Please read this post

The Covenant Zone bloggers meet every Thursday, 7-9 pm, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, in front of Blenz Coffee, wearing blue scarves. Why do we meet? Why do we bother? Every week for a year now we have posted reasons at this blog - check the archives and see. Well, we've had some people join us; but not enough. We need more people if we are going to achieve much. So, this week, let's try another tack. Let's now give the floor to someone who does not mince his words, or hide his learning, when it comes to discussing the problem of Islam as a political ideology that is antagonistic to our highest values in the West, an ideology that we can either confront now when we can (leaving Islam the religion alone), or we can let it grow in Western countries, with the help of the West's self-hating left, and, in time, perhaps lose our civilization. He says we must start meeting each other in public if we want to stop this.

Bill Warner of the Center For The Study Of Political Islam is who I'm talking about. If you're in Vancouver, I think he wants you to attend a Covenant Zone meeting. Read his essay, quoted below and face his difficult truth. But if you think he is lacking perspective on Islam, we still need you to come to our meeting and tell us why, or leave a comment here. If he is at all close to being right in his claims, you have to admit you have to come out and join us (after all, his prose calling on "revolutionaries" to get out and meet in public, and start working together, bears a striking resemblance to that of our co-blogger, Dag, who has been saying these things for some time). If you're not sure what to make of Warner, come to our meeting and have a calm and reasoned discussion with other people in search of the truth, people who ask the right questions and are not satisfied with easy pieties from any political, professional, or social camp. Here is a taste of what we must discuss:

First, let’s see how ignorant we are about the history of political Islam. How many Christians can tell you how Turkey or Egypt became Islamic? What happened to the Seven Churches of Asia mentioned in Paul’s letters? Find a Jew who can tell you the Jewish history of dhimmitude (second class citizens who serve Islam). What European knows that white women were the highest priced slaves in Mecca? Everyone knows how many Jews Hitler killed, but find an unbeliever who can tell you how many died in jihad over the last 1400 years.

We are just as ignorant about the doctrine of Islam. An FBI agent gets two hours of training on Islam and most of that is how not to offend the imam. We are fighting in Iraq. Who utilizes the political, military doctrine of Islam to plan strategy? Who can find a single rabbi or minister who has read the Koran, Sira and Hadith? What governor, senator, congressmen or military leader displays a knowledge of the political doctrine of Islam? Try to find a course available in a college about Islamic political doctrine and ethics. Graduates are schooled in Islamic art, architecture, poetry, Sufism, and a glorious history that ignores the suffering of the innocent unbelievers. Graduates read comments about the Koran and Hadith, but do not read the actual doctrine.

So why are we so ignorant? Let’s start at the beginning. When Islam burst out of Arabia into a decaying Byzantine world, the unbelievers recorded it as an Arabic invasion. Similarly, the invasion of Eastern Europe was by Turks; the invasion of Spain was by Moors. Our scholars were incapable of even naming the invaders.
[...]
But the Trilogy [of Islamic holy texts] is clear about the doctrine. At least 75% of the Sira (life of Mohammed) is about jihad. About 67% of the Koran written in Mecca is about the unbelievers, or politics. Of the Koran of Medina, 51% is devoted to the unbelievers. About 20% of Bukhari’s Hadith is about jihad and politics. Religion is the smallest part of Islamic foundational texts.

Political Islam’s most famous duality is the division of the world into believers, dar al Islam, and unbelievers, dar al harb. The largest part of the Trilogy relates to treatment of the unbelievers, kafirs. Even Hell is political. There are 146 references to Hell in the Koran. Only 6% of those in Hell are there for moral failings—murder, theft, etc. The other 94% of the reasons for being in Hell are for the intellectual sin of disagreeing with Mohammed, a political crime. Hence, Islamic Hell is a political prison for those who speak against Islam.
[...]
Our civilization must acknowledge our status. We are still dhimmis. It has been 1400 years of servitude, slavery, dhimmitude, ignorance and a repressed and denied history. When we understand our history we will see exactly how repressed and in denial we are. The first mark of the dhimmi is ignorance of political Islam.

We must acknowledge our suffering. We must decide that 270,000,000 of our ancestors did not die in vain. We must gain insight into why we know so little. There is a very deep reason in our collective psyche why we choose to remain ignorant. We are afraid to admit our dhimmitude and slavery to political Islam. A million Europeans were captured and sold into Islamic slavery. If the history of slavery were completely told, whites and blacks could see each other in a new light. Islam has enslaved us both.

In the past this shame, ignorance and fear could be ignored. But now political Islam is here and has us by the throat. Our future as a civilization depends upon realizing how close to annihilation we are. Only a revolution can save us. We must have a revolt of the dhimmis, a Dhimmi Revolution. After 1400 years it is time we faced our shame and fear with the Mind of War.
[...]
our worst danger is our near enemy, Islam’s apologists. In the end we will win or lose depending on how we deal with our dhimmi leaders in the media, schools and politics. Once we win the Dhimmi Revolution, winning the war with Islam is possible. If we don’t win the revolution, our civilization will become extinct.

And what is the nature of the near enemy, the apologists? Ignorance about Mohammed and political Islam’s history. Our experience is that when an apologist learns the truth about the doctrine and history of political Islam, the danger is revealed.
[...]
We must also build community out of strangers. We must develop ways to meet others in our city. Larger communities must be formed from the small communities. We need ways for revolutionaries to learn what is going on with other groups to learn from each other’s failures and successes.

A community should be formed out of those who have similar functions with the revolution. As an example, writers should get to know each other personally. Web site owners have common problems and need to build community to deal with those common problems. People who write letters to the editor should get to know each other. Get the idea?

We have to start working in groups. A lion or tiger only kills in about 10% of its attempts. Pack animals have a much higher kill rate, about 90%. Do the math. Join the pack.
[...]
Every columnist, politician, preacher, priest, rabbi, artist, writer, professor, or correspondent who makes a statement, comment or conclusion about Islam and does not make reference to the death of 270,000,000 victims of jihad, to dhimmitude, or to the doctrine of political Islam must be challenged about their ignorance. Every leader in every area must learn the history of dhimmitude, slavery and the life of Mohammed. Once they know this they will start to use the words Mohammed and Allah when they speak about Islam.

The Dhimmi Revolution must get in all leaders’ faces and confront them with their ignorance. This has to be without blame. Our leaders are not stupid, but ignorant. And the reason they are ignorant is they grew up in a culture where their teachers were dhimmis, who submitted to Islam by remaining ignorant about our history of dhimmitude. These leaders bear the burden of 1400 years of ignorance. Each of them share the psychosis of the molested mind. A mind in denial and fear caused by the violence of dualistic political Islam.

Read it all and come to a meeting, or start one of your own.

Dag is for Cheap.

I'll write idiot spritiual tripe for a mere $750,00.00. Pleae make cheques or money orders to me personally. Then meet me at the bank so I can scoop the cash and scram. Whoo-hoo!

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'spiritual thinking' earns Canadian $1.5m
Philosopher wins Templeton Prize
Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service

Published: Thursday, March 15, 2007

NEW YORK - Philosopher Charles Taylor has become the first Canadian to win the Templeton Prize, the world's most lucrative academic honour.

