1In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. 2This was the first enrollment, when Quirin'ius was governor of Syria. 3And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. 4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. 7And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
8And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. 10And the angel said to them, "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; 11for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!"
15When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." 16And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 17And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child; 18and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
I promised a submarine sea trials post, and you shall have one. But first I wanted to share this delightful holiday greeting that I received in my email at work.
For Our Liberal Friends:
"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.
This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."
Thank you for stopping by and reading while I was away. As you can see, I have returned home. I will post an unclassified report soon. All of you submariners out there know already that that means that I will not be able to say too much about the status of some of the news systems, but I'll give you what I am able.
I will be gone for a little over a week to complete USS Ohio's sea trials. I cannot tell you when exactly I am coming or going, but when I get back I will post an unclassified report.
In the meanwhile, remember those who love you and take care of them. You will not have them forever. See my previous post.
A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that his faithful dog had been dead for many years. He wondered where the road was leading them. After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. As he reached the wall, he saw a magnificent gate in the arch, and the street that led to the gate made from pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.
When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"
"This is heaven, sir," the man answered.
"Wow! Would you happen to have some water? We have traveled far," the man said.
"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up."
The man gestured, and the gate began to open.
"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.
"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."
The man thought a moment, remembering all the years this dog remained loyal to him and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going. After another long walk he came to a plain dirt road, which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
"Excuse me!" he called to the reader. "Do you have any water? We have traveled far."
"Yes, sure, there's a faucet over there." The man pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. "Come on in and help yourself."
"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to his dog.
"There should be a bowl by the faucet; he is welcome to share."
They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned faucet with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree waiting for them.
"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.
"This is heaven," was the answer.
"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was heaven, too."
"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's hell."
"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"
"No. We're just happy that they screen out the folks who'd leave their best friends behind in exchange for material things."
My best friend preceded me to Heaven this morning. Her name is Cocoa, and she was God's most perfect creature. She tried to be human and for the most part succeeded, I'll write some stories about that later. The first thing that comes to mind is her efforts to speak as a human speaks. I have never heard a dog do that before. Of course she couldn't do it, but her efforts were unmistakable.
During one of my deployments my wife became seriously ill. Cocoa knew this and took care of her while I was gone. I am convinced that she save my wife's life. Every morning she would ensure that my wife would wake up during a time when that may well have not happened. She was aggressive and would not let up until my wife was awake.
Everyone who ever met her loved her immediately. Even the emergency animal hospital, on one night two weeks ago when we had to rush her there stopped in the middle of the night to take a group picture with her. They had never seen her before and normally an animal's presence would have been just business. Not with Cocoa.
She was truly extraordinary.
As I write this we are having a wake for her at home while we wait to take her to the crematory. Our other dog, Niko, needs to know why she is now gone. This is not as silly as it may seem. Canine societies are well structured and dogs know, and, to some extent, mourn, when one of their members passes on. This according to the most recent animal psychological research.
Her body is in her bed at my feet, and I am weeping. She was God's most perfect creature and she was my daughter.
It was a privilege to have her live in my house for 11 years, since she was 8 weeks old, and proof that God loves me.
Timothy Treadwell thought that grizzly and Alaskan brown bears are cute and cuddly. He took his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, with him to Alaska to go play with them. They both learned that this is not a good idea. Wild animals are, after all, wild. When around wild animals one should not act irresponsibly.
Anti-American liberals are now learning the same thing. Dr. Rusty Shackleford has it at The Jawa Report.
Christian Peacemaker Teams issued a statement saying the four were working on behalf of Iraqi civilians. The group said it has had a team in Iraq since October 2002, working with U.S. and Iraqi detainees and training others in nonviolent intervention and human rights documentation.
Kember and another person were part of a visiting delegation, while two members of the group's Iraq-based staff also were taken, the statement said.
The group said on its Web site that it was founded in the mid-1980s and is supported by Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Church Canada, Church of the Brethren and Friends United Meeting.
It places teams of trained peacemakers in crisis situations and militarized areas, and those teams work with civilians to document abuses and develop nonviolent alternatives to war.
The group said the team in Iraq was working on documenting detainee abuses, referring Iraqis to human rights organizations and accompanying Iraqi civilians as they interact with coalition troops and Iraqi government officials [no doubt to ensure that the evil Americans and their usurper puppets would not take them to a secret prison somewhere - ed.].
These leftists probably believed that because they hate the U.S. the terrorists freedom fighters would like them and leave them alone. While it does not lessen the tragedy of their impending deaths, they were acting irresponsibly.
It seems that the execution video shown on CNN, and posted on this blog, was fake (at least according to that highly honest and credible government of the DPRK and its Dear Freak).
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Saturday called a recent CNN program depicting a public execution in the communist state a "sheer fabrication" and dismissed it as a ratings ploy by the U.S.-based broadcaster.
North Korea takes any criticism of its internal affairs sensitively and brands it a part of U.S. conspiracy to topple the government of its leader, Kim Jong-il.
CNN earlier this month broadcast a documentary, "Undercover in the Secret State," which among other images showed a grainy clip of what it called a public execution by firing squad of a man accused of helping a refugee cross into neighboring China.
YANJI, CHINA. Hungry and Stalinist North Korea keeps its' people under firm grip with public executions and a wide network of informants and prison camps, people who escaped from the country to China, human rights organizations and various news publications say. According to the interviews with nine North Korean escapees, the public executions have become routine in their country.
The North Koreans told in the Chinese city of Yanji, that the executed ones are often first beaten up to a near-dead condition, their elbows, knees and ankles are crushed, which after they are tied to a pole and shot before a firing squad.
"Their eyes, hands, middle bodies and feet are tied. Then they shoot them in every place," tells a teenager girl, who says that altogether ten shots are being fired. She estimates to have eye-witnessed 15 executions.
A 30-year-old man tells in another interview situation, that there are nine shots. International Herald Tribune interviewed one year ago a man, who said that for each person there are three soldiers, who all shoot three times - one in the head, the other one in the chest and third one in the stomach. That testimony is in line with the information gathered in Yanji.
All of the interviewed said they had seen several public executions. "At least twenty", a middle-aged woman says. Also children are invited to come and see the executions, the North Koreans say.
