Wrong War?

The following is an excerpt from an August 31 article in ChronWatch By Raymond Kraft:

"Terror" is merely a tactic, and "terrorism" a strategic philosophy - it is not the driving force. It is the tool, not the carpenter. It is the hammer, not the man who swings the hammer. We cannot win a war against the hammer without winning a war against the man who swings the hammer. But to do this, we must know him, we must recognize him, we must see him for who and what he is, we must name him, and then we must make war against him, Islamic Nazism, and not merely against the hammer, the tool, the acts of terror, the acts of the man who swings the hammer. To win, you must know your enemy for what he is, not for what we wish him to be. And no euphemism of "Islamo-Fascism" can make the Islamic Resistance Movement, the Wahhabist Jihad, anything but the resurgence and re-emergence of Nazism ideologically married to puritanical Islam. Islamic Nazism.

We do not quite want to see what confronts us, not even in the spotlight of Muhammed's words:

"And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with Allah wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush; but if they convert and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for Allah is Gracious, Merciful."
- Koran 9:5

"Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in Allah, or in the last day, and who forbid not that which Allah and his Apostles have forbidden, and who profess not the profession of the truth (Islam), until they pay tribute out of hand, and they be humbled. The Jews say, Ezra is a son of God; and the Christians say, The Messiah is a son of God. Such are the sayings in their mouths! They resemble the saying of the Infidels of old! Allah do battle with them! How are they misguided!"
- Koran 9:29

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Kraft continues:

I am getting some liberal response to my [above excerpted] article at ChronWatch about Islamic Nazism - and some of these people give drivel a bad name. The intellectual vacuity is truly amazing. One of the defining attributes of the Liberal mind, it seems to me, [in addition to engaging in ad hominem arguments] is the inability to differentiate between one's personal, internal (emotional) state, or reality, and external, impersonal, objective reality - the Liberal mind merges the two and attributes its "internal reality" to external things. It is unable to distinguish between "how things are" and "how I feel about things."

Strong is Wrong?

Dave Runyan 9 04 06

How did Israel go from being the plucky underdog kid that most in the US and Europe admired, to a country so widely (if inaccurately) reviled as an oppressor and the source of all that is wrong in the Middle East?

The answer I think is the belief system at the heart of “leftism”. The core of this belief system is that people (and countries) are innately evil, and if given the opportunity they will oppress anyone weaker than they.

This explains the infatuation of leftists with both the weak (e.g. Arabs), and internationalism (e.g. the UN) as a means of controlling and weakening the power of the strong (e.g. the US, UK, Microsoft…).

So by surviving the assaults of its neighbors for 50 years, and (horrors) prospering far beyond any of them while doing so, Israel has become in the Middle East what the US has become in the world at large… a blazing beacon refuting the core leftist value that to be strong is to be evil, simply by virtue of having achieved strength.

In the leftist mind, strength can never be achieved honorably: strength can only come from having oppressed the weak, who are by definition noble, even if they be bloodthirsty.

So, the next time you see the US pilloried about human rights by some murdering autocrat who chairs a UN “rights” committee, or hear a US politician of the Democratic persuasion screech about “fascism” in the US and the government “chilling” free speech, or hear the only democracy in the Middle East (except for Iraq) accused of aggression for defending itself against rocket attacks; and you wonder just what the hell is going on… just remember the simple credo of the liberal left: “Strong is Wrong”.

For the left it trumps all logic, as it must, least their whole belief system be shown for what it truly is – a gaily colored piñata that contains no sweets, only a poisonous misanthropy.

ht/ American Thinker

Game's Over Man!! Plame that is

This just in from from the Washington Post

"It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent [sic] Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband. [Fancy that]

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor [in which thePost engaged] that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago. [Everyone, including the prosecutor knew it!]

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people [and media pirhanas such as the Post] took him seriously.

I wonder how the civil suit filed against the White House by Wilson and Plame is going. Just curious. If Bush does not pardon Libby in spite of the uproar that will be raised by the Dimmocrats, he is more of a wimp than I already believe him to be. Remember all those Clinton pardons of crooks during the last days of his administration?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A Racialist Boondoggle

The following is an article published in The American Thinker:

By Thomas Lifson 8 30 06

The University of California, which has been raising tuition at an extraordinary pace for years, is throwing millions of dollars a year at a racialist boondoggle. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross report the creation of a new post:

...vice chancellor for equity and inclusion—a job that not only has an impressive title, but an equally impressive salary of between $182,000 and $282,000 a year.

Plus an office budget in excess of $4 million.

The mission is:

The goal isn’t so much to recruit more minorities but rather to ensure students, faculty and staff are “fully respected for their individuality and what they represent,” [UC Berkeley Chancellor] Birgeneau said.

Birgeneau said the aim is “to prize our diversity and learn from it and to appreciate people for being part of the whole but also for what they as individuals bring to Berkeley.” [....]

... “we decided we needed to create a new organizational structure which will look at issues of equity and inclusion holistically—that is, not just students, not just staff and not just faculty, but all, all together.”

This is startlingly illiterate, even incoherent. Translation: propaganda pap, thought control diversity training, hectoring, and thumb-on-the-scale preferences in hiring and promotion. And the effort is slated to grow:

The total $4.5 million budgeted for the new vice chancellor’s office might just be the start because, according to spokeswoman Janet Gilmore, the university “hopes to increase substantially the funding available to further equity and inclusion initiatives through fundraising.”

The whole edifice rests on doublespeak because the aim is to help certain groups at the expense of other groups. And nobody can tell the truth about it because it is both unpalatable and premised on a false picture of California’s and UC’s population [as well as illegal].

There is no majority population in California. Whites are a plurality, but they are under half of the population. So the euphemism “underrepresented minority” is employed. Falsely. You see, because Asian-heritage students excel at academics, they now outnumber whites at the top UC campuses. Caucasians account for a substantially smaller share of UC enrollment at the elite campuses than their share of the California population.

That means that whites are by definition an underrepresented minority! But you will never see UC including whites in the various schemes to benefit groups on the basis of race. Nor will they admit that the net effect of their efforts at racial engineering, should they succeed, would be to penalize hard-studying members of a racial minority.

California voters passed an initiative banning the state from preferences based on race. So the bureaucrats are forced to resort to nonsense language and stealth to implement their agenda. In the process, they damage the university, penalize those who work hardest to achieve, and waste time and [tax] money.

"...respected for their individuality..." At Berkeley? A true oxymoron.


ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The Pacifist/Leftist mindset

The following post and graphic on the left was shamelesly stolen from a post by Rocco DiPippo at: THE AUTONOMIST because it ilustrates perfectly the mindset of many of todays collectivist/leftists. Read it and rage. http://antiprotester.blogspot.com/2006/08/russell-shaw-wishes-for-second-911.html

A blogger for the leftwing Huffington Post wishes for another 911 in order to 'save' American lives.

Russell Shaw, a self-described pacifist, states:



"I am not proud of myself for even considering the notion that another
terror attack that costs even one American life could ever be considered
anything else but evil and hurtful. And I know that when I weigh the possibility
that such an attack- that might, say, kill 100- would prevent hundreds of
thousands of Americans from dying who otherwise would- I am exhibiting a
calculating cold heart diametrically opposed to everything I stand for as a
human being. A human being, who, just so you know, is opposed to most wars and
to capital punishment.

But in light of the very real potential of the next two American elections
to solidify our growing American persona as a warlike, polluter-friendly nation
with repressive domestic tendencies and inadequate health care for so many tens
of millions, let me ask you this. Even if only from the standpoint of a purely
intellectual exercise in alternative future history:

If you knew us getting hit again would launch a chain of transformative,
cascading events that would enable a better nation where millions who would have
died will live longer, would such a calculus have any moral validity?"



The fact that Shaw tries so very hard to elicit a 'yes' answer to that question shows exactly where his sentiments lie. I won't waste copious words explaining why Russell Shaw expresses his warped sentiments; ones that many of his 'peace-loving' leftist colleagues no doubt share.

In a nutshell, he is just another garden-variety, leftist hack suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). As such, he routinely ignores reality and facts, in this case a fact that destroys his own logic: Under the Bush presidency that Shaw obviously hates, life expectancy in the U.S. continues to increase. That is in spite of the loss of life Shaw imagines has been caused by Republican policies.