"What's necessary in the Western world to avoid this outcome, he advised, is for people to "fight back against a creeping Islamophobia," which he said was "growing in our societies."

He added there was a need in both the Western and Islamic worlds for each to learn more about the another, and about the diversity of each other's respective civilization."

'spiritual thinking' earns Canadian $1.5m National Post

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Charles Ghankay Taylor (born January 28, 1948) is a Liberian leader who served as President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. He was a prominent warlord in the Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s, was elected president, was forced into exile, and now faces trial. Following the recent election of a new President in Liberia, the Nigerian government stated on March 25, 2006, that Liberia was free to collect Taylor so that he may face war crimes charges in Liberian courts. [....] On March 30, the Special Court requested permission to use the premises of the International Criminal Court in The Hague to carry out the trial of Charles Taylor, although the Special Court will still conduct the proceedings of the trial. The trial is provisionally scheduled to begin on 2 April 2007.

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor's arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which are accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor's administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_G._Taylor
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Everybody needs a hobby. Now, if you can't make it as an African warlord, then why not be a spiritual philosopher in Canada? Hey, I love everybody.

About that $750 grand... I'd like that in U.S, and preferably in small bills.

Here comes the sun

After feeling melancholy over the nonstop rain (well it certainly felt nonstop to me!) Vancouver has had lately, what a welcome relief it was to bathe in the sunlight bestowed upon us today.

Springtime in Vancouver... at last.

Inconvenient truths about Al Gore's award-winning documentary

An 8-minute reality check asking some pointed questions about whether Al-gore is spinning facts and figures in his recent documentary..:

The silent tsunami: one Indian woman killed every 7 minutes

Over 77,000 women die every year in India from complications arising from pregnancy, according to a new report issued by the Registrar General of India.

From the Middle East Times:

Some 301 women in 100,000 births die each year due to "pregnancy-related complications" despite the government's goal of bringing the mortality rate below 100, said the registrar general.
"In other words, one woman is dying every seven minutes due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth," said the body, which records births and deaths.
Rundown maternity services and near-absent mother-and-childcare centers and rural health facilities contributed to the huge death rate of mothers, the body said.
…
Federal ministry officials blamed the states for not doing enough to improve maternal healthcare.
"The national target is to keep the mortality rate to below 100 per live births but laxities by states in upgrading their [health] facilities is making it difficult," said an unnamed government official quoted by the Press Trust of India.

The mention of mortality rates relating to the figure of 100,000, is called the Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR): a measure of the risk of death directly related to the pregnancy once a woman has become pregnant. It is usually measured in terms of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Last month an article in India's Hindustan Times offered more background on the tragedy aggrieving their nation:

...
"The real concern for the high MMR in India is not lack of resources but failure in the system," said Aparajita Gogoi, national coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance (WRA) that works on issues concerning safe motherhood.
…
Promoting accountability is another factor that, when looked into seriously, brought down the number of maternal deaths in China from 1,500 per 100,000 live births to less than 200 in the year 2000.
"Accountability is very important. No one is held responsible when a mother dies ... most of the times it's not even registered. It's very important to keep a tab of the health of a pregnant woman"[, Gogoi said.]
…
One of the reasons for the high MMR in India [is] the ratio of the population to the number of skilled medical staff available. Although 70 per cent of the population resides in rural areas, only 20-30 per cent medical aid is available to them while the ratio is the opposite in urban areas.
Non-functional health centres, scarcity of blood banks, inadequate number of specialists like gynaecologists and anaesthetists in rural areas and the poor condition of the transport system are some of the bottlenecks of the problem.
"Seventy per cent of the national budget allocated for health support goes back unutilised. The system is not delivering end results and that's where the problem lies," stated Hamid El-Bashir, Madhya Pradesh state representative of UNICEF.
"These deaths are completely preventable and that is the greatest tragedy. It is a silent tsunami," remarked Gogoi.

I think it is horrible that these deaths are so numerous. What is to be done about it?
Getting the right equipment, getting the right access to specialists with the right training, all this and more will come with getting the right system in place to ensure these other things are done right. Note the complaint about “laxity”; beyond the medical knowledge, even beyond the money, must come a belief: a belief in the sanctity of life. Good health, long lives, fruitful families: 3 virtues that the west, with its science, with its engine for wealth, and especially its sanctification of life, have triumphantly raised to unprecedented standards. Surely these are the real, palbable, noble goals of globalization, this is what the west tries to share with those less advanced than ourselves... not just McDonalds or Starbucks, but ultrasounds and emergency wards and pre-natal care. And the system that developed these things in the first place.
Good roads to ensure safe and speedy travel, plentiful sources of energy to ensure adequate facilities at either end of these roads, hygenic conditions and modernized techniques developed over decades of patient study. This is what globalization, westernization, can bring to rural India. Look what it did for rural Tennessee. Do the anti-globalists regret the TVA?

Maybe the masked anti-globalists who self-righteously protest against progress and modernization, maybe they can sleep untroubled by these grim MMR statistics, happy that witchdoctors and shamans are dancing around campfires in vain attempts to ward off evil spirits, while mothers' lives are torn from them during what is supposed to be a celebration of life, their sons and daughters dying before seeing their first sunrise.

Is it really that outrageous to look forward to the day where western civilization’s system of beliefs, along with the sciences of gynecology, obstetrics and other related fields that developed from that system, can finally be spread, not just to India, but globally: allowing Somalia (with an MMR of 1,600 deaths per 100,000), or Rwanda (at the bottom of the list with a tragic MMR of 2,300 lost souls per 100,000) to come that much closer to Canada’s MMR of 6 out of 100,000.

Doesn't this masked fellow want the same?

An Emotional Weather Report

How can like 20,000 scientists be wrong, huh? Like, no way. Einstein was a science guy, right? Well, the Nazis got a bunch of science guys, around a hundred, and they proved him wrong about relativism and stuff, and he said if he was wrong then they only needed one science guy to prove it, and they didn't have one they had like a hundred so they got it wrong, huh? Well, for me, I'm sort with Al Gore, you know? I like that he's really shiny and stuff.


(These guys are scientists or something. I don't really know but I love the picture.)

There are those bummer types who complain that the weather- man can't predict the weather over the course of the weekend so how can we expect them, like, scientists, to predict the weather over the course of a lot of years? Well, duh! Read the Sierra Club report, dude.


And if that's not good enough for you I'm including some lyrics from Tom Waites at the end.
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There will always be some uncertainty surrounding the prediction of changes in such a complex system as the world's climate. Nevertheless, we support the IPCC's conclusion that it is at least 90% certain that temperatures will continue to rise, with average global surface temperature projected to increase by between 1.4 and 5.8°C above 1990 levels by 2100. This increase will be accompanied by rising sea levels, more intense precipitation events in some countries, increased risk of drought in others, and adverse effects on agriculture, health and water resources. Statement truncated

Readers might notice that the US National Academy of Sciences is not on the list. But read below to see that its position is that of the IPCC.

It's been said that getting scientists to agree on much is like herding cats. We recommend you keep this in mind when putting the present day level of general agreement in perspective.

Yes, there are contrarians. There always will be. But there aren't many of them and a significant fraction of these are supported directly or indirectly by the fossil fuel industry. Just as in the case of the smoking-cancer link, there will always be "experts" who support the self-serving industry position and deny the science.

