You are kidding, right?

Over at Khalifah.com, I was intrigued to read this:

"The party (Hizb Ut-Tahrir) also works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society and engages in dialogue with Western thinkers, policymakers and academics."

I was intrigued because the actual method of 'projecting a positive image of Islam to Western Society', based on a perusal of this website, is to pour vitriol on our social life, institutions and principal political figures; lie about our policies; distort events from all around the world and tell us how our inferior societies will be much better off once they've been over-run and coerced into muslim observance.

But then we see this-

What is Hizb ut-Tahrir’s methodology?

Hizb ut-Tahrir adopts the methodology employed by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) when he established the first Islamic State in Madinah. The Prophet Muhammad limited his struggle for the establishment of the Islamic State to intellectual and political work. He established this Islamic state without resorting to violence. He worked to mobilise public opinion in favour of Islam and endeavoured to sway the political and intellectual elites of the time. Despite the persecution and boycott of the Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims, they never resorted to violence.

Islam, especially at the beginning, was established by military conquest. In particular, places that had humiliated or rejected Muhammed with contumely were conquered with particular viciousness. This H.u-T statement is a modulated, calculated lie. But thanks for the heads-up about subverting our self-proclaimed 'political and intellectual elites'. The great liars lying on behalf of islam have gone a great distance in persuading those so-called elites of the 'true' nature of islam: the religion of peace. Its not, of course, never has been, and for the duration of its existence (can't be long, methinks) will not be.

As Mark Steyn points out, if there is some hideous crime committed these days, the odds that the guy responsible will probably be called Mohammed are very good indeed.

Damn lion! Bit my head off!

Remember the limerick about the lady from Niger? I'll repeat for those of you unfortunate enough not to have been exposed to a lot of Edward Lear:

There was a young lady from Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside
And the smile on the face of the tiger

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5003160.stm

Sadly, nobody in Britain seems to GET this idea. Want to go off to Israel and arse around in somebody else's civil war? Seems like a fine idea. Especially if you are burning with righteous indignation on behalf of the poor ickle Palestinians. But actions have consequences, and going into a war zone can have really nasty high velocity consequences.

But instead of just accepting that if you put your head in the lions mouth, that may well be your last act; nowadays people feel that they must be allowed to sashay about the world opining their little opinions and bleating their indignation and protesting their little protests and without ever meeting up with the reality of those places they swan in to. The reality of wars especially civil wars is that many people die, very often unjustly and without much reason. If you go to one, that could possibly happen to you.

I don't feel sorry for James Miller and Tom Hurndall. They were men who chose to go into a very dangerous place, and wander around the VERY FRONT of the front line. I don't really care what they were doing there, but it was completely voluntary. And the consequences of their actions was, they died. Tough.

The Anglican Socialist Commune

It was with a sinking heart that I read the headline: "Church Plan attacks Government". The Anglican Church has become a home for soft-headed and blasphemous views on just about everything. 2000 years with no women or homo bishops? Who cares!! We're 'Modern'. So I just knew that in some way, this Church plan was going to be a bozo-fest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5003498.stm

And sure enough it is. The minimum wage is too low!! The government uses poverty as a 'tool of coercion' against asylum seekers!! Jobs for life are not guarunteed to everybody!! (ok, I made up that last one). But seriously, these are the views of mid-20th century communists. How many Anglican bishops DO believe in the state as the mechanism to cure all ills, and DON'T believe in the healing power of Jesus's blood? I'm guessing its a lot. This bunch of washed up intellectual midgets with their trendy vicar nonsense need superannuating, and the Anglican church needs to take Christianity seriously again. It also needs to take the 'Anglican' part seriously, i.e. its the Church of England, and for the English.

Put away 'Das Kapital' guys, and take out those Bibles!

Public policy the modern way

The way that public policy is conducted in Great Britain has gone from lean, relatively mean, effective and certainly cost effective 100 years ago; to bloated, grotesquely generous, ineffective and utterly cost-inefficient.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2190421,00.html

This story about Britains inability to rid itself of cunning and cynical enemies covers pretty much all those bases. There are seven million people working for the government in this country, none of whom can send these enemy activists back to their homelands. They can provide them with homes, cash and legal support however.
So even though there can't be more than a handful of people in the whole country who actually want that to happen, thats what happens.

When are we going to make this country work properly again?

Is political correctness a myth?

I hear more and more often that political correctness is mythical, a straw man created by right-wing ideologues so they can launch tirades against the humanitiarian policies of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.

I just downloaded the 'Electoral Commission Guidance on registering as a political party'. Government document from a government department. On the cover are five pictures montaged. The first one is of a young woman who looks Iranian or perhaps arabic. The second is a stock shot of the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. The third is of a hand holding a mobile phone. The fourth is a middle aged black woman. And the fifth is a hand putting a letter in the letter box.

As a piece of propaganda, its dull and worthy, but it is undoubtedly politically correct. Only 6% of the British population are anything other than white anglo-saxon yet you would think from this document that there weren't actually any white people in the country at all. Thats just silly and condescending and factually incorrect. Which is a pretty good working definition of political correctness.

Highway to nowhere

What could be more symbolic of the disastrous and through-the-looking-glass world of African politics than the recent naming of a refurbished highway in Malawi. Bingu wa Mutharika thought it was appropriate to name it after Robert Mugabe, marxist dictator of Zimbabwe. The highway was paid for by the EU.

What we have here is a mutually supportive gang of thugs, un-reformed marxists and parasites, using our money to defecate on our heads. Malawi is a desertified disaster zone, policed by government spies, ruled over by mean and stupid men. Zimbabwe, about the same.