So logically, as far as saving American lives go, there is no need for Mr. Shaw to even suggest such a trade-off. On the other hand, to BDS sufferers like himself, the mass murder of American citizens might be considered a small price to pay to destroy George W. Bush and end Republican control of Congress and the White House.

And Pigs will Fly!

By Andrew Bostom:

Given the enduring and ignoble historical legacy of conversion to Islam at sword-point it remains to be seen whether contemporary Muslim religious authorities—particularly those within Palestinian society, and affiliated with Hamas or Fatah—will condemn publicly the forced conversions of the kidnapped Fox reporters Centanni and Wiig.

Moreover, will they be joined by a chorus of authoritative voices representing the entire Muslim clerical hierarchy—Sunni and Shi’ite alike—from Mecca and Cairo, Qom and Najaf, to the Muslim advocacy groups in the West (such as CAIR in the United States, and the Muslim Council of Britain in England)—unanimous in their condemnation of this hideous practice, and formalized by a fatwa stating as much?

These groups can and should be judged according to their reaction to this hideous practice. When they have a mind to do so, they are able to speak quite loudly and command media attention.

Will such Muslim authorities at least recognize the acute predicament of Centanni and Wiig by issuing a fatwa stating that their “conversion”, being under duress, was not bona fide, condemning in advance any Muslim who might now attack these journalists for “apostasy” from Islam?

More

Don't hold your breath.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

"Aufwiedersehen, liebshen"

Between 1981 and 1991 Leonidas spent considerable time sailing in the vicinity of Puerto Rico and occasionally hid from hurricanes in the lagoons of Isla Vieques. He observed the mindset of these jerks at work and is pleased with the outcome.

By Dick McDonald
Do you remember when Puerto Rico was raising heck about the US Navy using that nothing little island just off the coast of Puerto Rico for bombing practices, which they had used for the past 75 years?

Demonstrations were held, Hollywood left wingers, Al Sharpton, and his fellow demagogues went down there to demonstrate to get the Navy out? I am sure it infuriated you just as it did me at the time. Well, here is our revenge.

Always be careful what you ask for, you just may get it!

One of the many headaches that the U. S. has had was the Puerto Rican Island of Vieques. In the waning years of the Clinton Administration, Protesters demanded that the US Navy abandon bombing and naval gun fire exercises that had taken place on the largely uninhabited island for nearly seventy years. Liberal icons bumped into one another to fly to Puerto Rico, boat over to the island, trespass (but never on a day that there was an exercise scheduled) and get arrested for the benefit of the New York Times or Newsweek. They included the Reverend Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Edward Olmos, Michael Moore and Ramsey Clark, just to name a few.

In 2002, the bombing exercises were transferred to an Air Force bombing range in central Florida, not far from the Jacksonville and Pensacola Naval Air Stations. In January, many of the protesters were back in Puerto Rico, celebrating the final bombing exercise on Vieques and waved Puerto Rican flags and placards that read

"U.S. Navy, get out of Puerto Rico."

The following February, Rumsfeld announced that the U.S. Navy will close the Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station in Puerto Rico in 2004, eliminating 1200 civilian jobs as well as 700 military positions. This naval facility is estimated to have put nearly $300 million annually into the local economy.

The next day a stunned [Socialist] Governor Sila Calderon, held a news conference in San Juan, protesting the base closure as a serious blow to the Commonwealth's fragile economy. The governor stated that "The people of Puerto Rico don't now or never did have an interest in closing the Vieques bombing range or the Roosevelt Roads naval base. We are interested in both staying in Puerto Rico."

When asked, the Commander-in Chief, Western Atlantic Command, said,"Without Vieques, I see no further need for the facility at Roosevelt Roads. None."

So, Yankee go home? Fine. But we'll take our dollars with us. Hasta la vista, baby!

On February 21, the Secretary of Defense also announced that starting this year, the U.S. European Command would begin moving most if not all of its active combat and support units from bases in Germany to others being established in Poland, The Czech Republic, Hungary and Turkey to "better position them for rapid deployment to likely hot spots in those parts of the world."

Immediately the business and government leaders in the German states of Hesse, Rhineland and Wurttemburg, protested the loss of nearly $6 billion in revenue each year from the bases and manpower to be displaced.. A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry speculated that the move may be "what the Americans call 'payback' for the actions of this government in opposing Military action in Iraq".

" Does anyone know the German translation for: "Hasta la vista, baby?"
I think "Aufwiedersehen, liebshen" is a good translation.

Oh, ain't it nice to see a government with guts and a good memory.

Next stop South Korea?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Environazis and other Collectivists

Where the old leftists still believe in the virtues of a centrally planned economy and the evils of capitalism, the green utopian leftists consist mainly of people who have developed a vague vision of an anarcho-agrarian society. Leftists originally joined the greens (environmentalists) with the intention of using them in the fight against capitalism. (there is an ongoing dispute as to who joined whom) But a funny thing happened to many of these cultists on the way to their socialist revolution: their anti-capitalism was transformed into an anti-industrial ethic. They abandoned their visions of a workers’ state to embrace the fantasy of a green Elysium that only the elect can enter. These people could also easily be classified as Luddites.

This is why they had no difficulty in deserting the materialism of Marx for Rousseau’s fantasy of the “Noble Savage”. None of this is really surprising. Their utopianism is obvious to any informed observer. Incredible as it seems and despite all the evidence to the contrary, these dangerous clowns actually believe that profit driven economic growth (is there any other kind?) creates mass unemployment and wholesale destruction of the environment.

What is really striking, however, is the resemblance of the green movement to revolutionary millenarianism — with one crucial difference: the top echelon of the green movement consists largely of intellectuals, the spoiled and selfish offspring of an affluent and indulgent capitalist society. In one subtle ideological move, “the dictatorship of the proletariat” has been transformed into the dictatorship of the lumpenintelligentsia.

Bush Kicks Pluto Out of Solar System

Bush’s big astronomy buddies announced this week that Pluto’s planetary status has been officially revoked, and it is no longer welcome in the solar system. Such is the price of dissent in this day and age.

On the bright side, three “dwarf planets” have been admitted into our celestial community – three new additions to Bush’s Galactic Coalition of the Coerced and the Bribed. One can only wonder what kind of deal he struck with all those poor, naive little dwarves. No doubt it involves stealing their oil.

However, I can’t help but question the timing of the whole thing. It’s just a little too coincidental that three whole planets appear out of their cosmic deep freeze now, simultaneously, without any sort of advance warning, and so close to the November elections.

I’m no astronomy expert. The planetarium at Berkeley was closed in violation of local indecency laws, and at Evergreen they simply fed us mushrooms and told us to write down what we saw. But I know enough about the subject to state with 99.9% certainty that heavenly bodies do not just materialize out of thin air for no reason, at least not for an Evangelical peeResident who favors superstition over science. With Bush conveniently off on another one of his alibi-establishing fishing trips, I doubt we’ll be getting any real answers either from him or the dwarves any time soon.

source:

Why Academia Hates the West

The Austrian economist Schumpeter [writing over 60 years ago] and others have argued that the very success of capitalism will be its downfall. It will, because of the creation of more and more colleges and universities, produce an expanding pool of disaffected intellectuals. Now there have always been disaffected intellectuals. some of whom were quite brilliant and made great contributions to the development of free societies. I would dread to think where we would be today without such people. But these people were not the product of a mass education system.

What Schumpeter and other observers meant is that as society became progressively wealthier the demand for ‘education’ would grow. It would be demanded as a right. As higher education became a mass system there would be a proliferation of what we call "Mickey Mouse" subjects in the humanities and social sciences to satisfy the increased demand. Examples would include almost any course with the word "studies" as a suffix.

Many of the maleducated graduates of these degraded subjects would have developed expectations that simply cannot not be met. Further, in the course of their studies they would have come under the influence of teachers and lecturers who would be imbued with the anti-capitalist ethic and a hatred of Western civilization, even if it meant allying themselves with Islamofascists.

Thus, when they graduate they find that their ideology and ‘education’ has made them superfluous to the cultural, intellectual and economic needs of the progressive economy that nurtured them. Having been made psychologically unfit for physical work, and painfully aware of their own intellectual inadequacies, they will become progressively alienated.

