Wolf Pangloss

Ti$a’s viral campaign video for Obama seems like the kind of polarizing appeal that Barack Obama’s campaign is dreading having to explain to the squares. By the squares I mean anyone who isn’t already in the tank for Obama.

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

Technorati Tags: Obama, Video

Hillary Clinton picked the filly Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby. She bet on her to win, place, and show. Eight Belles was running a clean race with no bumping, but both front ankles broke shortly after crossing the finish line. She (the horse) had to be euthanized by injection on the track, in front of the spectators of the race, before Big Brown, the favorite and winner, was presented with his trophy.

Barack Obama picked Colonel John (not Admiral John) to win. His horse was not in the money.

PETA blamed the jockey, Gabriel Saez, for the tragedy.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Kodera’s Korner, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Big Dog’s Weblog, Democrat=Socialist, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Stageleft, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Clinton, Obama, Sports, Eight Belles

The May 4 strike that the April 6 group planned seems to have fizzled. Whether it was the security preparations, the Muslim Brotherhood calls for protesters to stay home in a peaceful (non) protest, or the fact that Mubarak promised a 30% raise to the civil service, something appears to have taken the wind out of the strikers’ sails.

I guess that the Egyptian economy and government will be improved “inshallah,” if God wills it. But I don’t expect Egyptians to do anything about it.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Kodera’s Korner, DragonLady’s World, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, Democrat=Socialist, Stageleft, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Egypt, May 4, Mubarak, Strike

This is a comment I made on the Spyglass, in response to a post about witnessing to and proselytizing to Muslims that focused on Father Zakaria Botros and Pope Benedict XVI.

As Skarbutts points out in Faith Against Faith, there is no belief system that lacks faith.

A belief system based solely upon the science of reason is more limited than a system based upon faith in a Creator, in that, man as the exclusive source of knowledge is limited. Since a materialistic system of thought seeks to exclude things that cannot be verified, gaps in knowledge are created which must be bridged in order to be logical. This creates a paradox, for to fill these gaps in knowledge, the materialist must resort to faith. The faith of the materialist, however, is an antifaith. His thought process is not in the spiritual but the in the physical. He is, therefore, forced to manufacture knowledge based on circumstantial evidence, or create and rely upon theories and assumptions in order to connect pieces of knowledge and arrive at any explanations. These explanations often tend to create even more questions which in turn demand an even greater faith from the materialist. Thus, in many cases, the materialist is no less believing, no less devoted, no less fanatical, nor any less evangelical than his religious counterpart. When an idea gains enough traction in intellectual circles it becomes widely accepted as a reality; therefore, many things that are treated as fact are unknown to man.

In other words, there is no practical reason to choose the secular outreach over the religious one. A religious belief system is complete where a secular one is not (as Skarbutts proves), and the fundamentalist Islamic belief system is nothing if not complete. You cannot replace a complete belief system with an incomplete one. The incomplete belief system will not hold if challenged.

To add to the previous paragraph, a secular belief system ends up being as complete as a religious one because faith becomes incorporated in it. However, the nature of that faith can change based on circumstance. So the real danger of a secular belief system is that it is unstable, and therefore it might not last. The faith basis of a religious belief system comes from the core beliefs and moral structure of religion and is not susceptible to casual changes. Therefore it is stable. Stability increases happiness and satisfaction. Instability leads to flailing for answers and to a change in beliefs.

If we make our strategy one of conversion or moral neutralization, and our target either all Muslims or only the Idolaters of Jihad, there is no good reason to choose either the lesser target or strategy. Failed neutralization does not reduce the number of Jihad-worshippers in the world. But a failed conversion might still neutralize. Likewise, reaching out to all Muslims will necessarily include Jihad-worshippers as well as those who do not idolize Jihad, and will reduce the human ocean in which the Jihad terrorists travel.

Imagine the winking five-pointed star perched above the crescent moon. Reach for the star and even if you fail you might reach the moon.

Trackposted to Pooh Flinging NeoCons, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Democrat=Socialist, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Counterjihad

Open Trackbacks. The stealth communist holiday of Mayday deserves a poem that exposes the rotten, hollow heart of Russian Communism and the mass murder and tyranny that beat at the heart of the Mayday celebration.

Here is a good poem. “The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb” by Robert W. Service from Bar-Room Ballads.

