgust to shame come in at 100 or so. No doubt Mallick thinks, and her editors think, this is a funny and Gemanically Ironic piece that the white trash types just don't get. Well, no. It's just hate.