"For the first time, I saw the execution from far distance. I got nightmares. But I was told, that if I look nearer, it won't come to my dreams. So, next time I went very close and it helped. I don't see dreams about it any more," explains a woman in her thirties.
If this story is just CNN's attempt to garner ratings, it seems a bit widespread.
Those of you who are regular readers know that public executions are not the worst of it. Read these posts;
The Generals who run the government of Burma have, for various reasons which we can only guess, moved the capital of the country into the jungle. This is a central location which will enable them to better control the tribes further north.
Burma's top generals have finally begun their planned move to the hills North of Rangoon. For months Rangoon had been rife with rumours that the country's military rulers were planning to retreat to the hills in central Burma because of fears of a foreign invasion from the sea. This week deputy ministers have begun the major shift to the new government centre at Pyinmana.
More than two weeks ago the deputy interior minister cleared his desk in the ministry building ready to move. He is now installed in his newly completed offices, according to Burmese government sources. The ministers apparently are remaining in Rangoon for the time being and are slated to move by the end of the year.
Ten ministries have been relocated this week, including the interior, agriculture, forestry and power ministries. The government's Central Bureau of Statistics is also being transferred out of Rangoon. The second phase will begin at the start of next month follow by a further move at the beginning of January.
This is the start of a mass relocation of the Burmese government and military headquarters out of Rangoon. According to the blue-prints for the new complex, it is actually going to replace Rangoon as the country's capital.
"This is typical of Than Shwe's pretensions to be the new Burmese monarch. Like all the Burmese kings before him he is building a new palace-capital for posterity," according to a senior Burmese analyst, Win Min based in Thailand.
Burma's military rulers are preparing to relocate the country's centre of government inland for safety reasons, according to diplomats and government officials in Rangoon.
The military's headquarters, government ministries and the new parliament are all scheduled to be moved to an inland location within the next twelve months in what many in Burma are now calling "Escape City".
I'm not sure it's all about safety, although when you're paranoid I suppose everything is about safety.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 reinforced the top generals' fear that the US might attack Burma, according to analysts. Burma's military strategists have long argued that the country's defences were vulnerable to an attack from the sea. Burma's top generals have always suffered from a siege mentality. "Than Shwe has a bunker mentality, and when he's completely secure he'll launch his offensives," according to the Burmese analyst, Win Min. "But a key strategic drawback of the site is its lack of access to the sea, it is not close to a port," he added.
Many analysts believe that the move is also intended to give the regime better access to the frontier areas, especially the Chin, Karen, Kayah and Shan where most ethnic groups with ceasefire pacts with Rangoon are strong.
"Although the ethnic organisations have ceasefire agreements with the junta, the top generals remain highly suspicious of the ethnic groups and want to be in a better position to control them if they need to," said Win Min. [selection edited for punctuation only - ed.]
Fadhlallah: The Arabic language, 200 years ago, was a universal language. It's interesting to note that when Christopher Columbus went to America, in what language did he speak with the Indians? It is said that the language they spoke with the Indians – and I have indisputable documentation of this at home... The intellectuals among the Indians spoke Arabic. He took two Arabs with him, to serve as interpreters between the Spaniards and the Indians. He took two of them as translators. So you can imagine the historic and cultural value of Arabic. It's undoubtedly very important.
As he promised to the AFVKN and NARKN delegation on 27th October, US Congressman Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, has just sent a following letter to Park Gil-Yon, North Korean Ambassador to the UN, urging immediate resolution of the abduction issue.
We appreciate this strong warning message from a leading political figure in the United States towards a tyrannical regime.
It seems that the North Korean government likes to kidnap people from all over the world. I have written many times in this blog about the abduction of Japanese nationals by agents of the DPRK. We have known for a long time about the kidnapping of hundreds, and possible thousands of South Korean nationals by North Korean agents. Know we have this; Evidence grows that Thai woman abducted to North Korea
Hong Kong (dpa) - The memoirs of a U.S. army deserter have added weight to the theory that three young women who went missing 27 years ago in Macau were spirited away to North Korea, a news report said Sunday.
The trio - Thai masseuse Anocha Panjoy and jewellery shop assistants Hong Leng-ieng and So Mio-chun - have not been seen since the evening July 2, 1978, after they accepted a dinner invitation from a wealthy Japanese man who called himself Mr Fukoda.
At the time it was thought the women could have been abducted and forced into prostitution or murdered on the high seas after being enticed on board ships.
However in his recently published memoirs, American Charles Jenkins, who spent 39 years in North Korea after deserting his unit in 1965, claimed to have met Thai national Anocha Panjoy during his time there.
Jenkins says he knew her well because she was married to fellow deserter Larry Abshier who died of a heart attack in 1983. He also produced a photograph of a beach scene with a woman in the background he claimed was Anocha.
In his book Kokuhaku (To Tell the Truth) he says he believed there were abductees from all over the world in North Korea.
Thailand's government is investigating claims that a Thai woman missing since 1978 was kidnapped by North Korean agents and is now living there.
Relatives of the woman, Anocha Panjoy, were alerted to her possible fate by an article written by a US man who recently left North Korea.
Pyongyang has already "informally denied" abducting the woman, said Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkon.
And this should be interesting;
The North Korean charge d'affaires to Thailand, Kim Chol-nam will discuss [lie about, ed.] the case with Nopadol Gunavibool, director general of the East Asia Department at the Foreign Ministry, later this week, according to the Bangkok Post.
It is unbelievable to me that there are Westerners, particularly Americans, who support this monsterous regime. See this, and this, and this.
Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. No one lied. There were many valid reasons to take Saddam down, WMD being only one. Everyone left™ and right thought he had them. To say that he never did, as the Left™ now does begs the question, what about Halabja? I suppose those thousands of people just had a bad mass allergy.
Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it. We are not openly torturing anyone. Sleep deprivation and loud music are not torture. Oh, and ripping up Korans is not torture either.
Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night. If this idiot is writing about capturing illegal combatants on the battlefield, or nabbing people as they are caught trying to carry out terrorist acts is not "the merest suspicion". People found to be arrested in error are released.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule. Beneath discussion. And this idiot writes this in support of people who wish to impose a totalitarian Islamic Caliphate on all of us.
Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price. When?, Where?
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion. How is this happening? Oh, it's not. Actually this would be impossible. Even assuming that we could get soft-headed American judges to rule against abortion, it is so popular in Europe that NO WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY IS REPRODUCING AT REPLACEMENT LEVELS.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance. Opinion, and an idiotic one at that.
People look at all this and think of Hitler and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
It is interesting that, in the cause of "freedom" they have no respect for elections. They accuse the President of wishing to set up a fascistic dictatorship when, in fact, it is they who wish to overturn an election and impose some other government. They are hypocrites and worse than despicable.
Read the list of endorsers. It is very interesting.
My hatred for the government of North Korea does not translate to support of an American military presence in South Korea. That force is so small that it would be little more than a speed bump during a North Korean invasion of South Korea, and they know that. While it would be exceptionally tragic for South Korea to be defeated in war and be governed by the murderers of North Korea, it would be better to preserve our forces in Japan to be used later, after the initial thrust of the DPRK, rather than lose them in a diplomatic and political exercise. As it stands now, our troops are there as an act of generosity to the people and government of South Korea. In fact, they are a hindrance to our ability to negotiate freely with the North Korean government because they are basically hostages to the murderer freak-boy Kim Jong-Il. The only benefit to the South Koreans is business. Most of which still want our money.
It is time for us to go. Perhaps the world will learn something by watching what happens to South Korea once we leave. Western liberals and their leftist™ fellow travelers will celebrate, but their cruelty will be fully revealed. Ironically the defeat of South Korea would aid in the struggle against them elsewhere.
The (now former) Korean Ambassador to the U.S., Hong Seok-hyun, disputes this.
Hong attributed such conceptions to an insufficient under- standing of changes sweeping Korea and the world at large, and to excessive focus on trivial incidents.
One major change in Korean society was that the decision-making process has become more complex, Hong said. Now dissenters need to be convinced, and the process takes longer as the democratization of Korean society progresses.
I have to say that that is pretty lame. The people in joshua's photos were not waiting for the opportunity to be convinced of anything.
Perhaps he fears the weakening of American support for our presence there, and rightfully so.
TOKYO, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A Japanese citizens group will soon begin broadcast of a short-wave radio program for Japanese abductees living in North Korea.
The 30-minute Japanese-language program, "Shiokaze (Sea Breeze)," which will include messages from family members of abductees, will be broadcast daily at 11:30 p.m. starting in late November, the Asahi Shimbun reported Thursday.
The program will start with such messages as: "It won't be long. We will rescue you without fail." About 50 names of those believed to be held in North Korea will be announced each day.
With about 270 names on the list, the announcement of names will loop every five days.
The program also will tell listeners that many people in Japan are trying to rescue those snatched by North Korea, and that abductees should try -- with caution -- to send information to the outside world.
It is good to see the people acting independently of their government. This is a great American tradition and can only be done by people living in a free country.
More to follow on the story of Japanese (and others) abducted by North Korean agents.
Africans living and working in Paris have been pushed into ghettoized suburbs of Paris (banlieue), where the state has withdrawn education, health, and other services, while increasing police presence, checkpoints, raids on sans-papiers and levels of oppression in general. This week the suburbs have exploded.
The trigger came on Thursday, October 27th, 2005, as a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. When police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.
There it is, the fictitious "oppression" in a socialist country that does whatever it can to appease her Muslims - oh, wait! Who said they were Muslims? They are African high school kids.
On Sunday, however, provocation turned into outrage as the women's prayer room at de Bousquets mosque was teargassed by police. As people stumbled out gasping for air, the policemen called the women "whores", "bitches" and other insults.
That's right. Women peacefully at prayer (just happens to be at a mosque) were teargassed by the police for absolutely no reason at all.
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. "By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night," I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: "French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest."
"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
Liberal appeasers in the United States would have the same thing occur here.
NOTE: I wrote this post a couple of days ago hoping that something would change. Silly me.
The riots in France are now well covered by the MSM (for my new readers that's MainStream Media) although you may notice that they avoid a certain fact, knowledge of which is not permitted under current thought control laws.
It'’s not just Paris. Successive nights of riots have rocked parts of Århus, the second largest city in Denmark. Little to nothing has appeared in the English language press about the second front in the Eurabian intifada. Århus is home to an excellent Danish university, and is a place where I have spent some time. It is usually spelled "Aarhus" in English.
Fortunately, Hendrik, The Viking Observer, has translated in his blog a press account from Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper which has been the target of Muslim protests for publishing drawings of the prophet Muhammad.. A few excerpts:
Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. "This area belongs to us", the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack. Their words sound like a clear declaration of war on the Danish society. Police must stay out. The area belongs to immigrants....
He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark. "The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here".
A civil war is coming to France, and will eventually burn across all of Europe.
This man was one of the very great conductors of the 20th Century and a huge influence on me. As child and later as a music student at Illinois Wesleyan University and then Southern Methodist University I studied his recordings to learn how to clearly interpret symphonic music.
As I hadn't heard any news of him for some time, I did an internet search on his name and discovered the above listed article.
This is a man whose musical skills dwarfed virtually all others. It is impossible to say too much about him.
When I was a First Class Petty Officer on USS Florida I had a very hard time establishing myself as a leader in my Division. I ultimately succeeded. During that time I received great solace from his recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (the greatest work of music ever written). I still have memorized every tempo and every balance of every voice, even in the most densely contrapuntal sections of his recording of that very complex work. His Mahler Symphony Number 1 in D Major is my paradigm of how Mahler is to be played. There is too much to write about here. His musical thinking was formative for me.
CAUTION: The idea expressed here is illegal under current speech and thought control laws in most western countries.
Europe died in Auschwitz
I was walking along Raval (Barcelona) when all of a sudden I understood that Europe died with Auschwitz. We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20 million Muslims!
We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create. We burnt the people of the world, the one who is proclaimed the chosen people of God. Because it is the people who gave to humanity the symbolic figures who were capable of changing history (Christ, Marx, Einstein, Freud...) and who is the origin of progress and wellbeing.
