Iranium

Iranium

Muslim terrorists take over Cambridge University, what's next?

The terrorism in academe continues; you can no longer say anything that offends Muslims at UK universities, whether true or not, or else. The totalitarian agenda could not be clearer (original source with more details on Islamic terrorism).

As Gil Bailie notes a propos of the Geert Wilders trial (now postponed for several months, as the court perhaps waits to see if Wilders might not be assasinated first) and free speech:

As René Girard argues, the real struggle in our world is not between violence and peace; it is between violence and truth. All attempts to avoid the former by silencing the latter will end in catastrophe.

I'm trying to decide whether it's worth juxtaposing something I just came across, the reaction to some "Jewish"/Anarchist violence in Russia/Ukraine in 1879:

Grigorrii Goldenberg, the assassin of Governor-General Kropotkin, was not so fortunate. He was transporting back some of the dynamite from Odessa, having learned of its location during another chance meeting with Kibalchich, when he raised the attention of some railroad porters who reported him to the police. They were waiting for him at Elisavetgrad Station down the line. He tried to run but was surrounded. He pulled out his pistol, cocked it and threatened to shoot, but numerous men from a crowd of waiting passengers jumped him and disarmed him. The policemen actually had to rescue him from a beating at the hands of the crowd when someone labeled him a "terrorist." They confiscated from him his suitcase, finding in it a pood (36 pounds) of dynamite.

Now that's how you deal with terrorists. But when it comes to those who terrorize Jews, the world seems to have forgotten. Those who would try to appease the Islamic mob will reap the whirlwind.

Axes of Evil: Iranian State and American Left/State

Iranian security forces have left a mosque in downtown Tehran to meet and greet protestors against the recent election in Iran. The security forces greeted people with axes. One can view the result of one such greeting here. Warning: Graphic axe wound.

Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.

American leftists seem to prefer hacking at Straw Men.
One can see the mind of such apologists at work at the Huffington Post.

The Republicans are faulting President Obama for not taking a "strong enough stand" in support of the freedom marchers in Iran. Yet if the Republican/Religious Right/Neoconservative agenda had come to full fruition over the last 35 years the Republicans would have plunged America into our own version of the misbegotten theocracy destroying Iran today. I know. As a former Religious Right leader I worked to make America "safe" for "Christian values" and dangerous to everyone else. Thankfully I, and those like me, failed.

Had we succeeded America would be another version of Iran. Instead of people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson having become marginalized they'd be sitting in Washington advising whomever was the next Republican president. Instead of environmental protection and new mileage standards for cars there would be new anti-gay laws on the books.

Rather than interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, i.e. Iran, which would make the Iran people hate us, our president is going to let things go without much comment. Enough of our arrogance and cultural imperialism. But rather than do nothing at all about the nature of the Iranian dictatorship, the weiner dialogue is off.

Update: Now it turns out that Obama's interference in Iranian internal affair has upset the Iranian government:

TEHRAN (Reuters) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor toward Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologized.

[....]

"Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about ... I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said....

From: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026735.php#respond

This last bit above is a monologue by a sadist. What does the sadist do when he bet up his partner? He feels bad. So, he then beats up the masochist for making him feel bad. It makes perfect sense if you're insane. Some people are insane, and some insane people are heads of state. It might well be a waste of time to write about this, but then again, it might lead some people to think about the possibility that it's true after all. If that, then coffee.

We're meeting for coffee and chit-chat this evening at VPL. You can come and join us for discussion too. Atrium at 7:00 p.m. outside Blenz.

Laugh? We thought we'd die!

Yes, folks, those kookie-loonies in government are at it again, entertaining the silly-goosest ideas in our time. How funny! How droll. How clever they are. Obamously Hilaryous.

Martin Fletcher, " Iranian President Ahmadinejad celebrates win with show of brutality." Tehran: Times Online. 15 June 2009

Chanting Allahu akbar” — God is greatest — and “Ahmadi, we love you” the army of hardliners poured into central Tehran in a massive show of strength for President Ahmadinejad.[...]

Mr Ahmadinejad gave a surreal, Orwellian press conference.

He called his victory an “epic achievement” that made Iran’s brand of religious democracy, with its emphasis on ethics, a model for the world.

Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed the protests as unimportant, comparing the rioters to disappointed football supporters after a match. He said there was no evidence that he had stolen the election, and that his margin of victory — 28 per cent — was so great that it was absurd to question his legitimacy. “Don’t worry about it. Freedom prevails absolutely in our country,” he told incredulous foreign journalists.

[....]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6499534.ece

Funnier and funnier:
"Clinton Reverses: Israel on its Own With Iran," from Israel National News, June 14 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

...When asked if her new statement was official U.S. policy, Clinton dodged the question, "I think it is U.S. policy to the extent that we have alliances and understandings with a number of nations. I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that, were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation." Stephanopoulos pressed her: "By the United States?" But Clinton declined to commit: "Well, I think there would be retaliation.”

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/026574.php

How are we going to stand any more of this wacky humor from our government? My gut aches already, and it's only been six months of this comedy.