This is the yarn he told me
As we sat in Casey’s Bar,
That Rooshun mug who scrammed from the jug
In the Land of the Crimson Star;
That Soveet guy with the single eye,
And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin’s Tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.
With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;
For years a score they’ve laboured sore to save him from the worm.
The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin’s Tomb is red,
And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: “He sleeps and is not dead.”
Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,
And as they pass that dome of glass they see - a God Divine.
So Doctors plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,
So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.
But say, Tovarich; hark to me . . . a secret I’ll disclose,
For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.

I was a Cheka terrorist - Oh I served the Soviets well,
Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;
That I might tell the thing I saw, and that only I did see,
They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.
But I got away, and here to-day I’m telling my tale to you;
Though it may sound weird, by Lenin’s beard, so help me God it’s true.
I slouched across that great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.
The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin’s shrine;
Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin’s map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by that saturnine host,
When with a start that shook my heart I saw - I saw a ghost.
As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin -
A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.

Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;
But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.
And there’s so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,
Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.
And of theses sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far
Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.

A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;
His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: “O carrion crew!
I’d die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you.”
I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race….
And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.
(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)
He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.
He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;
I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.
I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;
Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.

The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;
My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.
I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;
For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.
Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,
This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone.
His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay . . .
And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.

Without a sound we shuffled round. I sought to make a sign,
But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.
With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,
We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.
With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,
And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart. . . .
Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,
With fiendish cry he raised it high, and . . . swung at Lenin’s head.
Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,
And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.
Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again
The leprous light ’twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;
And ringèd around by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;
For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.
They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,
But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.

I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,
I broke away, but listen, here’s the point of all my tale. . . .
Outside the “Gay Pay Oo” none knew of that grim scene of gore;
They closed the Tomb, and they they threw it open as before.
And there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign,
And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine;
And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay;
And there he sleeps and calm he keeps his watch and ward for aye.
Yet if you pass that fram of glass, peer closly at his phiz,
So stern and firm it mocks the worm, it looks like wax . . . and is.
They tell you he’s a mummy - don’t you make that bright mistake:
I tell you - he’s a dummy; aye, a fiction and a fake.
This eye beheld the bloody bomb that bashed him on the bean.
I heard the crash, I saw the flash, yet . . . there he lies serene.
And by the roar that rocked the Tomb I ask: how could that be?
But if you doubt that deed of doom, just go yourself and see.
You think I’m mad, or drunk, or both . . . Well, I don’t care a damn:
I tell you this: their Lenin is a waxen, show-case SHAM.

Such was the yarn he handed me,
Down there in Casey’s Bar,
That Rooshun bug with the scrambled mug
From the land of the Commissar.
It may be true, I leave it you
To figger out how far.

Technorati Tags: Open Trackbacks, Communism, Poetry, Tyranny, Crime and Punishment

Matthias Küntzel lays out the scary truth about Iranian hopes, particularly those of Mahmoud AhmediNajad.

In his first major speech, in October 2005, the one that gained him notoriety, Ahmadinejad declared that the Zionist regime in Israel “must be eliminated from the pages of history.” Many will recall this quote. But only very few people have read the rest of the speech and so understood the context of the threat. Let me please quote just three more sentences of this famous talk.In it, Ahmadinejad said: “We are in the process of a historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.”

So as we can see, the roots of this “historical war” have nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East conflict. The speaker views the destruction of Israel as a stage in a war that started long before the foundation of Israel. But what is meant by “World of Arrogance”? I will come back to this point.

He also said: “We have to understand the depth of the disgrace of the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave.” Here a religiously inspired feeling of superiority is contrasted with the “depth of the disgrace of the enemy”. But the notion of a “holy hatred” is also striking. This hatred is unconditional: it cannot be moderated through any kind of Western or Jewish behavior. It currently expresses itself in the first instance as hatred of a recalcitrant and rather pro-Western Iranian people that has to be silenced through stonings, public executions, mass arrests, torture and censorship. Above and beyond this, the expression of this “holy hatred” is destined to “expand continuously” to a global level and to overwhelm the world like a mighty tsunami.

Third and final quotation from the speech: “In this very grave war, many people are trying to scatter grains of desperation and hopelessness. They ask: ‘Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?’ But you had best know that this goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved.”