We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving in under the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallacious cultural relativism, opened it's doors to 20 million Muslims, often illiterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in places such as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, and who are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madrid bombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the social welfare.
We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity to create with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition. We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who even under the worst possible conditions have always looked for a better peaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the pride of life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of our children.
Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia.
They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked.
This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians.
A government-brokered truce has only partially succeeded in reducing the number of incidents in recent years.
Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.
It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.
For liberals and the Left™ this is merely a local disturbance. The killing of Christians for the simple fact that they are Christians is perfectly understandable to them, even if the victims (true martyrs, no bomb vests required) are schoolgirls. According to the BBC and liberals in both Europe and America, the evils ones are those such as myself who would call this what it is, Islamic terrorism and part of an Islamic movement to exterminate Christians and Jews (and Hindus - Buddhists just have to wait for a few years, but they are on the list too).
The sea trials for USS Ohio have not occurred yet, so I have time for another post or two. I ran across this in the comments section at Little Green Footballs and thought I'd share it with you. Thanks go to Yank in the EU.
Anti-Americanism is the prevailing disease of intellectuals today. Like other diseases, it doesn't have to be logical or rational. But, like other diseases, it has a syndrome--a concurrent set of underlying symptoms that are also causes.
• First, an unadmitted contempt for democracy. The U.S. is the world's most successful democracy. The right of voters to elect more than 80,000 public officials, the length and thoroughness of electoral campaigns, the pervasiveness of the media and the almost daily reports by opinion polls ensure that government and electorate do not diverge for long and that Washington generally reflects the majority opinion in its actions.
It is this feature that intellectuals--especially in Europe--find embittering. They know they must genuflect to democracy as a system. They cannot openly admit that an entire people--especially one comprising nearly 300 million, who enjoy all the freedoms--can be mistaken. But in their hearts these intellectuals do not accept the principle of one person, one vote. They scornfully, if privately, reject the notion that a farmer in Kansas, a miner in Pennsylvania or an auto assembler in Michigan can carry as much social and moral weight as they do. In fact, they have a special derogatory word for anyone who acts on this assumption: "populist." A populist is someone who accepts the people's verdict, even--and especially--when it runs counter to the intellectual consensus (as with capital punishment, for example). In the jargon of intellectual persiflage, populism is almost as bad as fascism--indeed, it's a step toward it. Hence, the argument goes, the U.S. is not so much an "educated democracy" as it is a media-swayed and interest-group-controlled populist regime.
The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.
This is only one of three arguments that Mr. Johnson presents and really explains why the U. S. is the greatest country in the world. Go read the rest of the article for more.
I thank God that I was blessed to be born an American.
I will not be posting for a couple of weeks. I will be leaving soon to ride USS Ohio's (SSGN 726) sea trials. Of course I cannot say when they are, but we will leave soon.
International (MNN)--It began as a quiet campaign from the Vatican, but grew to a clamor that has been picked up by Non-Government Organizations, human rights groups and Christians.
Church leaders are pushing the United Nations to recognize 'Christianophobia' as an evil equal to anti-Semitism or 'Islamophobia'. Persecution of Christians may have been heightened because of the war on terrorism, however, it has always existed.
Documentation from human rights watchdog groups details a fervent campaign in many countries to stamp out Christianity.
Baptist World Alliance's Wendy Ryan wants believers in the West to pay attention, saying it's more than a human rights issue. "If there's a lack of religious freedom in any one place, it has an impact on every place. The person in the local pew should be really concerned that if freedoms are lacking in other parts of the world, who knows? There could come a day where we might have to fight for our freedoms." Ryan explains religious freedom, which includes the right to evangelize, is deteriorating. Take, for example, believers in places like Saudi Arabia. The Christians there are free to meet, but not to share what they believe. A similar scenario repeats itself in countries like China, Indonesia and Eritrea.
"We are mindful," Ryan says, "that there are restraints and the question then comes, if you are in a position where you are free to meet, but you are not free to openly share the Gospel, what do you do? That is a part of religious freedom, and that's something for which we also fight."
I'll write later about how some of these groups "evangelize" in countries that are already Christian (Protestant evangelizing in Russia and Eastern Europe is a sore spot with me), but any effort to fight anti-Christian (and anti-Jewish) persecution is good and very much needed. Helping in that effort is something that the United Nations will not do.
Piracy has never gone away. Indonesian waters have long been the most pirate infested waters in the world. Now the coast of Somalia has joined Indonesia as a region for mariners to avoid. Pirates are not like the cute Jack Sparrow character played by Johnny Depp. These are human scum who know no law or morality. They usually kill everyone they come across.
There is only one cure for piracy. Every Navy in the world should be involved in killing pirates.
Pirates have seized a cargo ship off the coast of Somalia, local officials have confirmed.
They said the Maltese-registered ship, Pagania, was attacked late on Wednesday as it sailed from South Africa to Europe with a cargo of iron ore.
The hijackers are reportedly demanding a $700,000 (£394,000) ransom for the release of the ship and its crew, all believed to be Ukrainian.
More than 20 ships have been seized or attacked in the area since March.
The International Maritime Bureau - which records such attacks - has recently advised ships "to keep as far away as possible from the Somali coast".
A UN-chartered ship carrying food aid to tsunami victims in northern Somalia, the MV Semlow, was released this month, after being held by hijackers for 100 days.
The Nigerian naval escorts were of no help to Americans Ryne Hathaway or Denny Fowler. The pirates who attacked their boat on the Olero Creek in Nigeria's Western Delta State April 23 gunned them down, along with five Nigerians.
Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, the pirates had drawn near the Americans'’ vessel -- possibly using military-style dress as a ruse -- and demanded that the escorts throw down their arms. The escorts refused and the pirates opened fire. Hathaway and Fowler, both Texans, had gone to Nigeria in April as contractors for ChevronTexaco Corp. to assess the feasibility of resuming drilling operations that had been shut down due to escalating tribal violence.
Weeks later in the Strait of Malacca, a narrow channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula notorious for violent attacks on shipping, the Indonesian transport Ikan Murni was boarded by two dozen pirates armed with automatic weapons. Waiting near Berhala Island, the pirates fired on the ship and boarded. Twelve crewmembers jumped overboard and were later picked up by local fisherman.