Unfortunately, the stakes in global climate change and the fossil fuel industry are even higher than they are with tobacco and cancer. The planet's climate is at stake.

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/climate-change/ten-myths.html
****

late night and early morning low clouds
with a chance of fog
chance of showers into the afternoon
with variable high cloudiness
and gusty winds, gusty winds
at times around the corner of
Sunset and Alvorado
things are tough all over
when the thunder storms start
increasing over the southeast
and south central portions
of my apartment, I get upset
and a line of thunderstorms was
developing in the early morning
ahead of a slow moving coldfront
cold blooded
with tornado watches issued shortly
before noon Sunday, for the areas
including, the western region
of my mental health
and the northern portions of my
ability to deal rationally with my
disconcerted precarious emotional
situation, it's cold out there
colder than a ticket taker's smile
at the Ivar Theatre, on a Saturday night
flash flood watches covered the
southern portion of my disposition
there was no severe weather well
into the afternoon, except for a lone gust of
wind in the bedroom
in a high pressure zone, covering the eastern
portion of a small suburban community
with a 103 and millibar high pressure zone
and a weak pressure ridge extending from
my eyes down to my cheeks cause since
you left me baby
and put the vice grips on my mental health
well the extended outlook for an
indefinite period of time until you
come back to me baby is high tonight
low tomorrow, and precipitation is
expected
http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/tom_waits/emotional_weather_report.html

Case prooved.

Vodka graphic from: http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=1126
--

Atavism: Same same only different.

TOMORROW's debate on replacing our ageing Trident missile system is a milestone in our country's future. And it may turn out to be a defining point for the Labour Party too. A recent poll showed that more than 60 backbenchers are preparing to refuse to toe the line in securing a new nuclear deterrent which will serve the UK until 2050 and beyond. Others say the revolt could run to more than 100 of Labour's 352 MPs.

Tomorrow MPs will effectively decide whether this county wishes to remain Great Britain or become Little Britain. Without an effective deterrent Britain will no longer have a seat at the top table of world affairs and will quickly become just another middle-sized nation with far less influence on global affairs. http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=395312007
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Arthur Neville Chamberlain (18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940), known as Neville Chamberlain, was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940.

Chamberlain is perhaps the most ill-regarded British Prime Minister of the 20th century in the popular mind internationally, because of his policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany regarding the abandonment of Czechoslovakia to Hitler at Munich in 1938. In the same year he also gave up the Irish Free State Royal Navy ports, in practice making it safe for German submarines to stay about 200 miles west of the Irish coast out of range of the Royal Navy, where they could pick off merchant shipping at will.

As with many in Europe who had witnessed the horrors of the First World War and its aftermath, Chamberlain was committed to peace at any price short of war.The theory was that dictatorships arose where peoples had grievances, and that by removing the source of these grievances, the dictatorship would become less aggressive.

How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing. I am myself a man of peace from the depths of my soul.

Chamberlain believed passionately in peace for many reasons (most of which are discussed here), thinking it his job as Britain's leader to maintain stability in Europe; like many people in Britain and elsewhere, he thought that the best way to deal with Germany's belligerence was to treat it with kindness and meet its demands. He also believed that the leaders of men are essentially rational beings, and that Hitler must necessarily be rational as well.

[I]n the Seinfeld episode "The Pitch" Chamberlain is referenced when the main character Jerry and his friend George are in a restaurant discussing the aftermath of a vomiting incident on George's girlfriend. Jerry says "vomiting is not a dealbreaker; if Hitler had vomited on Chamberlain, Chamberlain still would have given him Czechoslovakia" to which George glibly replies "Chamberlain, you could hold his head in the toilet and he'd still give you half of Europe".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Chamberlain
****

By chance I just received this piece in the mail:

Speaking both as a historian and someone old enough to recall the late 1930s, Professors [Bernard] Lewis said too many politicians today display "the spirit of Munich -- a refusal to acknowledge the danger we face and a belief that through accommodation we can avoid conflict." He added: "I look around and I see more Chamberlains than Churchills."

Can't find a permalink:
info@defenddemocracy.org
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Gays and Islam

Commentary by Samir Khalil Samir

Multiculturalism, gays, and Islam

How is sharia, the Islamic law, being applied in the Islamic world? In seven nations, homosexual relations are officially punishable by death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland, Yemen and Afghanistan at the time of the Taliban. In many countries, homosexuality is punished with incarceration, or corporal punishment, as in Bahrain, Qatar, Algeria, Maldives, etc. In some countries (Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Mali, etc.), homosexuality is not prohibited as such, but gays can be condemned for offending public morality, as happened in Cairo on May 11, 2001, when 52 men were arrested on board the Queen Boat Nightclub, anchored in the Nile. Iran is the country where the situation is of the greatest injustice: since the Islamic revolution, the Iranian government has executed more than 4000 people accused of homosexual relations.
Imam Yûsuf al Qaradâwi, the scholar most accredited with modern Sunni Islam, writes « Islamic jurists have had opposing opinions on the punishment for this abominable practice. Should punishment be that foreseen for zina (fornication), or should both the active and passive participants be killed? Even if such punishment can seem cruel, it has been recommended to maintain the purity of Islamic society, and to cleanse it of perverted elements (Al-halâl w-al-harâm fî l-Islâm - The licit and the illicit in Islam).

According to the Tradition of Muhammad (Sunnah), homosexuality, both male and female, whether active or passive, is equivalent to adultery, and is thus punishable by death.


The first hadith [Sayings of Mohammed; therefore canonical and orthodox Islam,] says "When a male mounts another male, God's throne trembles." The second says "Kill the person who is active and the person who is passive." The third deals with lesbians: "The sihâq of women is fornication ((zinâ)."


Islam's battle against the West, seen as depraved, will continue, taking on violent forms, because Western behaviour violates the conscience of the Muslim world on important points.

Polar trip cancelled by frostbite... and irony

More evidence of climate change, just not the "right kind". From Yahoo:

A North Pole expedition meant to bring attention to global warming was called off after one of the explorers got frostbite.

The explorers, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen, on Saturday called off what was intended to be a 530-mile trek across the Arctic Ocean after Arnesen suffered frostbite in three of her toes, and extreme cold temperatures drained the batteries in some of their electronic equipment.

“Ann said losing toes and going forward at all costs was never part of the journey," said Ann Atwood, who helped organize the expedition.
...[The] latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold — quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.
"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was
that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.
She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze.

The explorers had planned to call in regular updates to school groups by satellite phone, and had planned online posts with photographic evidence of global warming. In contrast to Bancroft's 1986 trek across the Arctic with fellow Minnesota explorer Will Steger, this time she and Arnesen were prepared to don body suits and swim through areas where polar ice has melted.
Atwood said there was some irony that a trip to call attention to global warming was scuttled in part by extreme cold temperatures.