Imagine if the leader of a medium-sized Western country, for example Mr Berlusconi, the former Italian head of government, had made a speech in which he talked about a historical war against the Islamic world, denounced the “depth of the Islamic world’s disgrace”, summoned up Christianity’s “holy hatred” of Islam and finally pronounced the goal of erasing Saudi Arabia and Pakistan from the map realizable.

The entire talk is wonderfully argued. Read it all. I will only extract a few more ideas from it for reference, and to convey the four key characteristics of this Iranian Holy War against the world, which should be differentiated from the less dangerous but no-less objectionable Salafist/Al-Qaeda Holy War against the world.

The world beyond is more important than this one

During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the semi-official Iranian daily Ettela’at wrote the following:

In the past, we had child-volunteers: 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds. They went into the minefields. Their eyes saw nothing. Their ears heard nothing. And then, a few moments later, one saw clouds of dust. When the dust had settled again, there was nothing more to be seen of them. Somewhere, widely scattered in the landscape, there lay scraps of burnt flesh and pieces of bone.” Such scenes could henceforth be avoided, Ettela’at assured its readers. “Before entering the mine fields, the children [now] wrap themselves in blankets and they roll on the ground, so that their body parts stay together after the explosion of the mines and one can carry them to the graves.”[2]

The children who thus rolled to their deaths formed part of the mass Basij movement that was called into being by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. They consisted of short-term volunteer militias and represented about 30 percent of the personnel on the battlefield. Most Basij members were between 12 and 18 years young. They went enthusiastically and by their thousands to their own destruction.

[...]

“The natural world,” Khomeini explained in October 1980, “is the lowest element, the scum of creation.” What is decisive is the beyond: the “divine world – that is eternal.”[4] According to Khomeini’s mindset, the martyrs’ death is nothing but the transition from this world to the world beyond, where they will live on eternally and in splendor.

Before Khomeini, for a Muslim deliberately to be sent to certain death was considered sacrilege within Islam.

[...]

Reason as sin

The second characteristic of the holy war relates to Islamist epistemology. I must admit that it took me a long time to understand this aspect. For us, the employment of reason is the most self-evident thing in the world. For Islamists the use of reason – apart from in the natural sciences – is an expression of arrogance – hence our castigation as the “World of Arrogance” – and an offence against God. Their starting point is that the Koran must be interpreted and applied literally. But evidently, any kind of reason-based doubt undermines such an approach to the Koran. As a result, doubt and conjecture are opposed.

[...]

Revolutionary mission

It is the Iranian leadership’s special sense of mission that propels them along the course toward confrontation with the West. “Our nation’s important mission” Ahmadinejad enthused only some days ago, “is to introduce the Islamic Revolution to the whole of mankind.”

[...]

Liberation through annihilation

The Iranian leaders do not at all regard themselves as antisemites.

“We are friends with the Jewish people”, stated Ahmadinejad in Columbia. Moreover, the 25,000 or so Jews in Iran represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country.

Nonetheless, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism not found in any state leader since World War II.

Ahmadinejad does not say “Jews” are conspiring to rule the world. Instead he says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.” Instead he says, “The Zionists” have for 60 years now blackmailed “all Western governments.” “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural, and media sectors.” “The Zionists” fabricated the Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists thrive on war and hatred,” Ahmadinejad claims. “Everywhere they exist there is war.”[18] The pattern is familiar. He invests the word “Zionist” with exactly the same meaning Hitler poured into “Jew”: the incarnation of evil. Anyone who makes Jews – whether as “Judas” or as “Zionist” – responsible for all the ills of the world is obviously driven by antisemitism. He must want to eliminate Israel, as the “germ of evil”, in order to save the world. He must deny the truth of the Holocaust in order to pave the way for his “truth”. The demonization of Jews, Holocaust denial, and the will to eliminate Israel – these are the three elements of an ideological constellation that collapses as soon as one of the elements is removed.

[...]

“The extermination of Jewry throughout the world”, declared a Nazi directive from 1943, is “the precondition for an enduring peace.”[20] Liberation through annihilation. This is similar to the mission that Islamism has set out upon whose first target is Israel. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out and humanity will be liberated.”[21]

He reiterated this belief in his most recent speech at the United Nations in September 2007: “The age of darkness will end”, he enthused to the General Assembly and “the peoples in Europe and America will be liberated from the burdens the Zionists have inflicted on them”.