The pirates, believed to be Aceh separatists[who want an Islamist state, btw - ed.] in Indonesia, kidnapped the ship'’s master and another crewmember, and abandoned the ship. They demanded a substantial ransom for crewmembers'’ release, but authorities decline to say whether a ransom was paid. The owners of the Ikan Murni hired a tugboat to bring the ship back to shore, according to an account in "Tale of a Modern Pirate Gang" by piracy expert Mark Bruyneel.
Lawlessness on the High Seas
These incidents, and hundreds more like them each year, help explain why international piracy has become a top priority for military and police officials from Southeast Asia to Africa and the United States.
"The seas are unpoliced and unregulated and, therefore, attractive to those who want to exploit or abuse them," said U.S. Navy Secretary Gordon R. England. Speaking in July at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., England said, "On average, more than one ship each day is attacked, robbed, hijacked or sunk."
The effort to kill all pirates should be global. In fact there is significant international cooperation in this mission, mostly by the Americans, the Australians, the British, and others who have not given up on themselves (count the French out).
Of course, the UN in its effort to support all that is evil, covers for the pirates in the MV Semlow case, Somali pirates 'not looting aid'
The UN has denied reports from local residents that pirates who seized a ship carrying tsunami aid to Somalia have started looting the food.
"Our contacts in the region assure us that the vast bulk... of rice aboard the MV Semlow has not been taken ashore," the UN's Robert Hausser said.
Weeks of talks have failed to secure the release of the ship and its crew.
Of course, the piece quoted at the top of this post reports that they have been released. Sadly, no pirates were killed.
In addition to my degrees in music, I decided in the late 1980's to pursue a degree in electronics engineering. While I had to abandon that program as Uncle Sam decided to send my back to sea, I did finish all of the "flunk-out" courses. These generally had a 55-65% attrition rate. These are the calculus, physics, statics, and dynamics courses. I did well, with a B+ to A average, but in the 15 years since then, I have forgotten it all. This has been bothering me for some time. I took, and did well at, four semesters of calculus up to and including multi-variable calculus, differential equations with complex variables, linear algebra, advanced engineering mathematics (which by then was easy), and much more. I worked very hard and learned to enjoyed working out the problems as puzzles.
I am starting again. What got me going was actually a series of equipment failures. My trusty old HP 32S calculator died on me a few months ago and I had to replace it with an HP 33S. Probably the best "basic" calculator in the world.
I also had an advanced calculator that I used after I completed the calculus courses. This got me through the calculus-based physics courses. It was the HP 48SX. It is now gone, and I had to replace it with an HP 49g+, which is the most powerful calculator in the world.
The plan is, use only a No.2 Mirado, a legal pad, and the HP 33S for the numeric stuff for now. As I get back into the calculus, I'll use the HP 49g+ to check my answers. Then, when I get into the statics, dynamics, physics, and circuit theory the 49g+ will be fully employed.
One of my mathematics professors called me a "mathematical pit bull" then. I plan on getting that back.
It's easy to tell that we are in that happy season celebrated by Muslims worldwide. Charles Johnson has a whole series of stories on these celebrations.
Nothing like celebrating the one's most holy season by killing Jews, Americans, and other infidels more than one would during the rest of the year.
Our enemies on the Left™ like to accuse Charles and others (such as myself) of being Islamophobes (whatever the hell that is). We just report news, we don't make it. It would be nice if the MSM would report the news too.
Modern bioethics is probably the area in which the liberal culture of death is most clear. I have posted on the before in posts about Peter Singer here and here.
(AgapePress) - Burke Balch, director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics of the National Right to Life Committee, says the Netherlands is no longer sliding down a slippery slope, but rather has fallen off a moral cliff as the medical community in that nation expands its euthanasia practices. He notes that the Dutch government intends to expand its euthanasia guidelines to include so-called "mercy killing" of children with spina bifida or other disabilities, as long as the parents consent.
This development is horrifying, though not surprising, Balch contends, because once a price is placed on human life, the price goes down. "In the Netherlands, although they started with purely voluntary euthanasia for people who were dying," he says, "they moved very rapidly to individuals who were not dying but were disabled."
Soon after that, the head of the Powell Center says, doctors in the Netherlands started euthanizing "individuals who were neither dying nor disabled but who were simply old and, in fact, lonely. They moved on to depressed patients, then they moved into cases where the patient hadn't given consent at all."
For instance, Balch asserts, the pro-euthanasia doctors in the Netherlands have now moved on to euthanizing the elderly in nursing homes and even killing children without parental consent. He says it is obvious that arguments about physician-assisted death being the patient's choice are no longer relevant. Instead, he insists, it has come to be about a determination of who is fit to live.
"One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. According to other sources it had been issued by Sheikh 'Abdallah Al-Najdi.
The fatwa declared that it is only permissible to play soccer when its rules are different than the accepted international rules. This was based on a hadith [Prophetic tradition] which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews. The fatwa read:
"1. Don't play soccer with four lines [surrounding the field], since this is the way of the non-believers, and the international soccer rules require drawing [these lines] before playing.
"2. One should not use the terminology established by the non-believers and the polytheists, like: 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick,' 'goal,' and 'out of bounds.' Whoever pronounces these terms should be punished, reprimanded, kicked out of the game, and should even be told in public: 'You have come to resemble the non-believers and the polytheists, and this has been forbidden.'
"3. If one of you falls during the game and breaks his hand or his foot, or if the ball hits his hand, he shall not say 'foul' and shall not stop playing because of his injury. The one who caused his injury shall not receive a yellow or a red card, but rather the case shall be judged according to Muslim law in the case of a broken bone or an injury. The injured player shall exercise his rights according to the shari'a, as [is stated] in the Koran, and you must testify together with him that so-and-so tripped him up intentionally.
"4. Do not set the number [of players] according to the number of players used by the non-believers, the Jews, the Christians, and especially the vile America. In other words, 11 players shall not play together. Make it a larger or a smaller number.
"5. Play in your normal clothing, or in pajamas, or something like that, but not in colorful pants and numbered jerseys. Pants and jerseys are not appropriate clothing for Muslims. They are the clothing of the non-believers and of the West, and therefore you must be careful not to wear them.