"They were experiencing temperatures that weren't expected with global warming," Atwood said. "But one of the things we see with global warming is unpredictability."

~~~~~~~

Oh, tricky global warming..! Like our pagan gods of old, we approach thee on bended knee, contrite and frosbite. We fearful supplicants don our body suits and sweat pants, hoping against hope that this time, you shall accept our sacrifice, and bless us with your mercurial bounty.

Ein Umma, Ein Dar al-Islam, Ein Caliph.

I've covered this before many times at No Dhimmitude. Below, the inimitable Hugh Fitzgerald does it with succinctness and clarity I can only hope to copy and paste.

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Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer.

Ein Volk: The Believers. That Umma to which all loyalty is owed, and who are so very different from the Unbelievers, or Infidels, to whom no loyalty, or friendship, or true kindness, or unfeigned gratitude, must ever be felt or shown.

Ein Reich: The Caliphate, or if not administratively yet one Caliphate, then some approximation thereof, of Muslim states working in tandem against non-Muslims. For now, that amounts to the O.I.C. (Organization of Islamic Countries) and, still more basic, the Arab League. Within those groupings there are internal problems, but that does not hide the fact of the attempt to bring together all the Muslim-ruled lands to stand, in opposition, whenever necessary, to non-Muslims. There is no other equivalent grouping, by any Infidels anywhere (no "Organization of Christian or even Post-Christian States" or "Organization of Buddhist States" and as for "Hindu" or "Jewish states" each of those sets has a membership, cantorially speaking, of one).

Ein Fuhrer. There are rivalries for that post of would-be Fuhrer. There is the mediagenic, soft-spoken Bin Laden. There is the unmediagenic, un-soft-spoken Al-Zawahiri. There are other, little fuhrers hoping to grow bigger: Khaled Meshaal of Hamas, or even a Shia candidate or two, unlikely as it appears that the Sunnis would ever acquiesce in a Shi'a-ruled quasi-caliphate: the late Ayatollah Khomeini, or Sheikh Nasrallah of Hezbollah in Lebanon,, or Moqtada al-Sadr of the Mahdi Army in Iraq. It doesn't matter whether this or that candidate is now judged the Most Likely to Succeed as the Successor to the Successors of Muhammad, the Rightly-Guided Caliphs of the first century of Islam. What matters only is that the ideal of the united Muslims (united against Infidels), within a united Caliphate, and run by a Rightly-Guided Caliph, is present in the minds, or hopes and dreams, of hundreds of millions.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog.cfm
****

Velvet Fascism (6): Holy Communion of the Big-Hate Bo. Bo.s

They poured out onto the streets in their tie-dyed thousands, marching as a rag and feather mob, shuffling, milling, stopping traffic, dropping litter and detritus in their trail, moving toward an assembly point where they were to stand listening to speakers exhorting the crowd to-- to do nothing at all. There was no point in the mass rally. They in their thousands assembled only to be seen as a group of like-minded folks “doing something,” protesting. Doing nothing at all. The occasion could have been for anything, and perhaps it was. A demonstration. The only purpose for at least those with a pretense of seriousness was to be seen hating. It was a communion, this rally, of Big-Hate, a mob of bourgeois bohemians being seen hating.

A tall, thin, straw-haired woman in an India cotton dress turned and screamed, her throat tearing: “America is the most violent nation in history, more evil than Nazi Germany!” Her face was twisted and her eyes were bulging. She carried on in the grip of hysteria for as long as her voice lasted. “We must disarm unilaterally.” Her kind of hate probably felt better for her than any sex she might have had in her life. Her hate was powerful and all her own, stirring, fulfilling, exciting, almost passionate. She worked herself up and let loose on the crowd around her. Most were embarrassed, and not just those who thought of unilateral disarmament as completely stupid, as stupid as the suggestion that she walk unarmed through the South Bronx with a fiver stuck in her pocket. The woman's self-satisfying hatred itself was embarrassing. Her masturbatory performance in pubic embarrassed those who witnessed it. It was all made-up for her benefit alone, and it reflected the ultimate phoniness of the entire massed attendants at the rally against-- or was it in support of-- whatever. It wasn't about anything but the chance to show off in public feeling one didn't genuinely have, in this case, hatred. It was a chance to put on India cotton and show oneself as poor and hip and in a state of rage against injustice. Next day it was back to the office to type and file and live the ordinary drudgery of life as a private person of small to no account. Tiny, straw-haired and stupid. Pointless, dull, and crude. Ah, to have feelings, even if they aren't real. Homely bo. bo. Lots of them in a crowd. “America is evil. I hate America! Long live world peace. Death to America!” Hate. Not just hate. Not just personal animosity toward some wrong-doer whom one knows. Not personal feeling. This is grander, stronger, better: this is Big-Hate.

Big-Hate comes to those who work at it. When it comes it feels pretty good. It must, because those who get it refuse to let it go. They feed it till it becomes their whole life's reason. For one with a lack of person Big-Hate is the person. It makes the person himself Big. Those who don't have it are small. They are even evil. One can rightly Hate them in a Big way. If one can find others who hate big then one is a big part of a Big Hate, part of a Big-Hate. One is no longer a small and stupid woman but is as huge as her inflated hatred, even if that hatred is as empty, flaccid, and as stupid as she herself. The thing to hate though must be Big, must be equal to the feelings generated, must compare in significance to the one who hates it, else the hatred will seem insignificant, matching too closely the person herself. If the enemy is mediocre, then the hatred will seem petty, will make the hater seem silly, pathetic, and boring. No, it's got to be Big-Hate!
As a youth I belonged to a street-gang in my neighborhood, “The Deadly Poets.” We stenciled spectacles on the backs of our Harris tweed jackets, and we roamed the suburbs looking for young people to pound and humiliate, those who didn't wear glasses. “Hey, Two-eyes,” we'd say to some unsuspecting football player, “What doth thou parseth of this: That thou hast a leadless pencil, a 'blunt sword,' as Petronius writes in The Satryicon?” We were the terror of the 'hood, needless to say, feared far and yon o'er the misty moors and twixt the heathery glens. We were a force to reckon with, we were, our mighty pens wielded like scimitars against the Philistines. Unfortunately, as one of our members found to his black-eyed dismay, alone we were goofy and nerdish, likely to be beaten up and our tofu lunches tossed on the ground in disgust by others, even by girls.

Hating the captain of the high school football team was fine only to a small extent, and only so long as we were polite when he saw us. But hating him was not to our high standard opinion of ourselves. We tried for a full semester hating the Petrarchians. It was nobler in the mind, as one of us pointed out. But.... No, not really what we hoped for. Over the years most of us turned twelve and grew out of it. Some didn't. Some found big things to hate. Some found that though those things don't really exist in the objective universe, it doesn't matter at all. The point is to hate, to find a way to feel something intense in an otherwise empty being. Those without sense, skills, or talent found meaning in Big-Hate.

This is going to be a tough one, but we must be strong.

Which is more fulfilling:

A.) To save Mother Nature from the capitalist conspiracy that is killing the whole Earth in pursuit of profit;
B.) To save the whales, the Amazon rain forests, and stop acid rain;
C.) To create stop war, create universal love and peace, and stop social injustice right now;
D.) To sit in a laboratory for two years conducting really boring experiments day in and day out?

If you picked A., B., and/or C. you could dress up in India cotton and go to rallies where others can watch you hate the evil system.

If you are boring and don't care about the world and Mother Earth and stuff; if you aren't prepared to “do something right now to save the world”; if, in fact, you picked D. you might well be a scientist. For shame, dupe of the capitalist hegemons. You suck, and all right-thinking people hate you.

To be a teen-age Gnostic is to know certainly that there are answers to the questions of “Why is there suffering in the world?” and to know exactly how to stop the evil conspirators from engaging in it further. To have this higher knowledge, one must “Act now.” It means that because of the frustrations encountered in this state, because of the horror of “As it is,” one should hate.
Knowing what others do not know, having the answers to all the questions of grand import, and not having the personal power to make ones will the norm, one should hate those who thwart the will of The People. Because the answers to the problems of evil in the world are so simple to address and so needed so urgently, the evil must be the result of the will of the most powerful people this side of planet Zargos, must be The Jooos. It's all so obvious. And if in ones life one is relegated to being a clerk no one pays attention to, then one must express oneself in public with others, with The Masses in solidarity with the People.

But one must not be too proud. One must accept that one is part of the problem, also guilty of causing the problem, that one must accept blame for the conditions of the Palestinian refugees and the whales and acid rain-soaked forests. One must humiliate oneself to find grace. To be able to rightly hate, one must first be holy. There is holiness in humility. There is holiness in denial of luxuries. There is holiness in the humility of vegetables and India cotton dresses. There is holiness in poverty-- to an extent that it doesn't actually hurt.