In short, they won’t feel needed. But what they mean by needed, however, is being put into positions in which they can exercise power and influence over others. The kind of positions that only a Soviet-style state could provide. It really is no accident that they strongly support interventionism and totalitarian states.

Having been denied what is theirs by right and so left feeling rejected an emotional vacuum has emerged. To them any society that does not need them (in the way they think they should be needed) is unjust. callous, materialistic, racist, etc. Schumpeter expressed it superbly in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

Gerard Jackson

A Domestic Commercial Flight?

This is the main reason ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ will drive his truck across country rather than submit to the "booking" procedure of todays commercial airline flight.

"Continental Airlines, Business Class. "For your comfort and safety we ask that all passengers remain manacled for the entire trip, with sacks over their heads. Thank you for choosing Continental."

HT chasemeladies.blogspot.com

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ will again fly commercial airlines when he is allowed to carry his self/family defense system ( .357 mag smith & wesson mod. 66).

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!!

Pain at the Pump II

Washington Times picked up this Jeff Leonard AP piece on Trilby Lundberg publisher of the authoritative Lundberg survey of national gasoline prices. Refreshingly for the AP, this story is a straight profile on Ms. Lundberg that reveals some important insights from the “gas guru” as Leonard dubs her.

She condemns the “overzealous meddling” of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, and said government-mandated reformulation of unleaded gas and engine modifications aimed at curtailing emissions are more to blame for gas price increases than the worldwide Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Well, this sure doesn’t fit the template. And she opines on global warming: “global warming is a “boogeyman for political opportunism.” Those who promote the theory are trying to create a power base and “believe global warming is a reason to hike taxes and hike prices”

Al Gore call your publicity agency (the AP) this doesn’t comport to well with your big summer media blitz. There’s only one problem Trilby Lundberg has more credibility in left her thumbnail than Al Gore. Her views are widely anticpated every time she reports.

Chris Alleva 8 22 06

Refugee or Spy?

By Amir Kidon

An unusual sight was seen a few days ago, with the exit of Paratrooper Brigade forces from Lebanon: one of the brigade reserve soldiers was carrying, along with all his heavy equipment and weapon, a white kitten. "On the way back to Israeli territory we passed through the village of Kauzer," said the soldier, "and all of a sudden I saw a kitten coming out of one of the houses. After a few seconds I realized it is wounded and that its hearing has been hurt. I picked it up and carried it for six kilometers, until we reached Israeli territory. I decided it deserves a better future. After all, it is not its fault that war broke out." The first thing the cat and its new owner did after having crossed the border into Israeli territory was to share IDF military canned meat. The cat was named Kauzer by its new owner.

ht: rantburg

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

By Doug Hanson 08-20-06

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, citizens of New Orleans had their firearms unlawfully confiscated under orders from former New Orleans Police Chief Eddie Compass. So during a time when the means of self-defense were most needed, the Second Amendment rights of the city’s law-abiding residents were swept away based on a gross misinterpretation of a suspect state emergency powers law.

After hearing about the illegal gun confiscations, the National Rifle Association (NRA) filed suit in federal court and obtained a preliminary injunction that stopped the gun seizure. Not only did New Orleans ignore the court ruling, it also claimed that the gun confiscations never occurred! The NRA then filed a motion for contempt that additionally ordered the return of all seized firearms.

Finally last Wednesday, in what was seen as as a “landmark victory for NRA and law-abiding gun owners,” Judge Carl J. Barbier of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana turned down a motion for dismissal by the City of New Orleans and held that,

…the Second Amendment applies to law-abiding residents in the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.

Why the judge had to rule on this most basic of Constitutional rights was because the City of New Orleans attempted to justify the unjust seizure by claiming that the Second Amendment does not apply to residents in the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans! This should take care of any doubts about the true agenda of leftist functionaries and what would be in store for US citizens if they ever returned to power in our nation’s capital.

But the battle isn’t over in Louisiana. After denying for months that the city had ever confiscated any weapons, in March of this year, Mayor Nagin and the police department admitted in federal court that the firearms were stashed in two trailers. After agreeing to a process where the citizens could reclaim their firearms, the NOPD,

"…never notified gun owners how to claim their guns, and turned many away citing impossible standards for proof of ownership."

This sad state of affairs will possibly lead to more inquiries about the entire conduct of the NOPD, including accountability of the illegally confiscated guns. The Mayor’s defiance about returning these weapons leads to suspicions that a significant percentage of them are missing or stolen – probably at about the same rate that saw a number of “no-shows” of police officers in the critical days after the hurricane hit.

The suit must now proceed in a timely fashion since it appears that the chances of successfully reclaiming these firearms dwindle with each passing day.

source

Will there be a Turnaround?

In the Israel Hezbollah war where a Patton was needed, Israel got an incompetent Halutz and a bumbling Olmert.

"War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours...I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!.." George S. Patton Jr.

The Post-modern, Western way of war prides itself, not on victory, but on minimizing casualties. Israel strove so hard to limit civilian casualties (getting of course no credit from the world's Jew haters) that it neglected to defeat its enemies. Instead it expended much effort explaining why victory was unachievable. Recall this: our enemies killed 3000 American civilians in one day--and celebrated-- while we search for every opportunity to flagellate ourselves over the deaths of one enemy prisoner. Israel is at war for weeks and kills less than a thousand and diplomats cry halt. The most damaging fallout from Israel's delicate, politically correct prosecution of the war, is that the surrounding jackals, having drawn blood, will seek a second holocaust soon with renewed vigor.
America is deeply infected with the same disease of political correctness. We too have forgotten how to wage war and too many of our Generals seem to have spent more time learning the arts of diplomacy than the art of war.

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A Perverse Logic?

The greenies, environazis and other collectivists who wish to add to government powers are forever trotting out charts, graphs and Hollywood extraganzas to support their positions and solicit grant dollars from our rulers in Washington, so let's have some fun with letters:

everyone knows that hurricanes and tropical storms get tagged with names that progress through the alphabet each season.

Well, in Just 9 days, we will come to the one year anniversary of the emergence of hurricane “Katrina” from the mere tropical storm Katrina. That’s Katrina with a “K”, the 11th letter of the alphabet, thus the 11th hurricane of 2005.

So has this year’s K-storm, named “Kirk” shown up for the party yet? No, and neither have Joyce, Isaac, Helene, Gordon, Florence, Ernesto, or Debby. Do you suppose it was something we said?

Tropical storms Alberto, Beryl, and Chris did briefly show up, but they drank of the intoxicatingly warm tropical waters in moderation, and went home early, and soberly, without becoming hurricanes and doing the knocking-over-the-punchbowl things that hurricanes tend to do.

Bottom line: the number of named storms so far this year, three. Last year at roughly this time, 11.

In 2005 we had 15 hurricanes, and 7 of those were major. This year the latest (revised down twice now) prediction is: 7 hurricanes, 3 of those major. Looks like we are losing 50% of our hurricanes per year! If we started out with 15 in 2005, we will have our last hurricane ever during the season which ends in, …wait for it – December, 2009! Holy cow!!

Paging Al Gore! Al Gore, call your office immediately … and get me re-write!

read more

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Pocketbook Jihad

The world media has ready access to figures that indicate that perhaps more than a third of Hezbollah's fighters died in the recent conflict with Israel. Why does the world's media refuse to provide this information, while focusing almost exclusively on Lebanese civilian casualties?

In a word, "Business."

read more | digg story

Afghanistan was and Lebanon is

By Mark Steyn

Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They've got bigger fish to fry. If you're interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The "sovereign" state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

That's the issue: Pan-Islamism is the profound challenge to conventional ideas of citizenship and nationhood. Of course, if you say that at the average Ivy League college, you'll get a big shrug: Modern multicultural man disdains to be bound by the nation state, too; he prides himself on being un citoyen du monde [a citizen of the world]. The difference is that, for Western do-gooders, e.g. leftists, it's mostly a pose: They may occasionally swing by some Third World basket-case and condescend to the natives, but for the most part the multiculti set have no wish to live anywhere but an advanced Western democracy. It's a quintessential piece of leftie humbug. They may think globally, but they don't act on it.

Pain at the Pump?