So let me now sum up on this final point: There are other dictatorships in the world. But only in Iran are the fantasy-worlds of antisemitism and religious mission linked with technological megalomania and the physics of mass destruction. The specific danger presented by the Iranian nuclear option stems from the unique ideological atmosphere surrounding it – a mixture of holy war and high-tec, of antisemitism and weapons-grade uranium, of death-wish and missile research, of Shiite messianism and plutonium.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, third world county, Maggie’s Notebook, Adam’s Blog, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, , CORSARI D’ITALIA, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Gone Hollywood, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Jihad, Islamism

Robert Service dedicated this very sad poem to his friends, who must go on to have other children, to help heal their hearts after their child died young.

The Other One
by Robert Service
from Ballads of a Bohemian

“Gather around me, children dear;
The wind is high and the night is cold;
Closer, little ones, snuggle near;
Let’s seek a story of ages old;
A magic tale of a bygone day,
Of lovely ladies and dragons dread;
Come, for you’re all so tired of play,
We’ll read till it’s time to go to bed.”
Keep reading →

Israpundit teaches a good vocabulary lesson concerning Israel that I’ve paraphrased. Read his for more.

The West Bank should more properly be called Judea and Samaria, as those are the traditional names of the areas. The West Bank was a name that was imposed by the King of Jordan after his 1948 seizure of the areas.

The concept that Judea, which even has the word Jew for its
first syllable, doesn’t have anything to do with Jews is laughable. And
Samaria, is that named for Philistines or Samarites?

Palestine is a Roman variant for the Philistines, who were an ancient people who were hostile to the Jews who lived in Judea and Samaria in Biblical times. Palestine was the name the Romans imposed when they scattered the Jews out of Judea, leaving only the early Christians. Note there were no Muslims in Israel at this time.

Palestinians was first used in modern times to label the Jewish volunteers in WWI. Yaser Arafat seized it for his collection of eternal refugees in the 1960s and used it to describe an invented continuity between the ancient Canaanites and the modern Arabs who had moved into the area as the Jews bought up and improved the desolate areas of Judea and Samaria at the end of the 19th century.

The so-called Occupied Territory of Judea and Samaria was inhabited by Jews until 1948, when the King of Jordan drove all the Jews out. When Israel took it back at the end of the 1967 war it was actually Liberated.

I don’t have anything to add to what Gerard Jackson wrote about George Soros.

Soros revealed the source of his confusion and ignorance when he admitted that his experience of money markets led him to his present views. (I knew it couldn’t have been serious study). This apparent revelation leads him to merely parrot the old cry that financial markets are inherently unstable, leading to breakdowns and depressions. And that this instability led to the evolution of central banks. Yet, according to him, free market “ideologues” (how lefties love that word) argue that it was faulty regulations, not markets, that were really responsible.

Markets are basically stable. What is not stable is monetary policy. And it is faulty monetary policies that destabilise economies. When the gold standard reigned supreme financial markets never witnessed the kind of prolonged financial gyrations that we are now experiencing. These wild fluctuations are basically caused by constant changes, and anticipated changes, in money supplies, price levels and exchange rates.

Read the whole thing to learn a bit about the Austrian School of Economics that Ron Paul began to popularize this Republican primary season.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Faultline USA, A Newt One- help us catch a monster, Woman Honor Thyself, Adam’s Blog, Maggie’s Notebook, Right Truth, Shadowscope, Celebrity Smack, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Economics, Soros, Austrian School

How can this be? The truth is that every change in the economy is good for someone and bad for someone else. Increased production, however, which Democrats and their Green buddies are against because of their irrational global warming obsession, lifts up everybody at the same time. What is the solution Soros proposes for the troubles he sees? More progressive and socialist agitation validated by the increasingly feckless (ref. meaning 2) Democratic Party, which he has bought and paid for with his billions. The only way to stop the dollar from plummeting is to stop printing so much money. This would require raising government interest rates and cutting government spending. In order for these changes to not plunge the US and world into a new depression, tax rates would also need to be reduced to minimal levels and bad rules and laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Americans with Disabilities act need to be repealed or drastically revised.

Trackposted to Rosemary’s Thoughts, third world county, Adam’s Blog, The Pink Flamingo, Celebrity Smack, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Dumb Ox Daily News, , Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Technorati Tags: Democrats, Economics, Progressive, Hoaxes, Socialism, Soros