"6. Once you have fulfilled [these] conditions and rules, you must play the entire game with the intention of improving your physical fitness for the purpose of fighting Jihad for Allah's sake and preparing for the time when jihad is needed. One should not waste time in celebrating a false victory.
"7. Do not play for 45 minutes, as is the practice among the Jews, the Christians, and in all of the countries of non-belief and atheism. This is also the length of time that is accepted in the soccer clubs of those who have strayed from the righteous path. You must be different than the non-believers, depart from their path, and not imitate them in anything.
"8. Do not play in two parts [i.e. halves], but rather in one part or in three parts, so as to be different than the sinful and rebellious, the non-believers and the polytheists.
"9. If neither side has defeated the other and neither side has inserted the ball between the posts, do not waste further time [in an extension] or in 'penalty kicks' until someone has won, but rather leave [the field] immediately, since this kind of victory is precisely an imitation of the non-believers and [adoption] of the international soccer rules.
"10. Do not appoint someone who follows the players around and is called 'a referee', since, after canceling the international rules such as 'foul,' 'penalty kick,' 'corner kick' and so on, there is no need for his presence. Moreover, his presence is an imitation of non-believers, Jews and Christians, and constitutes adoption of the international [soccer] rules.
"11. In the course of the game it is forbidden for groups of youth to gather and watch, since if you are gathering for the sake of sports activity and physical fitness, as you claim, why should they be looking at you? You must make them participate [in order to improve] their physical fitness and prepare for jihad; or else say to them, 'Go propagate Islam and seek out moral corruption in the marketplaces and in the press [in order to correct it], and leave us to improve our physical fitness.'
"12. When you finish playing, be careful not to talk about the game, and not to say 'we play better than the opponent,' or 'so-and-so is a good player,' etc. Moreover, you should speak about your body, its strength and its muscles, and about the fact that you are playing as [a means of] training to run, attack, and retreat in preparation for [waging] jihad for Allah's sake.
"13. If one of you inserts the ball between the posts and then starts to run so that his companions will run after him and hug him, like the players in America and France do, you should spit in his face, punish him, and reprimand him, for what do joy, hugging, and kissing have to do with sports?
"14. You must take the three posts or iron rods which you use to construct [the goal], and into which the ball is kicked, and replace them with just two instead of three. In other words, take out the cross-post or rod… so that [the goal] will not be similar to what is customary among the non-believers, and in order to violate the despotic international soccer rules.
"15. Do not do what is known as 'substitution' – that is, putting in a player in place of a player who has been disqualified – since this the custom of the non-believers in America and elsewhere."
The good news is, Saudi authorities and the Press are now telling their citizens that not all fatwas are issued by people qualified or knowledgeable enough to do so. In fact, this fatwa is criticized as unIslamic (a common fig leaf) and dangerous to youth for both religious and non religious reasons.
In this article the discussion of this fatwa follows. Go and read the entire thing. Perhaps the Saudis are finally getting a clue (but I doubt it).
It seems a papal commission reached a result that Pope Paul VI did not desire,
"--so the Pope simply overruled the experts who were qualified on this subject [artificial contraception] . . . . . This is not the only way Vatican methods run parallel with those of Washington. Rome too is now ruled from the margins. Most Catholics hold views different from the Pope’s on many matters."
Er, come again? When the Vatican is being run by the Pope it is being ruled "from the margins"? At the Roman "center," then, would be papal commissions endorsing the majority will?
One wonders how many readers—how many Catholic readers, forsooth--skim over flabbergasting stuff like this and think, "Yeah—right! What makes the Pope think he has the right to run the Church?" Apparently the author expects it.
What is obvious to Orthodox Christians is sadly lost in this liberal, godless culture. The Orthodox Church and, for the most part, the Roman Catholic Church are the preservers of the original faith, having defended it against the many terrible heresies of the first four centuries. We have the witness of the early Saints and Holy Fathers to teach us, and our Priests and Bishops to transmit that teaching to us. The Church teaches us how to live a holy life. Secular liberalism cannot.
God doesn't change. He is what he is, and the way to personal sanctification is what it is, regardless of how a democratically conducted poll would have it.
We learn from our Bishops, our Priests, our monastics, and other holy people how to be holy. How to stengthen our spiritual lives (this has nothing to do with any kind of emotionalism). How to be closer to God.
USS Parche (SSN 683) is in Dry Dock 2 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard being recycled. There is not a lot left of her. I walk past her several times each day as Dry Dock 2 is between my office and Pier 6 where USS Ohio (SSGN 726) is moored. She has been gutted and is cut in half, with the forward end of her reactor compartment capped-off.
Submarines have never had the same kind of beauty that many surface ships have, see my earlier post on USS Mississippi. In military terms, that matters not at all. USS Parche and her crews executed missions of inestimable importance to the national security. For a clue, read Blind Man's Bluff, it is a great read.
There is no evidence that Osama bin Laden was killed or injured in the earthquake that recently occurred in Pakistan. There is good news, however - No Evidence Bin Laden Hurt or Killed:
Meanwhile, scores of activists from an Islamist charity linked to a banned Pakistani militant organization died in the devastating earthquake.
The militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, was outlawed by Pakistan in January 2002, a month after its fighters were accused of taking part in an attack on India's Parliament in New Delhi.
A spokesman for Jamat-ud-Dawa, a group drawn from the ranks of Lashkar, said the charity'’s mosques, hospitals, schools and seminaries were obliterated in Saturday's earthquake. "Many of our members have been killed. They are in scores while several others are still trapped under the rubble," the spokesman said yesterday.
It is of course tragic in the extreme that such an event as this earthquake could kill so many, but the deaths of Islamists like those of al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba is not to be regretted. Good riddance to them.
The Chinese see North Korea as an important source of minerals and is investing hundreds of millions of yuan in mineral ventures, particularly the new Taean Friendship Glass Plant Resource-hungry China looks to North Korea
State-run Korean Central Television in Pyongyang has not only begun regular weekly updates on the Taean Friendship Glass Plant, it has also spruced up its studio to play the part of attractive investment locale.