We are all impacted by the recent as well as long term increases in the cost of energy as it affects the costs of transportation of all the products we need. The recent spikes in prices of oil and related products are often blamed on "gouging" (by privately owned corporations) which is a favorite term used by politicians and others who are ignorant of economic realities. What the leftist politicians do not want you to know is that the major contributors to this situation are the environmentalists and their puppets in the federal and state governments as well as the thugs in charge of many third world countries.

EXXON MOBIL is the world's most valuable listed private company, with a market capitalisation of $412 billion. But if you compare oil companies by how much they have left in the ground, the American giant ranks a lowly fourteenth (much of this reserve capacity is controlled by so called "democratic" governments held hostage by environmentalists who preclude exploration , production and refining). All 13 of the oil firms that outshadow it are national oil companies (NOCs): partially or wholly state-owned firms through which governments retain the profits from oil production.

One result of government ownership of oil supplies, is that they manage oil fields as well as production, refining and distribution less efficiently than privately owned firms, resulting in less oil for everyone. The national oil companies are not really investing and developing oil fields, they are using the energy reserves as political assets to maintain political power and line the pockets of despots around the globe.

There are roughly 60 national oil companies worldwide. Nearly half of them own reserves outside their home country, or hold ambitions to do so.

Our friends the Cuban communists are on the verge of developing oil production in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits which are off limits to U.S. companies due to laws enacted at the insistance of the Sierra Club and other environmental lobbies. By the way, the current price of gasoline in our friend Hugo Chavez's Venezuela is $.12/gallon. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has purchased diesel fuel there for $.06/gallon.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Israel: Meet your Jimmy Clinton

During most of 1979 and 1980 ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ was cruising in Spanish speaking Mexico and Central America. The Iranian hostage crisis was often a subject brought up in conversation with our hosts in Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras. Invariably those who spoke to us on the subject were astonished at the lack of "huevos" demonstrated by the Carter Administration. The world is now reaping the results of that pusillanimous behavior. The following article illustrates the point precisely.

By Steven Sanders 8 12 06

Here in the U.S. we’ve had our share of questionable leaders from time-to-time. They arise, do their work, and then hopefully go away without causing too much long-term damage. In a country such as ours, the effects are usually minimal on a long-term scale.

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to face the threat of Islamo-Fascism. He became the first U.S. leader to confront a radical Muslin regime, in Iran. His answer? Weakness. Don’t threaten, negotiate, slowly increase the pressure. Did it work with Iran? Hardly. We were seen as weak and incompetent in the region. The hostages being released only after Ronald Regan took office.

William Jefferson Clinton stood down no less than seven direct attacks by Islamo-Fascists on our strategic national interests and Country, killing numerous Americans. His answer: slow, deliberate, incremental action, sponsored by the U.N., which only emboldened and elevated the terrorists leaders. Cruise missiles against Bin-Laden, retreat in Somalia. Withdrawal and caution, the hallmarks of his term. The result? Empowerment. Al-Quaeda remained in-place, stronger than ever. Bin-Laden a hero.

Enter Ehud Olmert, an IDF journalist and a lawyer, a career politician. A man who finds himself as the prime minister of Israel at crucial point for the country. Ascending to power through the unfortunate ailment of Ariel Sharon. Hezbollah challenges him by capturing 2 IDF soldiers and killing several others. His reaction: caution, air power, limited ground invasion. The result: a U.N. cease-fire, Hezbollah remains, U.N. troops return, status quo. A tie.

A “Tie” is okay for the U.S. in the big picture world of global politics. After all, we’re separated by oceans. For Israel in the Middle-East, a tie carries a harsher price. It smells of weakness and invites further aggression.

I pray for the 10-13 year old Israeli children who will one day soon have to fight another war against Hezbollah; a war brought to you courtesy of “Jimmy-Clinton politics” and Olmert’s “tie”.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Sorry

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has been forced to reactivate the word recognition function for comments due to the influx of spam.
Our apologies.


ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Made It!!!

Well folks your wait is over. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ has made it back from a 4000+ mile drive to Kalifornia for some skin cancer repair. Having made just under a dozen trans continental trips over the past 26 years (including 3 on a motorcycle) I have noted many changes to our fair land. The area of my youth has become seedier and more crowded which is understandable as the ideal climate (weather wise) has attracted a host of jerks who are now in control of the state.
I sometimes wonder if the fuel retailer signs advertising a discount for cash payment are having any takers. Who carries a bushel basket of banknotes along on such a journey? Thank the environazis who have insisted that absolutely NO additional oil will be produced or refined in these united soviets.
ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ only stopped a total of 3 times for fuel as "Nessie" the Ford F250 4x4 pickup has a 90 gallon transfer tank in the rear for (taxed?) diesel fuel. Petroleum bulk plants are a good place to buy fuel at sometimes $1.00/gal under the retail outlets.
The interstate highway system is losing its battle with the welfare and munitions sectors for maintenance $$$. As a result , at any given time about 2 miles in 10 are "under construction" and most of the rest contain bone jarring holes, dips and cracks. The worst (and they used to be the best) highways are in the Kalifornia soviet and the Kalifornia Highway Gestapo are hard at work doing what they can to generate cash flow for the various soviets (municipal and state) utilizing the 5lb vehicle "code". The trucking industry is the main target in this strategy and the consumers are blissfully ignorant that the extorted $ are passed along to them in increased transportation costs.
It will be a few days before ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is up to speed enough to comment on the current sociopolitical scene, so please bear with him. In the meantime a bit of unsolicited advice: Never utilize a mode of transportation that precludes your possession of an "asshole" equalizer. Preferably in the range of cal .357.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

I'll be Baaack!

Dear reader,
ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is departing on a business trip to the People's Republic of KKKalifornia in his trusty 4X4 truck and will thus not be providing his pearls of wisdom for about 10 days.
In the meantime you are invited to enjoy the gems of the following sites:

http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/
http://rantburg.com/
http://dickmcdonald.blogspot.com/
http://www.doctor-horsefeathers.com/
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/
http://americanthinker.com/index.php

Those sites should stir up thought for libertarian conservatives and piss off the progressives.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Ongoing Homicide

By James Lewis

The New York Times has announced that the entire world is outraged at Israel’s behavior in bombing Qana. So it must be true. Or is it?

Nothing is more heartrending than the suffering of children. Emotionally we all want to put the blame on the bombs, the bombers, and those who ordered the bombing. And yet that is obviously a twisted perversion of reality. Because it is the explicit policy of Islamist terror groups to hide behind children, shooting missiles at Israeli civilians all the time. The gains to the terrorists are enormous. Israelis inevitably feel guilty about the unwanted casualties, but they don’t know what else to do in the face of constant attacks on their own children at home. The Muslim masses are predictably outraged because they only hear one side of the story. And the Leftist media continue to lie—- there is no other word for it—- about who is choosing to expose children to danger.

So the seeds are planted from the beginning. The BBC and the New York Times have labeled the black hats and the white hats for years and years. We are seeing just another replay of Leftist propaganda since Stalin—- who was the innocent victim of Western aggression until decades after his death, when a few old Lefties sheepishly admitted his crimes. Communism killed some 100 million innocents in the 20th century, according to the authoritative Black Book of Communism (Livre Noire du Communism in the original French).

And yet, the most famous intellectuals of the 20th century served this murderous ideology. We are simply seeing a repeat today, with the usual suspects on the Left siding with Islamic fascism just as they took sides with the Leftist fascism of Stalin and Mao.

The Qana story is just a replay of Abu Ghraib, the myth that Saddam had no WMDs, the Wilson-Plame bedroom farce, and on and on. It has just become a kind of reflex of the Left: Israel and the United States are always wrong. Everything is set up for the same mendacious narrative.

Hezbollah killed the children of Qana, just as it killed the children of Haifa. Hezbollah is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow criminals of the mullahcracy in Tehran, who created the Hezbo monster with malice aforethought to “wipe Israel off the map.” There’s no mystery here. They are dead serious about a second genocide against the Jews of Israel. There has never been any effort to lie about it on the part of the Khomeini cult in Tehran. So we know who is responsible.