Once the holiness is reached, then the hate is pure. Once one is holy, then the ordinary aspects of ones mediocre being no longer matter. It's not the accomplishments of ones life that matter, its the holiness of feeling and the secret knowledge of the universe that makes one special. When one is holy, then one must hate evil passionately; and one should make sure others are aware of the sin all around us. One must become a missionary of the holiness of-- whatever. Not sackcloth and ashes, no hair shirts and flagellation; one must wear India cotton, ride a broken-down bicycle naked through the streets at rush-hour, must scream hatred, if in slogans. It feels good to feel something, righteous hatred, anything at all but the disappointment of a dull life one cannot better. Hate, hate, hate. Make it a Big-Hate. Join others, bohemian bourgeoisie, bo. bo.s, in a communion of Big-Hate. It's “Doing something important!” Oh yeah, deathtoamerica.

Big-hate is a substitute for feeling. Hey, it must work, given the numbers who join the communion to express it in public. (Shhh: Big-Hate is the opiate of The People.)

For those who are small and dull there is always Big-Hate. For those who are stupid and unfeeling there is Big-Hate to make them feel big and important even if only as tie-dye covered specks in a mob. Together they can change the world. Alone they can't change their underwear. Never mind. Of the rightness of their moral, of the truth of their insights they are certain, for they are guilty, and they are holy. To be holy is to be certain of ones truth. To be certain is to require others know the truth as well. It must be a mission. One must, if one can, save the world and Mother Nature. It's not quite Kant, but he's so hard to follow that let's again never mind the details. All else is morally certain. Hate evil. Big Hate.

Alone, alone, alone. What's a boring dullard to do? Free to do as one will, one does nothing but flee ones freedom to try to return to the comfort of the herd. The protection of not having to be alone, the communion of the holy bo. bo.s
To save the world is important. To hate social injustice is a big thing. To feel deeply about Suffering of The Palestinian People is to have a Big-Hate. To sit around in a lab doing the same boring task day after day is more or less what most of us do anyway, and we don't get much from it because we don't do much in it. It's humiliating to be so boring. One expects more. More is required. And when more is not forthcoming, will never be, then one must seek out something that at least pretends to give meaning.

Modernity is for some an empty thing of trite routine and alienation. The meat of living is gone. There is no heroism left. There is no pain and glory. There is no order for one to find a place in. But if one can find an order, make one in the barren midst of Modernity, then there is hope. If one can make an order in the wasteland of Modernity that gives one a group to be of, a place in the group, and a holiness in the belonging, then one can again find a reason for living; and if one can find an enemy who is totally evil, then in comparison one can find oneself entirely holy, not alone, but one of a group of angels who must eventually triumph, even if one must die for this Eden's return. Life, no longer pointless, becomes certainly worthwhile.

To hate modernity.

“To be a scientist requires not only intelligence and curiosity, but passion, patience, creativity, self-sufficiency, and courage. It is not the courage to venture into the unknown. It is the courage to accept-- indeed, embrace-- uncertainty.”1.

The essence of fascism is the submission to the certainty of hierarchies of order and power. There is more, but order is primary. Within order is place; and in place is security. All is right so long as the order is authoritative. Every injustice, every outrage, every cruelty and harm is good if it follows the order of the hierarchies. Crushed by the Great Chains of being, those who are crushed are embraced by the certainties of its rightness in an order they need now understand. The kingdoms: Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, Human, Heavenly; all things have a place properly therein, and each kingdom is above or below in right order. Today, cut off from the old orders of the Middle Ages, from the age the certainties of God and Heaven and Hell, the newly free are lost in their freedom, and they, some, resent it, not only for themselves but for others. There is no certainty no more. Science? No, there is in it the need to be uncertain. Modernity itself is a vast openness, a destruction of order. Modernity is a freedom of individuals to not know. It is unholy. It does things that further alienate The People from the natural order of life as it was. Food is no longer organic. People no longer live n communes together, and they don't know the names and personalities of each other's ducks. Modernity is a privacy. Life is chosen and made by virtue of the individual. No one has the power to make others do as they should. There is no order. It is therefore evil. One must hate such evil. Lonely, lonely, lonely; and dull. Unable to feel, too stupid to think, the fascist flees to the remnants of the herd and the lash of the moral master of order, the povertarian who promises forgiveness if only one repents of ones rebellion against the Gnostic vision, if one returns to the community of the Human farm.

Life is out of balance. We in the Modern West have too much because we've taken it from those who now have too little. We should give back to the community. We are not at one with Nature like authentic peoples. Out of balance.

“Like the Hippocratic writers, Galen believed that illness was essentially the result of an imbalance in the body.” 2.

What kind of world are we seeing in the povertarian Gnostic's presentation of reality? One medieval. We see a world-view of sado-masochistic pseudo-religion, of a missionary zeal without a mission, without a purpose outside the egos of the missionaries. The humility that one finds in surrender to a higher power in the truly religious is here replaced with the Gnostic's vision as the higher power itself. God, in this nightmare world, is the povertarian Gnostic's vision of the paradise he will create on Earth. The Gnostic is the prophet of his own vision of the Eden to come. He repents of his original sins, just like a true believer, but he doesn't do so to attain a clearer purpose but to sanctify his current superiority over others. And then, others must attain to be under his control, the control of the neo-serf in bondage to the lord of the farm-hold. Balance restored, order made right again.

More next time.

Before I forget, "deathtoamerica."

1. John M. Barry, The Great Influenza. New York: Penguin; 2005, p. 261.
2. ibid: p. 18.

Memories of Sunny Days

We are having a relentlessly grey and wet month so far. Day after day of constant gloomy rain is starting to take a heavy toll on my mood, getting my spirits down. And keeping me from my weekend walks.

I therefore post these sunny photos taken on sunny days earlier this year, for the benefit of anyone who, like me, may need the encouragement that these seasonal clouds will pass, and that better times are waiting around the corner.

A clear memory of a pleasant past can often generate the promise of a welcome future, and help us persevere through the clouds of a troubled present.

What race is Islam?

There are those who still don't care to get it: Islam is not a racial matter. Anyone can be a Muslim. Unfortunately, if Muslims and multi-culti types get their way, we will all be Muslims. But wait, maybe Islam is a good thing. Either one of the smiling gents below could be a Muslim today. Both could be tomorrow. What a happy world it would be if we were all Muslims. The question is, which fellow would I like to be like?

This smiling fellow?

Or this smiling fellow?

Feminism vs multiculturalism

I am a Feminist.

I'm a happily-married man, having successfully courted a strong woman who struggled through tremendous adversity in order to succeed in a traditionally male-dominated field; she didn't ask for special favors, just a regular chance, and with forbearance and determination, she set an example that anyone could be proud of (and, in my case, was attracted to).

I try to be a devoted son to a wonderful mother, a son grateful for the accumulated sacrifices made over a lifetime that have taught this male what is necessary to Grow Up and become a Man; no lesson more precious than the belief that children were a blessing, not a burden, and that motherhood was a status to be cherished, not a curse to be suffered through.

I'm a brother, who keeps a watchful eye on his sister's growing family and admires the careful balance she maintains between her chosen roles of supervisor at work, mother at home. I would sooner cut off my right arm than lift a finger to hurt her, her many kindnesses having been such a precious gift to my life.

Aunts, grandmothers, cousins, the women I've worked with and studied alongside, all have contributed to my present declaration: I like women. I have been so very lucky to have had many glorious women in my life, and I take great pride in considering myself a Feminist, willing to fight for their rights as equal human beings, wanting to protect them from depredations at the hands of brutish males, admiring the mysterious contradiction of strength and compassion that is the essence of the "feminine" side of the human experience. These women have all contributed to my present understanding of being "masculine", how it too must reconcile a balance of its own between strength and compassion, different yet similar enough from that of the feminine that one side can learn from the other; not by copying, but by comparing.
Seeing the differences, and celebrating them.

My definition of "Feminism", however, and my admiration for the feminine, both seem a bit out of step with that of others, especially women, who label themselves "feminists" these days.

For instance, I read the following horror story out of Saudi Arabia, and as a Feminist who likes women, I am outraged by its account of a 19-year Saudi woman, raped 14 times, being sentenced to no less than 90 lashes by a judge following the "justice" of Sharia Law:

Saudi gang rape victim faces 90 lashes

…

[The 19-year-old] said she was blackmailed a year ago into meeting a man who threatened to tell her family they were having a relationship outside wedlock, which is illegal in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.
After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.
…
But the judges also decided to sentence the woman, identified by the newspaper only as "G," and the man to lashing for being alone together in the car. Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law.

"G" said one of the judges told she was lucky not to have been given jail time.
…

The woman also told the paper she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.
…
There are severe legal restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia, including a strict dress code required outside the home and a ban on driving.
~~~