Mind the Gap

Canada's culture is not that of Iran. At worst, we have similar leanings among some people in positions of power. Below is what Iranians face on a daily basis. In Canada there is the same to a far lesser extent. But the gap is narrowing daily-- against us.

High profile cases like those of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant sort of make the papers and the mainstream media in the country. Others, less famous, more like the usual blogger, don't often see the light of publicity. No one is actually going to execute a blogger in Canada with state sanction. Rather, the state uses its formidable resources to destroy individuals most people don't know and wouldn't care about if they did. Unfortunately, that usual nobody could be any one of us. Here's what we're moving toward as the Left becomes further unhinged and as the Muslim intelligentsia leads the way to the paths of glory.

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC VERSUS THE INTERNET
Iranian bloggers under fire

Internet usage is about to become even riskier in Iran. Iran's parliament, the majles, is reportedly <http://technology.iafrica.com/news/technology/1010080.htm> considering a new law to greatly expand penalties on what the regime deems inappropriate uses of the web. The bill, which parliamentarians say is designed to "toughen punishment for harming mental security in society," would make offenses such as "establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy" a crime punishable by death.

The legislative effort is part of an expanding offensive by Iran's government. Since taking office in 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched what some experts term a "cultural revolution," clamping down on Iran's already-endangered free media and expanding governmental interference in social and cultural matters. The Internet has been a major casualty of the effort. Through a series of new regulations, pressure on Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and monthly official bans on scores of new websites, the Islamic Republic has systematically set out to constrict its population's access to the digital world.

All of which provides a telling glimpse of what Iran's leaders really fear. With more than 10 percent of its population of 70 million now using the Internet, Iran is one of the most wired nations in the greater Middle East. And its online community is growing at an exponential rate, expanding 2,900 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to the authoritative OpenNet Initiative <http://opennet.net/research/ profiles/iran>.

So is the number of Iranian weblogs. In 2005, the online Blog Herald estimated that some 700,000 Farsi-language "blogs" existed worldwide, with between 40,000 and 110,000 active blogs within the Islamic Republic itself. Today – bolstered by popular discontent over Iran's internal economic situation and fears of the consequences of the regime's nuclear quest – that number is undoubtedly higher.

Iran's regime has reason to worry. With its growing scope and reach, the Iranian "blogosphere" can give the international community a unique window into the nature of the Islamic Republic, a damning chronicle of its repressive human rights practices, and – perhaps most importantly – insights into its intrinsic social, economic and political vulnerabilities.

[Original link]

A local Vancouver blog has covered the on-going stories of Bill Simpson and Rachel Davis for well over a year, stories of official abuse of human rights that would have the average fair-minded person in a fit of outrage had the media continued to look into this official abuse of citizens and their rights. No, it's not Iranian in its intensity. It is the face of the future for Canadians, though. One person at a time hounded and banned from public facilities, set upon by City lawyers, pushed and bullied by the state in the name of conformity to the Left agenda of general infantalistion. We can't fight every battle. We can support some, though, and we can do perhaps as much as a lot by supporting the struggle for democracy at the local level by adding our voices to the growing crowd condemning the City of Vancouver's campaign of abuse against Bill Simpson and Rachel Davis. Next it could be me. But it could be you. Or it could be the whole nation under a pall of fear, one just short of Iranian.

Every story is local at some point. We don't have to go to Iran to find ours.

Shadow over Columbia

"This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking."
___Lionel Trilling

What a depressing, dispiriting fiasco it has been, to have seen the shadow of evil pass through columbia university not only unscathed, but enlarged, this past week.

The iranian president was able to advance his agenda, Dean Bollinger; do you think you were somehow able to advance yours..?
The most distressing part for me: students actually applauding ahmadinejad's "lecture"...

Normally I'm a pretty optimistic guy, prone to looking for the seed of good in things, but I confess that I have been absolutely demoralized by this whole visit and its aftermath. It's hard to find any silver lining this time, with this story.
It feels like bad news all the way, top to bottom. A clear sign of the coming of the end, not far down the road.

To in order to keep the light of one's faith burning even when it becomes drenched by overwhelming darkness, it's important to constantly act on that faith, lest the delicate flame be extinguished from lack of attention. Therefore, looking for something, anything, any one thing that I could do to keep faith in the likely preservation of the values of western civilization, I channelled my despair to productive ends, hopefully, by giving my outrage shape and form through this video.

Thank God that once I started doing this one thing, it became possible again to continue to keep faith in our ability to survive the shadow of evil creeping upon us... like rising from one's bed on the mornings we've been denied a good night's sleep. On such occasions we blearily, mechanically think of little, immediate tasks; turning off the alarm, sitting up, turning on the light... from there it is easier to imagine being at work and facing the day's labors ahead.

Today, for me, the darkness of cynicism is vanquished temporarily, pushed back for one more day. As with the west's larger conflict with the nihilist evils against which it finds itself engaged in battle, we can at least bring ourselves to imagine pushing defeat away, for a time, even if we can't quite imagine victory.

That's a start.