And yet, the “progressive” media always blame the good guys. There is something twisted and perverse about the media narrative, some sense of delight in enabling the overt malice of the Islamofascists. Because the media know. They know what’s going on. They are just playing dumb, trying to turn their easily-led audiences against those they hate the most. The media take an almost sexual delight in facilitating the murderous malice of Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad. In the calculus of moral responsibility, the New York Times and its ilk must therefore be held to blame in equal measure with the aggressor. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is their working slogan, and it is hard to evade the thought that the biggest “journalists” and editors have learned to enjoy that game, that sense of importance, that arrogation of power. They are co-conspirators in the slaughter of innocents.

The "Progressive" media will now tell us who won in Lebanon. They know, because they make the rules. When they announce that Israel lost, a frisson of delight will shiver the Left around the world. Muslims will hand out candy in the streets. And the world will become much more dangerous.

Yet our permanent Ruling Class will cling to its power, sneering at time-serving politicians with undisguised contempt. When George Bush and Condi Rice are history, Pinch Sulzberger and the BBC think they will still be there, exercising their monopoly on permissible thinking in the world.

Yet everybody knows that if Hezbollah did not exist there would be a solid peace between Israel and Lebanon, just as there is between Israel and Jordan. Both countries would thrive on peace, just as both are suffering today.

There are only two obstacles to a true and lasting peace: Tehran and the worldwide Left. Both must be defeated, if children on all sides are to live and thrive, and enjoy normal lives in the Middle East.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Another Glorious Victory!

The "progressives " of the left excoriate Israel constantly for its "brutality," complaining that Israel kills civilians. Yes, Israel kills civilians. So does every country that engages in military action. Like all civilized (i.e. "non-Muslim") nations, and to a greater degree than most, Israel strives to avoid civilian casualties, but they still happen. As a result of Muslim provocation, of course. Few will point that out.

Muslims, on the other hand, target civilians deliberately. The USUAL goal of armed Muslims is to kill civilians. Partly because they're barbarians, and partly because they generally lack the guts to take on soldiers.

Now another mighty Muslim warrior--an American citizen--has reminded us how brave and moral Muslims are, and how loyal Muslim citizens are, by breaking into a Jewish community center and shooting six women, one of them pregnant. Way to go, Muslim Avenger. I'll bet Allah is really impressed. Maybe next time you could break into a maternity ward and shoot Jewish babies. By Muslim standards, that would be a major military victory.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A Patrick Henry Moment

The problem today as it has been in all civilized societies is the deathly fear of conflict and war. This fear drives all men to cower in their own shadow and tolerate just about any concession to avoid conflict. Technology has brought those fears home to many. On nightly TV we are treated to graphic displays of the results of physical war. Unfortunately those pictures don’t tell the real story. As in all previous wars, their genesis is in the minds of men. Men start wars for as many reasons as can be imagined. Islam wants to fight a war to conquer the world for Islam. The Imams make it mandatory as dogma that a young Muslim will only be saved fighting to install Islam throughout the world. The Imams resort to the supernatural “Allah” as their authority and the idiots of the free world think they can talk the Muslims into secularism. Muslims don’t want no stinking secularism, they want a caliphate and no amount of talking will deter them.

So we find ourselves in August, 2006 teetering on a world gone mad with fear that the “Great Satan”, the United States of America, will not only tolerate but assist in killing the warriors of Hezbollah (The Army of god) . But fear is never a good reason for capitulation or surrender as your victorious opponent will visit upon you greater than that you feared. So in your mind if you have a scintilla of resolve, pray for the President of the United States to be courageous and cut the head off this poisonous snake right now. Waiting is what the Muslims pray for; don’t give them any help because they salivate at the thought of beheading you in the stadium no matter how long it takes.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A European Regret

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez
A Spanish Newspaper article on Judiasm

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly
discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20
million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture,
thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen
people, truly chosen, because they produced great
and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas
of life: science, art international trade, and above
all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we
burned.
And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we
wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of
the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million
Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance,
religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and
poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support
their families with pride.

They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into
the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the
government, they plan the murder and destruction of
their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture
for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill,
intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We
have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of
Europe and their talent for hoping for a better
future for their children, their determined clinging
to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death,
for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves
and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe

America would do well to learn from that mistake!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Perspective

On 1 July 1916, the opening day of the battle of the Somme, Total Allied casualties were 57,470, of which 19,240 were fatal. The battle lasted until November of that year with over 600,000 casualties on both sides. The 24/7 "news" outlets are suggesting that the 9 casualties sustained today by the IDF are "horrendous" and that Israel should agree to a "cease fire" to allow the "Army of God" (hezbollah) to resupply and reorganize. And these are not even the French!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Negotiate a Suicide?

To quote Hussein Massaw, (rest his soul in hell) the Hezbollah engineer of the suicide attack that killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers in Beirut in 1983: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." The muslim jihadists don't want to kill us because they have been deprived of freedom. They want to kill us because they believe their religion tells them that is what they are required to do. It is why they continue to try to kill us even when they live in very comfortable democratic circumstances such as Los Angeles and Detroit. Freedom is not a cure for what ails them.

Let us review a brief history of the "freedom fighters" of Hezbollah:

They perpetrated the 1983 bombings in Beirut that killed 241 US servicemen, 63 U.S. Embassy personnel and 58 French paratroopers. The 1984 torture-murder of CIA station chief in Lebanon William Buckley. The 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847 and the torture-murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem. The 1988 torture-murder of Col. William Higgins. The bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, killing 29, the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 96, and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 U.S. servicemen.

In spite of the nonsensical utterings of the U.N. secretary general and our own Dhimmicrat Senator Christopher Dodd, how is Israel supposed to "proportionally" respond to an enemy that hides missiles in houses that are inhabited by civilians? A war crime. And how is Israel supposed to "proportionally" respond to an enemy that volleys missiles laced with ball bearings against Israel’s civilian population? Again a war crime.

In fact just about everything Hezbollah and Hamas do is a war crime.

But few will say it is a war crime, and that Hezbollah and Hamas are war criminals.

The citizens of Lebanon are painfully learning the lessons of failing to form a sovereign state. Sovereignty requires that Lebanon maintain a monopoly on the use of force within its territory. By allowing Hezbollah to establish a terrorist state within its borders it has not done so; consequently, the claims of sovereignty ring hollow. There are really only two plausible explanations: either Lebanon is allowing Hezbollah’s attacks; in which case they’re a belligerent or they’re unable to stop Hezbollah in which case they’re not sovereign.

Any agreement entered into by Israel as a result of "negotiations" which allows the jihadists' military capabilities to survive is a suicide pact.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

End of the Nation State?

One of the most serious challenges to democracy in the 21st century is the unprecedented pressure from migration, and the fact that certain groups can decide to permanently change the entire demographic make-up of a country without public debate and without public consent, by simply refraining from upholding its borders. It has been called “the greatest demographic experiment ever forced onto a people politically.”

Even in the USA, the most astonishing aspect of the immigration debate is that the élites “think they can override the clear and huge resistance of the American people.” As columnist Tony Blankley wrote, the Senate was prepared to “legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public.” Eight out of ten Americans wanted the borders closed to millions of illegal immigrants, yet nothing substantial has been done. There has to be a reason for this.

There is also in the USA a dangerous drive for granting full rights, even voting rights, to illegal immigrants. In the Nordic countries — Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Denmark — foreign citizens, though not illegals, are allowed to vote in local elections. As Roger Scruton points out, Western civilization depends on an idea of citizenship that is not global at all, but rooted in territorial jurisdiction and national loyalty. A nation that refuses to differentiate between citizens and non-citizens cannot survive.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A Plan?

Over at Rantburg, ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ ran across a comment by an anonymous individual identified as "Poison Reverse" who presents a splendid plan for resolving the situation in Lebanon:

It is impossible to make an accurate map of Hezbollah zones. As long as Hezbollah actually holds parliamentary seats in the Lebanese government, it is impossible. Also, Hezbollah provides hospitals, daycare, plumbing, sewer services, water, electricity and other services to the Shiites. This is how Hezbollah establishes mind control over the Shiite population. Hezbollah is a cancer that must be destroyed completely. It can be done in three ways.