On Aug. 11, for the first time in North Korean news, an announcer and a reporter were shown at the same time, a man and a woman, talking with each other about the plant, said Yonhap News Agency.
A flashy new flat TV screen was also displayed in the drab studio.
"North Korea is publicizing the project positively," said an official at South Korea's Unification Ministry. "It's because the project is a symbol of the friendship between China and North Korea."
Part of the pomp surrounding the plant will be a ceremony to celebrate its completion. It will be held Monday-the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party.
Ordinary workers, meantime, are having to brave what the Workers' Party calls a cut in its "minimum wage"-from $80 (9,120 yen) to $38 (4,332 yen) a month. The idea apparently is to woo foreign investors by showcasing cheap labor.
Worker's paradise? And, this will help preserve the Dear Murdering Freak in power.
The liberal press in the U.S. Europe would have you believe that the "Israeli occupation" is the reason why Palestinian Christians have been fleeing Palestine. That is a lie. This piece starts with what is not old news, but makes a very important point.
The historical Christian towns of Bethlehem and Nazereth (sic), once home to large Christian populations, have seen that population flee en masse due to Muslim intimidation and violence. As HonestReporting has documented:
● Over 100 Palestinian terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity in 2002, using it as a fortress from which to fire upon Israeli troops, while holding nuns, priests and monks hostage, and looting or destroying virtually everything of value inside the building.
● During 2000-2002, the PA's Tanzim militia chose the Christian town of Beit Jala as a base for unprovoked shooting at Jerusalem. The Tanzim were specifically positioned in or near Christian homes, hotels, churches, and the Greek Orthodox club, knowing fully well that these sites would be hard-hit by Israeli return fire.
● In 1995, Bethlehem was 62% Christian, but today is less than 20% Christian. Before 1995, Bethlehem had a majority-Christian municipal council, but when the Palestinian Authority took over the town, Yassir Arafat replaced the municipal council with a predominately Muslim council, and Christian Arabs fled Bethlehem in droves after a radical Islamic wave began inciting against them.
● On February 6, 2002, the Boston Globe reported "a rampage of Palestinian Muslims against Christian shops and churches in Ramallah... Police made no attempt to stop the mob, which besieged and damaged a widely respected youth center associated with the Boy Scouts of America after torching the Christian properties...'The truth is this is a problem between Christians and Muslims,' said one Christian businessman."
A Palestinian government under Hamas or the PLO/PA (Palestinian Authority) will spell the end of Christianity outside of Israel as Christians will be killed and Church buildings both ancient and modern will be destroyed. All the while it will be the Israelis who will be criticized, not the murderers of Hamas or the PLO/PA.
You can count on liberals and the MSM to completely ignore this situation.
The French satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine reported in its September 14th issue that during the visit of French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to the new Holocaust museum in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem on September 8, he asked - while perusing maps of European sites where Jewish communities had been destroyed - whether British Jews were not also murdered. Needless to say, Douste-Blazy's question was met by his hosts with amazement. "But Monsieur le minister," Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, "England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II."
The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: "Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?"
Douste-Blazy arrived in Israel earlier this month for a first visit, as the guest of his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
According to an investigation by Haaretz on Sunday, the event actually occurred as described, although no official source was willing to confirm it. Douste-Blazy did visit Yad Vashem on September 8, at 11 A.M. He was in fact escorted by the curator of the museum, his entourage from the French foreign ministry and several French reporters.
One of the escorts confirmed on Sunday, on condition of anonymity, that the quotes in Le Canard were accurate, and that they caused great embarrassment. "It's a bit difficult to understand," the source said, "how an educated French person, who was serving in the French government during the huge celebrations of the Normandy landings, does not remember basic facts about the history of World War II, and especially Britain's role, especially in light of the fact, that France's great leader, General de Gaulle, led the operations of the Resistance from exile in London."
The French embassy in Israel learned of the embarrassing incident from Le Canard.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said in response that the French foreign minister had visited the Holocaust memorial site at the said date and time, and that she hoped his visit was "successful and enriching."
Philippe Douste-Blazy certainly seems to be in need of significant "enrichment". A mistake such as this is less the result of ignorance of the history of the British role in the War as an assumption that the mass deportation of Jews is a normal occurrence warranting surprise at the British failure to do so.
Saturday's demonstration in Washington, in favor of immediate withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, was the product of an opportunistic alliance between two other very disparate "coalitions." Here is how the New York Times (after a front-page and an inside headline, one of them reading "Speaking Up Against War" and one of them reading "Antiwar Rallies Staged in Washington and Other Cities") described the two constituenciess of the event:
The protests were largely sponsored by two groups, the Answer Coalition, which embodies a wide range of progressive political objectives, and United for Peace and Justice, which has a more narrow, antiwar focus.
The name of the reporter on this story was Michael Janofsky. I suppose that it is possible that he has never before come across "International ANSWER," the group run by the "Worker's World" party and fronted by Ramsey Clark, which openly supports Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, Slobodan Milosevic, and the "resistance" in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Clark himself finding extra time to volunteer as attorney for the génocidaires in Rwanda. Quite a "wide range of progressive political objectives" indeed, if that's the sort of thing you like. However, a dip into any database could have furnished Janofsky with well-researched and well-written articles by David Corn and Marc Cooper—to mention only two radical left journalists—who have exposed "International ANSWER" as a front for (depending on the day of the week) fascism, Stalinism, and jihadism.
The group self-lovingly calling itself "United for Peace and Justice" is by no means "narrow" in its "antiwar focus" but rather represents a very extended alliance between the Old and the New Left, some of it honorable and some of it redolent of the World Youth Congresses that used to bring credulous priests and fellow-traveling hacks together to discuss "peace" in East Berlin or Bucharest. Just to give you an example, from one who knows the sectarian makeup of the Left very well, I can tell you that the Worker's World Party—Ramsey Clark's core outfit—is the product of a split within the Trotskyist movement. These were the ones who felt that the Trotskyist majority, in 1956, was wrong to denounce the Russian invasion of Hungary. The WWP is the direct, lineal product of that depraved rump. If the "United for Peace and Justice" lot want to sink their differences with such riffraff and mount a joint demonstration, then they invite some principled political criticism on their own account. And those who just tag along … well, they just tag along.