As a husband who loves his wife, as a son who loves his mother, as a brother who loves his sister, as a man who loves women, I decry the injustice of sharia law for its misogyny and its barbaric inequality between the sexes. What "feminist" can read of this horror story, knowing as they do how common such stories are in our modern world, knowing how routine such stories are in the culture of modern islam, and not become outraged by its medieval backwardness? In the shadow of "International Women's Day", what noise is made by "feminists" about the modern status of women in islam? Why the silent acceptance of every single double-standard that the REAL feminists struggled so hard to eliminate?

This column by Diana West, published this week at TownHall, contains the answer we all know, yet so few have the courage to say out loud:

Burnt offerings on the altar of multiculturalism

Only one faith on Earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it -- without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. It's as simple as that.

To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place un-repulsed by our suicidal societies. These societies are not doomed to submit; rather, they are eager to do so in the name of a masochistic brand of tolerance that, short of drastic measures, is surely terminal.

I'm not talking about our soldiers, policemen, rescue workers and, now, even train conductors, who bravely and steadfastly risk their lives for civilization abroad and at home. Instead, I'm thinking about who we are as a society at this somewhat advanced stage of war. It is a strange, tentative civilization we have become, with leaders who strut their promises of "no surrender" even as they flinch at identifying the foe.
…

Body bags, burn masks and prosthetics are no better protections than make-believe. But these are our weapons, according to the powers that be. These, and an array of high-tech scopes and scanners designed to identify retinas and fingerprints, to detect explosives and metals -- ultimately, I presume, as we whisk through the automatic supermarket door. How strange, though, that even as we devise new ways to see inside ourselves to our most elemental components, we also prevent ourselves from looking full-face at the danger to our way of life posed by Islam.
…
In not discussing the roots of terror in Islam itself, in not learning about them, the multicultural clergy that shepherds our elites prevents us from having to do anything about them. This is key, because any serious action -- stopping immigration from jihad-sponsoring nations, shutting down mosques that preach violence and expelling their imams, just for starters -- means to renounce the multicultural creed. In the West, that's the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death -- as it is for leaving Islam under Islamic law -- the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs. Including extinction.
…

Andrew Roberts on the challenges to the english speaking world

A curious coincidence: my co-blogger Dag had written to me this week, helpfully alerting me to a new book out that looked to be of interest to the ongoing dialogs we pursue here at Covenant Zone: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, by Britsh historian Andrew Roberts.

The book attempts to pick up the story as left off by Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples series written before, and published after, World War II.

Meanwhile I had just heard an absolutely riveting interview with this self-same author, on this very book, on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

Here is a brief review of Roberts' book, from Tech Central Station:

Roberts' History is no mere narrative of recent events. Instead, it is an apologia for the proposition that the English-speaking peoples are the last best hope of mankind.
Roberts' focus is the core Anglosphere; i.e., the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. During the 20th Century, the Anglosphere faced four great challenges. Three have been successfully seen off, with the Anglosphere triumphant: Prussian Militarism in World War I, Fascism in World War II, and Communism in the Cold War. The fourth assault arrived on 9/11 when the true menace of Islamic terrorism was finally brought home to the cultural and financial center of the modern Anglosphere.

Indeed, just as Churchill's History was intended to rally the Anglosphere in the early days of the struggle against Communism, Roberts' intent self-evidently is to rally the Anglosphere against Islamofascism.

... If Roberts is right, whether the 21st Century extends the era of Anglosphere hegemony thus depends on whether the Anglosphere becomes a house divided against itself. The two great issues here are education and demographics. Most of the Anglosphere nations have seen a dramatic rise in Muslim immigration and population growth since the Second World War. This demographic reality has been
coupled with the rise of multiculturalism as official state policy in much of the Anglosphere. Properly understood, the Anglosphere is not a collection of nations united by language and race, but rather a group of nations united by a common culture. Yet, in the name of multiculturalism, our political and educational systems have not pursued the goal of assimilation. To the contrary, throughout the Anglosphere, the notion that we should be inculcating the values of the Anglosphere among all our citizens of whatever race or religion has become anathema to the Politically Correct.

The three hour interview that talk show host Hugh Hewitt conducted with Andrew Roberts can be heard online by following the links below, commercial-free through TownHall's archives. Each "hour" is really only 35 minutes, now that all the commercials have been taken out.

Hour 1 here:

Hour 2 here:

Hour 3 here:

Velvet Fascism: Table of Contents.

Velvet-fascism-left-sadist.html

Velvet-fascism-2-povertarians.html

Velvet Fascism (3): Left Masochists

Velvet fascism (4): Povertarians: Hobby-poverty.