Unlike the Democrats, I have ideas:
One is do what Israel is doing right now. Completely destroy the military capability of Hezbollah within Lebanon and cut off re-supply.
Two, the surrounding Arab states and the EU must be allowed to immediately supply funds and rebuild the city in the Shiite community. In fact, the Arab states and the EU must be on stand by with reconstruction personnel and equipment. The Shiite people of Lebanon must be able to witness, now that the Hezbollah military capability is destroyed, help is on the way. The Lebanese army should be put in place to provide security. In order to re-train the mind set of regular Shiite population, basic services must be restored immediately. Use Halliburton with Arab employees, I don’t care.
Third, the Lebanese army must be put along the Syrian border, yes that’s right, I said Syrian border and NOT the Israeli border and inspect every Syrian truck that comes into Lebanon. Any trucks with weapons coming in Syria must be destroyed ASAP. If the Lebanese can’t handle it, then let Israel know where the truck is located. Jordan cooperates with Israel in this manner all the time.

In conclusion, There should be a massive influx of construction equipment brought in, for the rebuilding. The Shiite population must be a clear witness to the reconstruction efforts. Now that the war is happening, the Shiite population is willing to put up with some inconveniences for a short time. There is a small window of time to restore or least a clearly visible massive attempt, to restore basic services. If basic services are not restored within the small window of time, about 3-6 months, the seed is planted for chaos and insurgency. Then, Lebanon turns into another Iraq that gives birth to new militias vying for power. Bottom line, whoever restores basic services first, wins the hearts and minds. It cannot be the US. The US can hand out 10 gold coins to every Shiite and they would still hate us.

I know my ideas won't be put in place due to the fact that the UN want chaos to exist to use as an excuse to thumb their collective noses at the evil Israel and the US.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Mother Moonbats friends

In September 2004, there was a huge gathering of anti-American, anti-Israeli organizations in Beirut to attend a conference entitled "Where Next For The Global Anti-War And Anti-Globalization Movements? An International Strategy Meeting." The resulting manifesto, simultaneously turgid and strident, has as its primary goal attacking the U.S. war in Iraq. It's [sic] secondary goal is to challenge Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian lands. It's a nasty document, with a decidedly anti-American tone. What makes it interesting today is the identity of one of the organizations playing host to all these anti-American Leftist organizations: Hezbollah .

One of the participants from the United States was a group called United for Peace and Justice. Ordinarily, this would just be one of the icky little anti-American groups that America produces, along the lines of Code Pink : Women for Peace (which also attended this little American and Israel hatefest). What distinguishes United for Peace and Justice is that Teresa Kerry indirectly funds it. So, in 2004, a couple of months before Americans decided whether to put John Kerry in the White House, his wife's money was being used to fund one of the participants in a virulently anti-American meeting held in Beirut and hosted by Hezbollah. Once again, we have reason to be somewhat relieved that American voters put their money on George Bush.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A Thomas Paine Moment

The more that Israel gave its lands back to Islam, the more Islam treated those gestures as weakness. They triumphantly declared victory. Islam immediately converted those lands into sites for missiles to bombard Israel with and the world stood by and deceived itself into believing that our progressives had done a good thing talking and meeting and compromising away some territory; while the Imams laughed themselves silly and plotted more treachery. But who are we to doubt the NYT and the State Department? They are the progressive bastions of America who fill the air with surrender monkey nonsense. You know the types that call George Bush "dumb" and merrily go down the path of extinction at the hands of those who don't mind getting their hands a little dirty.

So to those of you who are snot-nosed progressive geeks who buy into this strategy of self-destruction; don't call for restraint; don't call for meetings; don't call for the feckless UN to intercede; don't support Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other AKAs the Muslims use; Islam is crawling up your nose and you are too stupid to know it. Read something about it and stop this suicide by pacifism. In war, the goal is victory; the goal is not talking and surrendering to an enemy who knows your weaknesses and is using them against you. So stop reading or listening to liberals, they are the history that no one ever reads about.

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To the Spartan Motto ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ wishes to add: GOD BLESS ERETZ ISRAEL!!

Now We Know

Was it only last year that we were all ecstatic to observe the Syrian army pulling out of Lebanon after a 30 year occupation? Under considerable pressure Asshat, the Syrian "leader" caved in the face of international pressure and the "Cedar Revolution" and we were treated to media footage of Syrian troop trucks crossing the Bekaa valley on the road to Damascus. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ at the time thought it odd that those Syrian troops all decked out in camo battle dress and waving cheerily appeared strangely UNARMED. Nor did we see included in the convoys any artillary. Was all the hardware turned over to Hezbollah? It would certainly seem so as the terrorists who control the southern quarter of the country and occupy 20% of the seats in parliament are armed to the teeth. Asshat appeared to have the last laugh until he authorized the terrorists to goad the only credible military power in the region to respond. Let's see how long the U.S. president resists the pressure from foreign and domestic appeasers to "reign in the Israeli over reaction" to the acts of war against them.

Religion of "Peace"?

President Bush has blamed Hezbollah and Syria for the attack on Israel's northern border and Iran and Hamas for the rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza. This makes about as much sense as blaming only the officers and men of the six Japanese carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 for starting WW II. We should be clear as to the identity of the true enemy. It is militant, jihadist Islam.

Terror is the default position of Islam. If you don't convert to their religion, if you practice another religion, their solution is to behead you. They are no more peaceful than a scorpion who can't help it; forgiveness is not in their nature. There is no turning the other cheek in Islam. "Peace" is their siren song, death is the reality. They are the world's most successful evangelists because you can't refute their message of peace. But once they have you, you can't escape. If you try, it is off to the soccer stadium for your beheading. If you don't think these Muslims are a serious bunch remember their thought police killed two people in Somalia who were caught watching the World Cup because Muslim law forbids watching TV.

And all this diversion by names has some serious consequences. The people can't rally to their own defense when they have no earthly idea who their enemy is. America is not fighting Hamas or Hezbollah, they are fighting Muslims intent on converting the world to Islam and realizing their caliphate here on Earth. This is pretty scary stuff. No TV and no bikinis, just 7th Century religious barabarism run by unelected Imams of seriously questionable intelligence.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

B.O.H.I.C.A.#

The west stands on the brink of world war and the battle lines could not be more evident. The stated war aims of the jihadis which are the elimination of the Israeli state and the supplanting of western culture by a global caliphate although often repeated are ignored by western "progressives".

The Munich Olympic Massacres of 1972; the Iranian hostage crisis; the assassination of Anwar Sadat; the bombings of the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut; the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Athens to Rome; the Achille Lauro hijacking; the 1985 airport attacks in Rome and Vienna; the bombing of TWA flight 840 in Greece; the kidnapping and murder of U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel W. Higgins; the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; the 1992 Bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina; the initial 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy compound in Islamabad, Pakistan; the bombing of the Khobar Towers; the 1997 Tourist Killings in Egypt; the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya; the attack on the USS Cole; the September 11th 2001 attacks; the train bombings in Spain; the July 11th London train bombings; and most recently the terrorist bombings in India. All of these brutal acts of the cowardice that is unprovoked terrorism have one thing in common; they were all perpetrated in the name of Allah by radical Islamists.

Meanwhile, anti-war activists, the progressive-left and opportunistic politicians maintain their assertions that Islam is a religion of peace, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Comparing those who were in denial of the Nazi threat in the 1930’s to those who insist that Islam is a religion of peace is not a stretch. Rationalizing the use of terrorism by depicting terrorists as “freedom fighters” and “patriots” – as has been done by the intellectually stunted Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cindy Sheehan and Sean Penn – exemplifies denial and ignorance of history, exactly like the Neville Chamberlains of the Nazi Era.

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#Bend Over Here Islamists Come Again

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

"Watermelons"

The extent to which green-left thinking on the environment has taken hold in the mass media and at all levels of education has made it the dominant voice in the so-called environmental debate. There is not one opinion leader or political party, especially the shrinking Democrats, that has not been heavily influenced by it one way or another.

However, it would be a serious mistake to assume that the green-left alliance is ideologically united. It is not. Basically it comprises two factions: the Marxist-Leninist faction and the utopian faction. Both are temporarily united by their mutual loathing of capitalism. Temporarily because their long term goals are mutually exclusive.

The unregenerate Marxist-Leninists (aptly called watermelons: green on the outside and red on the inside) still fervently believe that capitalism will be brought down by its “inner contradictions” helped by a lot of economic sabotage. The collapse of the Soviet Empire has taught them nothing. They still have the fanatic’s capacity for self-deception and cruelty.