To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.
Read the whole thing, Mr. Hitchens supplies a solid argument to demonstrate his point.
There is absolutely nothing so evil that it will not be supported by the American and European Left. This is truly an evil political movement that seeks to promote tyranny and destroy the US and Israel.
Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate has now come out against the nomination of Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. Now Mr. Reid is from a conservative state, and is himself opposed to abortion. Judge Roberts has made clear that there is no place on the Supreme Court for ideologues. You would think that a guy like Mr. Reid would like to make his constituents happy by supporting a nominee who reflects the views of Nevada and, at least in part, Mr Reid himself. But no, he has been given other orders.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Tuesday that he would oppose the confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice, surprising both the White House and fellow Democrats still conflicted about how to vote.
In becoming the first Democrat to declare formally how he intended to vote, Mr. Reid may have made it more difficult for fellow Democrats to support Judge Roberts. Many Senate observers expected Mr. Reid, who comes from a Republican-leaning state and is opposed to abortion, to support Judge Roberts.
And the Democratic leader himself said Tuesday that he had earlier given the White House a list of nominees who would be objectionable and that Judge Roberts was not on it.
In announcing his decision in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor, Mr. Reid questioned Judge Roberts' commitment to civil rights and said he was "very swayed" by the civil rights and women's rights leaders who testified Thursday in opposition to the nomination - and with whom Mr. Reid met privately that same day. Liberal advocacy groups, who raise millions of dollars to support Democratic candidates and who have been putting intense pressure on Democrats to oppose the nomination, were elated. ... One centrist Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, said Tuesday that he had "not seen anything that would cause me to vote against" confirmation of Judge Roberts to be the nation's 17th chief justice.
Last Thursday, as Mr. Reid was weighing his decision, representatives of about 40 advocacy groups met with him in the Capitol; the reason, they said, was to underscore the threat they believe Judge Roberts poses to Democrats' core causes, racial and gender equality. Hovering in the background was a political argument, that if Democrats vote in favor of Judge Roberts, they will be held liable by voters for the decisions he makes on the court.
"He got the message loud and clear, didn't he?" Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said of Mr. Reid on Tuesday.
Yes, he did. If a nominee who is as nonideolgical as Judge Roberts cannot get Democrat Party support, why would the President think that any nominee of his could? Of course he would not think so, and would have no reason to consider Democrat Party opinion in his next nominee.
The not-so-loyal opposition Party wants to influence the President in his choices of nominees to the Supreme Court. But if Mr. Bush has to count on Democratic Party opposition to any choice that he may make, why should he consider them at all?
She has now arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for permanent repairs. I was standing topside on USS Ohio (SSGN 726) and observed USS San Francisco driving into Sinclair Inlet and then the Shipyard.
The damage that she sustained is extremely extensive. In fact, the ship was very nearly lost. Here are some photographs of her in dry dock after her arrival in Guam shortly after the grounding (with blue tarp installed to cover stuff that is classified).
Despite the obviously very serious damage that she sustained in an accident that took a sailor's life, she will be rebuilt and in the end have greater capabilities than she had before. Trust me, I hear things in the shipyard. We will make her better than she was.
How is it that people who hate the United States have such a huge part in memorializing Americans killed in terrorist attacks? It was just a few days ago that I posted on the abomination that is to be part of the "memorial" in New York City. Now we have the obscenity of a giant Islamic crescent to be used as a "memorial" to those murdered onboard Flight. 93 in Pennsylvania. Charles Johnson has been writing on the Flight 93 "memorial" here and here. Read the articles to which he links.
Zombietime has an excellent demonstration that clearly shows that this is, without doubt, to be an Islamic crescent. Flight 93 Memorial Project
Included on zombie's page is "an azimuthal equidistant world map centered on the location of the Flight 93 Memorial which seems to indicate that the crescent is oriented toward Mecca" created by "Etaoin Shrdlu". That is the picture that you see at the top of this post. Were this to be shown on a Mercator projection we would see the great circle route.
Listen up: The final decision on this memorial has to be approved by The Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton. I don't agree with some of her policies, but right now we need to set that aside and go straight to the top. Even if every intermediate decision-maker approves of the design, she can veto it. She has the final word.
Let her know that this is completely unacceptable. Gale Norton is one of the most conservative members of Bush's cabinet, so I think she will truly understand why this memorial is unacceptable.
You can send messages to her at the Department of Interior email address
As it stands now, the memorials to victims of the attacks of Islamic terrorists on 9/11/01 in New York City and Pennsylvania are mockeries. At least the Pentagon Memorial is respectful.
Newton Emerson is on great form in the Irish Times today. Since it deserves a much wider play on the Internet. I have permission from him to republish it on the net. It's a rhetorical gem.
By Newton Emerson
As the full horror of Hurricane Katrina sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if this is the end of George Bush's presidency. The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that every copy of the US Constitution was destroyed in the storm. Otherwise President Bush will remain in office until noon on January 20th, 2009, as required by the 20th Amendment, after which he is barred from seeking a third term anyway under the 22nd Amendment.
As the full horror of this sinks in, thousands of desperate columnists are asking if the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term will not still be damaged in some terribly satisfying way.
The answer is almost certainly yes, provided that the entire political agenda of George Bush's second term consists of repealing the 22nd Amendment. Otherwise, with a clear Republican majority in both Houses of Congress, he can carry on doing pretty much whatever he likes.
Unlike Slugger O'Toole, I do not have permission to republish the article, so go read the whole thing. This is really good stuff.
The USS Mississippi (CGN-40) is in Dry Dock #3 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. She was decommissioned on the 28th of July, 1997. I walk past the remains of her hull as she is being cut up for recycling. When I started working in the Shipyard most of the hull was there, although the superstructure had been removed. Now there is very little left. The Virginia class of nuclear powered cruiser (CGN) were beautiful ships that were decommissioned before their time. It is a damn shame.
I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer and a freelance performing 'cellist who brews his own beer. I am an Orthodox Christian. I am NOT a professional journalist, therefore nothing prevents me from writing what is true. I am now working as an Engineering Technician at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