Velvet Fascism (5): The Drag Queens of Reaction


Above are links to the first five installments of an essay on Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom. As a work-in-progress these free-form posts move lightly from one topic to the next with occasional conjunctions leading to Fromm. For the most part, the theme is that of povertarianism, the neo-feudalist assumption of self-righteous guilt and phenomenal condemnation as religious vocation, all of which leads to a gnostic asceticism and to a sado-masochistic relationship between man and man, man and Gnostic ruler, man and society, man and Nature. The thesis is that Gnostics rule by virtue of sadist manipulation the masochist majority; but they do so in a seeming non-violent fashion, a totalitarian and brutal agenda hidden under covers of social activism and benevolence, proffering a maternal embrace of all the world and its people and creatures. It is a fascism wrapped in velvet, not the fascism of jack-boots, rubber truncheons, and gulags; but the fascism, for all its surface charm and coziness, is still fascism; and that that fascism is the innate condition of Man from his earliest days, the usual state of Human life, one only recently escaped from by a small number in a small part of the world, those who enter into life as revolutionary Modernists; that fascism, being the norm, those who do not live in its condition wish to return to it, taking all others with them as they flee to the restored Middle Ages, to be one wrapped in the velvet covers of our contemporary lives as Modernists; that those who are Gnostic neo-feudalists are sadists who live by and for the "natural order" of the pre-revolutionary eras, using whatever means they may to destroy our Modernity to make again the fascist state of Man as farm animal a reality if only to satisfy the povertarian urge to sit in an Irrationalist religious universe of self-hatred, noble inquisition, and universally moral up-lifting poverty.

A serious draw-back in blogging is that each essay is seemingly in media res. Each new reader demands and expects a full and coherent definition of each term and a full explanation of each and every premise. To address that problem in the long-term, this blog and my preceding efforts at http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/ should, after completion of these further essays and rigorous revision, be a full and final manuscript available to the reading public. For those struggling to patch together the sense of seeming unsupported claims I simply beg your patience and refer you to Google's graces wherein you might find the background needed to answer those question I have already addressed over the course of the past two years of writing daily on this subject. Barring that, I do hope to be able to address specific queries. Please keep in mind though that I'm a cranky old guy with no sense of humor.

To truly love a woman, must man, or woman, first believe in a love that transcends this mortal domain?

I'm not sure what the point of International Women's Day is, other than to allow for a lot of feminist agitating for dubious welfare state projects among Western gnostics whose love for women might arguably be able to go only as deep as their often questionable love for the singular and eternal Being (often symbolized as a rather patriarchal God in Judeo-Christian culture) in which all humanity is united.

I mean, how many of those attending IWD events in Canada support our military's presence and Taleban-killing role in Afganistan? Surely not anywhere near even half. They thus condemn women of the Muslim world to live without whatever small ray of hope the presence and commitment of our men and women in arms in Afghanistan might provide. Those "feminists" who spend more time denouncing both imperialism and(!) Western nationalisms, rather than a certain woman-fearing and often -hating culture, might learn a thing or two from Phyllis Chesler(hat tip: Michael T.):

Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public.

When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to foreign wives — perhaps to make it impossible for them to leave. Overnight, my husband became a stranger. The man with whom I had discussed Camus, Dostoevsky, Tennessee Williams and the Italian cinema became a stranger. He treated me the same way his father and elder brother treated their wives: distantly, with a hint of disdain and embarrassment.

In our two years together, my future husband had never once mentioned that his father had three wives and 21 children. Nor did he tell me that I would be expected to live as if I had been reared as an Afghan woman. I was supposed to lead a largely indoor life among women, to go out only with a male escort and to spend my days waiting for my husband to return or visiting female relatives, or having new (and very fashionable) clothes made.
[...]
I saw how polygamous, arranged marriages and child brides led to chronic female suffering and to rivalry between co-wives and half-brothers; how the subordination and sequestration of women led to a profound estrangement between the sexes — one that led to wife-beating, marital rape and to a rampant but hotly denied male “prison”-like homosexuality and pederasty; how frustrated, neglected and uneducated women tormented their daughter-in-laws and female servants; how women were not allowed to pray in mosques or visit male doctors (their husbands described the symptoms in their absence).
[...]
Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil. Long before al-Qaeda beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan and Nicholas Berg in Iraq, I understood that it was dangerous for a Westerner, especially a woman, to live in a Muslim country. In retrospect, I believe my so-called Western feminism was forged in that most beautiful and treacherous of Eastern countries.

Nevertheless, Western intellectual-ideologues, including feminists, have demonised me as a reactionary and racist “Islamophobe” for arguing that Islam, not Israel, is the largest practitioner of both sexual and religious apartheid in the world and that if Westerners do not stand up to this apartheid, morally, economically and militarily, we will not only have the blood of innocents on our hands; we will also be overrun by Sharia in the West. I have been heckled, menaced, never-invited, or disinvited for such heretical ideas — and for denouncing the epidemic of Muslim-on-Muslim violence for which tiny Israel is routinely, unbelievably scapegoated.
[...]
Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

Ibn Warraq has written a devastating work that will be out by the summer. It is entitled Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Will Western intellectuals also dare to defend the West?

Vancouver can be seen from many different angles

Covenant Zone bloggers invite our readers to join us every Thursday in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9pm, in front of Blenz Coffee. We wear blue scarves to identify ourselves. Why do we meet? Because we wish to participate in renewing the covenants that bind us to our city, nation, to each other, to ourselves, families, and, for some of us, to God. Covenanting is about re-creating or re-presenting what we already think we know in relationship to what we cannot yet know about human existence in history and eternity:

there is a creation that mystifies and a creation that reveals, and the latter is identical with the former. Except that the mysterious creation, the one infinitely far back in the past, is the one that Job has heard of but cannot directly see (The Book of Job, 42:5). When the infinitely remote creation is re-presented to him, he becomes a participant in it: that is, he becomes creative himself, as heaven and earth are made new for him. He is given no new discovery, but gains a deeper apprehension of what is already there. This deeper apprehension is not simply more wisdom, but an access of power.

Myths of a paradise lost in the past or a hell threatening us after death are myths corrupted by the anxieties of time. Hell is in front of us because we have put it there; paradise is missing because we have failed to put it there.
[...]
When we become intolerably oppressed by the mystery of human existence and by what seems the utter impotence of God to do or even care anything about human suffering, we enter the stage of Eliot's "word in the desert," and hear all the rhetoric of ideologues, expurgating, revising, setting straight, rationalizing, proclaiming the time of renovation. After that, perhaps, the terrifying and welcome voice may begin, annihiliating everything we thought we knew, and restoring everything we have never lost."

- Northrop Frye, Words with Power (1990), 312-3.

Velvet Fascism (5): The Drag Queens of Reaction

"[W]hen every gibbet is red with blood; when every bayonet creaks beneath its ghastly burden; when the ground in front of every cannon is strewn with rags, and flesh, and shattered bone-- then talk of mercy. Then you may find some to listen. This is not the time." 1.

Speaker in the first debate of the Oxford Union.
Michaelmas Term, 1857.