To them socialism has not failed, it just has not been tried. Hence environmentalism is just another weapon in their ideological war against capitalism, which really amounts to war against our civilisation. To these socialist cultists “environmentalism” will provide the regulatory noose that will strangle capitalism and herald a new world.

Where the old left still believes in the virtues of a centrally planned economy and the evils of capitalism, the green utopian left consist mainly of people who have developed a vague vision of an anarcho-agrarian society. Leftists originally joined the greens with the intention of using them in the fight against capitalism. But a funny thing happened to many of these cultists on the way to their socialist revolution: their anti-capitalism was transformed into an anti-industrial ethic. They abandoned their visions of a workers’ state to embrace the fantasy of a green Elysium that only the elect can enter.

This is why they had no difficulty in deserting the materialism of Marx for Rousseau’s fantasy of the “Noble Savage”. None of this is really surprising. Their utopianism is obvious to any informed observer. Incredible as it seems and despite all the evidence to the contrary, these dangerous clowns actually believe that profit driven economic growth (is there any other kind?) creates mass unemployment and wholesale destruction of the environment.

What is really striking, however, is the resemblance of the green movement to revolutionary millenarianism — with one crucial difference: the top echelon of the green movement consists largely of intellectuals, the spoiled and selfish offspring of an affluent and indulgent capitalist society. . In one subtle ideological move, “the dictatorship of the proletariat” has been transformed into the dictatorship of the lumpen intelligentsia.

So basically the Green movement has been formed by intellectuals for intellectuals. “You won’t see any branches of the Sierra Club in Watts or Harlem”. And this brings us right back to their hatred of capitalism, or should I say economic growth. They hate it because it gives the masses what they want rather than what they, the intellectuals, think they should have.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Russians Get It Right!!!

Some times you have to hand it to the Russians. It seems that the Chechen Islamofascist who ordered the takeover of a Russian school in 2004 which killed over 300 including nearly 150 children most of whom were shot in the back while trying to flee has been sent to his rondevous with 72 virgins.

Report: Chechen Islamic terrorist dies in blast set by Russian agents

The Jihadist Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan school attack in 2004, in which 331 people, half of them children, were killed.

FSS Director Nikolai Patrushev said Monday that Basayev was planning an attack to coincide with the G8 summit of world leaders this weekend in Russia.

The operation was in Ingushetia -- a republic bordering Chechnya -- in which Basayev was killed early Monday.

Russian agents exploded a truck bomb next to several cars in which Basayev and other rebels were riding, according to the Interfax news agency, quoting Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev.

"This is retaliation he deserves for killing our children in Beslan, Budennovsk, all the terrorist acts his jihadis perpetrated in Moscow and other regions of Russia, including Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic," Patrushev said in an Interfax report.

A Chechen Web site quoted a rebel commander as saying Basayev's death was caused by an "accidental spontaneous explosion of a cargo vehicle with explosives," not Russian security agents.

Law enforcement officials in Ingushetia told Interfax that Basayev's body was in pieces but was identified by his head and by the fact that he had earlier lost a foot.

Twelve other Chechen terrorists were killed in the operation, the officials said.

I'll bet he wasn't even read his rights or represented by a court appointed attorney. Congressional Democrats will doubtless demand hearings by this time tomorrow.

It's Bush's Fault

If it was not bad enough that Progressives, headed up by Appeaser-in-Chief, Jimmy Carter, drafted the treaty that North Korea promptly ignored and developed nuclear weapons under, they are now complaining that the treaty did not work, and blaming Bush for it. Evidently, they do not feel that the United States has appeased the psychopath leader of North Korea quite enough, so off we go to the United Nations to learn the true meaning on international diplomatic incompetence. As we speak, the leaders of nations North Korea is not pointing nuclear missiles toward are deciding the fate of those who do. Perhaps, if we are lucky, the UN will get really tough with North Korea, and in addition to a press release expressing “regret” that North Korea is practicing its incineration of Tokyo, and order the United States to send 52 American hostages to Pyongyang to guarantee our good behavior.

Speaking of 52 American hostages, Iran, venue of President Carter’s last diplomatic victory for Progressivism’s cause, is going to develop nuclear weapons, as well. This time, the Bush Administration is doing what the Progressives want, and engaging in multilateral negotiations with a country that is the wellspring of global international terrorism. Not to be the pessimist, but they are not going to work. Iran is doing to pursue the development of nuclear weapons until either they have them, or someone destroys their nuclear production capabilities. We can stand around and negotiate forever, and this fact will not change. Progressives like to pretend that negotiations are an end unto themselves. That somehow, if we talk long enough, and give a hostile enemy concession after concession, peace will mysteriously erupt. The fact that negotiating with rogue regimes is no more effective today than it was in the days of Neville Chamberlain is lost on Progressives. Faced with the reality that the problem is not Iran’s poverty, infrastructure, or need for alternative fuel sources, but the radical terrorist regime running it, Progressives have once again chosen to blame Bush and the United States, in general, for objecting to Iran’s desire to “wipe Israel off the map.”

At no point have Progressives joined the threads of together and realized that we are doing the exact same thing with Iran that we did with North Korea. If there is ever a negotiated compromise to the current crisis, all it will do is give the Iranians a few years to secretly violate the treaty and then drop their fully developed nuclear capability on the world as a /fiat accompli/.

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Slavery in Colorado

Where are the "feminists" and civil rights "activists" when you need them?

Homaidan al-Turki, a Saudi subject was convicted last week in a Colorado court of:

* Twelve felony counts of unlawful sexual contact with use of force
* One felony count of criminal extortion
* One felony count of theft (this is probably the $64,000 in back wages he owed his “maid”)


In addition, there were two misdemeanor convictions, both related to “false imprisonment”.


Al-Turki owns a Colorado bookstore whose website still appears to be up and running. If you want to order an Islamic diatribe, here’s the email address: info@al-basheer.com. The snail-mail address is:

Al-Basheer Publications & Translations
3700 Havana Street, Unit # 102
Denver, CO 80239
U.S.A.

Let’s not forget that this man didn’t break any Shari’ah law. Rape of your Muslim slave is permissible under Islam. The young Indonesian woman, a seventeen year old virgin before al-Turki got hold of her, could be raped and enslaved with impunity. Now, rape of an infidel woman is another matter, so it’s probably no coincidence that the family’s choice of slave was a follower of the Prophet. I wonder if she was permitted a Koran in her basement hole? After all, her owner had a bookstore which sold them by the bushel. Maybe he gave her an employee discount…?

Fortunately for this woman, Shari’ah law has no jurisdiction in Arapahoe County, and the fiqh does not apply in Colorado. Thus the Labor Department, in its lawsuit against al-Turki, requires him to pay $64,000 in back wages. Perhaps there will, in addition, be a civil suit for damages and deprivation of her civil liberties. Calling the ACLU and Reverend Jackson: a tailor-made case here, just waiting for you. Much more apropos than eradicating little tiny crosses from municipal seals, wouldn’t you say?

Al-Turki has the full financial backing of the Saudi government. They went his bail, to the tune of $400,000, and the lesser bail for his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, who plea-bargained for a lesser fate. She’ll be sentenced in July, and has agreed to return to Saudi Arabia after her sentence has been served next year.

Al-Turki is not free on bond anymore. Having been convicted, his sentencing will take place in August. His defense argued that he should be allowed out on bond until then. The prosecutors asked that he be remanded without bond. He is not a citizen, and has immigration issues.

[Judge] Hannen ruled that since Al-Turki was convicted of counts that had aggravating factors that would put them into the category of violent crimes, the statutes did not allow him to continue bond, and Al-Turki was to be kept in custody until his sentencing Aug. 31.


In October al-Turki faces yet another trial — this one in federal court — on charges of forced labor, document servitude (he kept her passport from her, and it eventually expired), and harboring an illegal immigrant. The last charge is especially ironic, since it was al-Turki himself who created her status as an illegal alien by not permitting her to renew her visa.

This man is one of those famous Saudi “students”, a 36 year old student studying linguistics in Colorado. He is also a member in good standing of the Colorado Muslim Council, where he spoke while out on bond awaiting trial.

Nork Insanity

Forget the July 4th bottle rocket display by North Korea. It gets even stranger:

North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that's because they don't. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don't work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen. How do you negotiate under these conditions? No one knows. The South Koreans believe that if they just keep the North Korean leaders from doing anything too destructive (especially to South Korea), eventually the tragicomic house of cards up north will just collapse. Not much of a plan, but so far, no one's come up with anything better.

Go figure.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Name That Essay

Thomas Jefferson wrote a classic essay in 1776. It is no longer read in its entirety. Its economic complaint is no longer taken seriously by those who claim to be his political heirs. "He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." In fact, his self-proclaimed heirs seem to believe that our pursuit of happiness is dependent on ever-more numbers of office-holders and their ever-more-rapid depletion of our substance. It is the office-holders' pursuit of their happiness that presently reduces the ability of the rest of us to pursue our happiness.

Today, the process is everything. The goal of the political process is to capture that other crucial process, the flow of funds. The process that counts in modern politics is an interminable quest to control and multiply the offices that provide their holders with the ability to direct the other processes.

When it comes to the pursuit of my happiness, I am willing to settle for an all-around agreement to defend life, liberty, and property. This can and should begin by the widespread purchase of sufficient Second Amendment hardware to defend the other nine.

Read that essay in its entirety today. It's called the Declaration of Independence

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The "Progressives"

The current designation of our friends on the left as "progressives" appears to have emerged as a result of the falling out of favor of the terms "liberal" and "Marxist". The evolution of euphemisms never ceases to amaze ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ in these days where political correctness and the neglect of the study of history in the government "schools" has literaly resulted in an Orwellian inversion of definitions. These days the "progressives' " complain of the loss of a mythical former idylic human existance.

Yet this complaint is inspired as well by communist ideology. Throughout the twentieth century, Marxian cultural criticism exploited the sort of Romantic dissatisfactions with modernity expressed as early as 1802 in the Preface to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. No matter that the next two centuries saw remarkable improvements in material existence wrought by capitalism and science, and saw individual freedom extended to millions by liberal democracy, these modern cultural critics exaggerated and dramatized the social costs of such benefits. They contrasted life in industrialized capitalist societies with a mythic golden age of pre-capitalist communal life in which the “alienation” fostered by capitalism didn’t exist and the individual was nurtured in a warm collective cocoon. Indeed, according to Marx and his followers, this communal paradise also lies at the end of history: once private property is abolished, capitalism and the state have withered away, and people are once again united into an organic, mutually supportive whole, the needs and desires of the individual will be identical with those of the community.

In their zeal to strain out the gnat of individualism’s flaws, the idealizers of lost community swallow any number of communitarian camels. They forget the deadening conformity and petty tyranny that frequently characterize so-called “organic” communities, typically based on castes and classes that subordinate individuals to the group.

They wish to tame the energies of individual freedom in order to fit people into some larger vision of communal good, some utopia of perfect equality and justice, always to be challenged by the quirky, unique individual.

Hence the ideology of “communitarianism,” which gains traction by obsessing over the trade-offs and costs that necessarily follow when each person possesses his own freedom and autonomy. Yet these costs are more than outweighed by the benefits resulting from freeing the imaginations and minds of millions from the stultifying shackles of group norms and herd mentalities.

And whatever these costs, they are as nothing compared to the mountains of corpses created by the collectivist ideologies that dissolve the individual and personal responsibility in the aims and needs of the community.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

It Was Not Always So

In the 21st century, there is something that our society values more than our own lives — and more than the survival of civilization itself. That something may be described as the kind of moral superiority that comes from a good wallow in Abu Ghraib, Haditha, CIA interrogations or Guantanamo Bay. Morally superior people — Western elites — never "humiliate" prisoners, never kill civilians, never torture or incarcerate jihadists. Indeed, they would like to kill, I mean, prosecute, or at least tie the hands of, anyone who would. This, of course, only enhances their own moral superiority. But it doesn't win wars. And it won't save civilization.
Why not? Because such smugness masks a massive moral paralysis. The morally superior (read: paralyzed) don't really take sides, don't really believe one culture is qualitatively better or worse than the other. They don't even believe one culture is just plain different from the other. Only in this atmosphere of politically correct and perpetually adolescent non-judgmentalism could anyone believe, for example, that compelling, forcing or torturing a jihadist terrorist to get information to save a city undermines our "values" in any way. It undermines nothing — except the jihad.
Do such tactics diminish our inviolate sanctimony? You bet. But so what? The alternative is to follow our precious rules and hope the barbarians will leave us alone, or, perhaps, not deal with us too harshly. Fond hope. Consider the 21st-century return of (I still can't quite believe it) beheadings. The first French Republic aside, who on God's modern green earth ever imagined a head being hacked off the human body before we were confronted with Islamic jihad? Civilization itself is forever dimmed — again.
Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, RIP.
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Stating the Absurd

The recent arrests of a group of "terrorists" preparing to utilize 3 tons of explosives for an "event" in Canada has elicited the absurd comment that these individuals are representative of "a wide spectrum of Canadian society." thus ignoring the fact that they were all muslims. Mark Steyn nails it perfectly:

The multicultural society posits that each of its citizens can hold a complementary portfolio of identities: one can simultaneously be Canadian and Jamaican and gay and Anglican and all these identities can exist within your corporeal form in perfect harmony. But, for most Western Muslims, Islam is their primary identity, and for a significant number thereof, it's a primary identity that exists in opposition to all others. That's merely stating the obvious. But, of course, to state the obvious is unacceptable these days, so our leaders prefer to state the absurd. I believe the old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between a New York traffic light changing to green and the first honk of a driver behind you. Today, the definition of a nanosecond is the gap between a Western terrorist incident and the press release of a Muslim lobby group warning of an impending outbreak of Islamophobia. After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:

"British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow's train bombing."

Read the entire article.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

What Happened?

Embarrassing Quotation of the Week

"Assuming that the increase in wealth production and population continue at the present compound rates, it seems likely that in the course of two or three decades, the U.S.S.R. will have become the wealthiest country in the world, and at the same time the community enjoying the greatest aggregate of individual freedom."

Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), quoted in New York Herald Tribune Books 12, March 8, 1936, 2.

Reality intervened.

Is "Terrorism" the Enemy?

ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ believes that it is a tragic mistake to declare war on a tactic in lieu of the real enemy which simply utilizes the tactic to achieve his political/religious ends. A case in point is the present "war on terror".

Please read this good news with a sense of remorse: our peers and pundits are puppy-dogging the PC MSM into calling the Jihad (this Islamic Holy War) by this fictitious moniker "al-Qaeda" or "terrorism". What a tragedy we live in when we can't call our enemy by its proper name. Folks, our enemy is Islam, its Wahhabi and Salafist sponsors in Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Muslims worldwide who are praying to Allah that their brethren defeat us "infidels" and establish a "caliphate" here on Earth.
Conservatives are screaming from the rooftops that the "beheader-in-chief" Jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Iraqi master of Islamic Wahhabi insanity is dead. So what? The only thing this will do is force the left to deny what it publicized as the failure of the Bush Administration to do and move on to another distortion to impale rational Americans and our present leaders on. Additionally, the PC leftist media mere hours after the announcement of the successfull attack on Zarqawi and his thugs were bemoaning the collateral "civilian" casualties.

It is a great feat to have captured and or killed the real Satan in Iraq. Unfortunately, the military is not PC in this age of the cowardly surrender monkey who lives by the jaw and dies by beheading. The tragedy is in the process. Muslims are building their caliphate. They are 1.3 Billion strong. And they use beheadings and killing innocent women and children as their standard Geneva Convention.

The insanity of the left is so pervasive, rational humans are kneeling down and voluntarily putting their head in the guillotine.

As an example of how the left feels about it, Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded by Zarqawi, says that it is George Bush, not Zarqawi who was responsible for his son's death, and he feels no sense of relief at Zarqawi's death, just sadness that another human being had to die. Amazing that he considers Zarqawi a human being.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

I'm Baaack!

To all of you Fighting in the Shade enthusiasts (both of you) Leonidas is pleased to report that he has survived 18 days of sailing in the Caribbean Leeward Islands including Antigua, Nevis, St Kitts, Saba, St Barths and St. Maartin and will soon be offering incisive comment on the socio/political scene.