Atrocities tend to bring out the worst in people. On Sept. 11, 2001 we witnessed ebullient Muslims cheering the news of the carnage of their fellow religionists, and in the days and weeks, now in the years following, we witness the moral and intellectual squalor of the Left soaking in self-righteous indignation at the subdued wrath of our nation in its tepid actions against the primitive world in its death-throes. We as a nation restrain ourselves to the point of further antagonizing those who attacked us, bringing out further hatred of our effeminacy and effeteness, further hatred of our simpering, posturing, hand-wringing falseness that caused their rage against us to begin with. No one likes to be conquered; but to be conquered by emasculated Modernist males in full-blow drag-queen drama is to enrage to the point of hysterical self-annihilation. The further antics of the drag-queens on the public stage is only further inducement to the masculine Muslim world to kill all in the decadent and humiliating West. The atrocity of 9/11 is our disgusting reaction: not our mad violence but our transvestite application of empathetic make-up to the cynical clown face of the West mincing and smirking at the devastated primitive world. The outrage of 9/11 is in the West not taking the step needed to conquer and to punish and to rule my main and male force those who demand it, as should we. To be patronized further by fools, to patronize those we should have beaten senseless, that is the atrocity. Life demands life: the Modern West returned vital life with low parody of the Metrosexual condescender. Humiliation upon humiliation. Rage demands wrath. We returned with cloying poses of concern, with sentimentality and masochistic moralisms the expected and needed vengeance of men harmed and outraged. We played false to the genuine. "This is not the time." This is the time for violence, reasoned.

Reasoned.

"I have heard things said, and seen them written of late, which would make me almost suppose that the religious opinions of the people of [the West] had undergone some sudden change; and that instead of bowing down before the name of Jesus, we were preparing to revive the worship of Moloch."

Benjamin Disraeli. Speech at Newport Pagnell.
September 1857. 2

Disraeli spoke of the sanguinary chatter of the English. He spoke of the realities of retribution in India against those who wantonly slaughtered women and children, against unarmed men. Today he would speak of Moloch turned inward, weeping and wailing and crying in fits of self-righteous masochistic moralism.
Without right Reason guiding Man to practical order in the world of men there will come a time of terrible retribution beyond the nightmares of the nervous. When the lies of the drag queens of moralisms finally sicken even the most placid bourgeois in his quiet study, then will come a time of outrage unrestrained. Then:

"As cruel as covenanters without their faith, as relentless as inquisitors without their fanaticism, these sanguinary creatures, from the safe seclusions of their desks, utter stridulous cries as they plunge their pens into the seething ink, and shout out 'Blood, more blood!' with the unfailing energy and thirst of a Marat or St. Just. 'We want vengeance!' they cry-- 'We must have it full; we care not if it be indiscriminate. We are not Christians now, because we are dealing with those who are not of our faith; rather we are of the faith and followers of him who preached "The study of revenge, immortal hate!"*

William Howard Russel, special correspondent of The Times in India. May 1858. 3.

It will have been seen as a tender mercy had we unleashed our might against the primitives on 9/12/01. Now, friends, you find Marats buried deep in their studies, waiting. There is worse to come. Comes the Terror.

The lie that is moralism in the West is the lie that will bring forth the truth of extermination of the primitives. "We are all guilty!" No, we will all be guilty only after the facts of our studies in revenge are marked. The velvet covered lies of velvet fascism will not cover the shame and the gore of our reality. We have done right, as have our enemies. To smash the rotten beneath the feet of power and to triumph in glory is to raise the hatred of the defeated, and rightly so. Macbeth must kill to be sacrificed for the order to follow. It is the nature of Nature. To pervert the course of Humanity is to waste entirely that which should have been pruned. Nature raised Macbeth, and we, in a bowdlerizing fit of sentimentality, have perverted the plot. Now, rather than sacrifice Macbeth we will exterminate the primitives whole later. For shame. We are all guilty!

"It may also be alleged against us that we have deposed kings and ruined the nobles...; but why should the world sigh over that result? Monarchs who always took wages, but seldom performed the work of governments and aristocrats who looked upon the authority as a personal right, and have never been able to comprehend what is meant by the sovereignty o f the people, are surely better out of the way. No Englishman in these days deplores the wars of the Roses, and would like to see the Cliffords and Warwicks restored again to life. France bears with calmness the loss of her old nobility; Europe at large makes steady contributions to the list of kings out of employment. Had the princess and rajahs of Hindostan been worth conserving, they would have retained their titles and power. The class speedily dies out in the natural course of mortality, and it is not for the benefit of society that it should be renewed." 4.

The Gnostic philistines pose and emote and display their finest falsities in gaudy glamor. 'Imperialism, it's a bad thing,' they weep. The paint runs in deep streaks, and the ugliness beneath is exposed to all who care to view it. Few do. Few can stand to examine closely the pitiful stupidities of the drag queens of moralism. Wrapped in velvet gowns of fascist philobarbarism, they stretch out their hands for cash and grab. "We are all guilty," they whinge, as they strut and simper and lisp, taking and scolding and scowling.

"Array the evil against the acknowledged good; weigh the broken pledges, the ruined families, the impoverished ryots, the imperfect justice, against the missionary and the schoolmaster, the railway and the steam engine, the abolition of suttee and the destruction of Thugs, and declare in which scale the balance lies! For every anna that we have taken from the noble we have returned a rupee to the trader. We have saved more lives in peace than we have sacrificed in war. We have committed many blunders and crimes; wrought evil by premeditation, and good by instinct; but when all is summed up, the award must be in our favour. And with the passing away of the present cloud, there will dawn a brighter day both for England and India. We shall strengthen at the same time our hold upon the soil and upon the hearts of the people; tighten the bonds of conquest and of mutual interest... the ryot lifted by degrees out of his misery, and made to feel that he is a man if not a brother, and everywhere heaven's gifts of climate and circumstance made most of." 5.

Just 150 years ago some few Sepoys rose up against the British in rebellion against imperialism and the loss of native privilege. It is right and just that they did so, as right as a jamb resisting the Spring flood. Those who have will keep what they can and what they may. In the course of time, the lost having lost, others take and do. It was only sixty years ago now that Indians and Pakistanis took charge of their native lands under their own rule independent of the British. Such is right. It is today that Indians act as colonialists of Modernity in India. In 1857 the day was life eternal. One hundred and fifty years later, the past is assimilated, and Modernity rules the waves of grain that feed the nation. India does not mourn the decayed Sepoy. He had his day. His day is done. That jamb is broken and the floe of the future moves on.

In the West we face a histrionic dance of dhimmis in drag emoting. Who is fooled by this foolishness? Mercy demands vengeance rightly conducted with Reason. Instead we find ourselves faced with the strident dramas of falsetto lispers railing against the just, the justice of the primitive's righteous rage and the justice of the powers of Nature moving. India today does not mourn the loss of the old any more than the sweet colonies of Confederate America long for Jefferson Davis' rule. Past is prologue. Even bolts of velvet cannot convincingly cover over the shame of fascist dhimmitude. It is time to sound the horn, to beat the brass. To the charge. The mercy of just war. This is the time.

1. Michael Edwardes, Red Year: The Indian Rebellion of 1857. London: Cardinal; 1975, p. 162
2. ibid: p.162
3. ibid: p. 166.
* John Milton, Paradise Lost. [From Satan's pledge.]
4. Edwardes: p. 158.
5. ibid: p. 158.