"Some of the roads in this country were named after criminals, others were named by colonialists, perhaps for killing more blacks. However, in Mugabe we have a hero of Africa and he deserves the honour,"

Wa Mutharika said at a ceremony attended by the veteran Zimbabwe leader

That, unfortunately, is about the level of debate you get a lot in Africa. Just curious, but how many roads in Malawi WERE named for colonialists for killing more blacks? Names? Dates? killings? And the roads named after criminals? Why would you do that? We tend to put our criminals in prison, in disgrace...

What heroic deeds has Mr Mugabe performed? The Rhodesians voluntarily handed over power to the transitional government of Abel Muzorewa without ever having lost a battle, as I recall. Then Mr Mugabe won rigged election over Zapu, the Ndebele party, which he then destroyed root and branch in two years of murderous terror. Is that the heroic act Mr Mutharika was referring to? Perhaps it was the judicial theft of 5,000 commercial farms from their owners in the late nineties up to the present which has had the knock-on effect of almost completely destroying the Zimbabwean economy and given it +1000% inflation? We shall never know, I suspect.

What I do know is, every dollar we give these murderous buffoons is another dollar they can squirrel away to Switzerland, or another dollar they can use to make their own peoples lives a little bit more shit than it is now. Once we're done with Iraq, there are some more regime changes we should seriously consider.

Who's counting?

An article on the BBC website from the 6th of April quotes civilian casualty figures from a website called Iraq Body Count. The count is 39,296. A terrible toll.

Much harder to find, a body count for Darfur, Sudan. As of 15th of Sept 2005, the figure was 370,000. God knows what it is now, in May 2006. The body count for the Democratic Republic of Congo, is 3.9 million people, according the Lancet, journal of the British Medical Association. Interestingly, Iraq Body Count is the only dedicated website for casualty figures for these three ongoing wars.

Huge amounts of web space are dedicated to discussing those 39,296 deaths in Iraq. As far as I could tell, there is one professor (Eric Reeves, Smith College) counting the casualties in Darfur. Its very difficult to find anyone other than the Lancet who can give even a vague estimate of the DRC casualties. Which I think goes to show that one casualty is very much different from another casualty.

Muslim casualty murdered by a muslim in Iraq? Very Interesting! Black Muslim casualty murdered by an Arab Muslim in Darfur? Not very Interesting. Black African murdered by another black African in DRC? Yawn. The utterly disgusting thing about lefties and anti-war idiots is that they really don't care about Darfurians or Congolese or Rwandans or Sierra Leonians or Liberians. Can't get them to talk about them AT ALL. Doesn't make it onto their radar. They can discuss every nuance of Palestinian oppression with eery intensity. They can witter on for hours about US tactics in Ramadi or Mosul or Kut. But ask them how many times they've marched for the poor pitiful wrecks in the eastern provinces of Congo? How many times have they 'spoken truth to power' over the massacring of defenseless tribesmen in Darfur?

I have lived in Africa, and know first hand how much the people I spoke to long for what we have- safe, prosperous, interesting lives. And how they feel trapped and threatened and disempowered by their own criminal governments and the warlords who run most African countries. Anybody on the left care? Absolutely not. Unless there is some screeching anti-Bush or anti-Blair mileage to be made, those poor folk can just go hang.

The Fundamentals

I was just musing about an article I read a few days ago in the London Times newspaper. It was an opinion article about the supposed last days of Tony Blair in his job. Supposed, I say, because Tony Blair must secretly gloat over the vast number of obituaries written for him that were 'greatly exaggerated'. But in the center of this piece was the following hugely contentious statement, tossed out with inappropriate casualness 'On the fundamentals, Tony Blair has got pretty much everything right'.

Really? The fundamentals are defense of the nation from its enemies, keeping public order, avoiding harm to the economy, administering the machinery of government, running elections, maintaining the constitution and all legally constituted institutions of governance, collecting taxes and conducting relations with other states. So lets do a quick audit:

Defense: probably his biggest 'win' from an objective point of view. we have aligned ourselves unequivocally with the US, the only serious international player committed to free and just societies around the world. 1/1

Keeping public order: crime in Britain is rampant and getting worse. The Police are hog-tied and prevented by PC rules from acting strongly and effectively against criminals. Sentance lengths are stupidly short. Alternative punishments are non-existent. Habeas corpus and trial by jury have been undermined. 1/2

Avoiding harm to the economy: 7 million people in Britain work for the government. Taxes take 41% of GDP, the most EVER. The burden of bureaucratic nonsense on businesses is huge. The British economy is creaking under the strain of the huge welfare state edifice it has to support. 1/3

Running elections: For the first time in 150 years, electoral fraud is a problem in the UK. A number of elections in Birmingham were straighforwardly fraudulant. Postal voting is universal, rather than just for those who could not leave their houses. All because of a fictional 'voter deficit'. 1/4

Maintaining the Constitution, and the institutions of state: The house of lords has been gutted and now exclusively exists for party-political patronage. The position of Lord Chancellor has been dispensed with. Psuedo-parliaments have been created in Wales and Scotland, with ill-defined powers that compete with Westminster in some respects. 1/5

Collecting taxes: very successful. much too successful. 1/6

Conducting relations with foreign states: pretty successful. staunch ally to the US, annoyer of France and Germany, friend to all countries with equitable, free and open governance, and pretty hostile to tyrannies. 2/7

(Healthcare and Education): these are NOT fundamental functions of governments. And perhaps thats why this government does such a bad job with them. The healthcare systems in this country are chaotic, over-funded and utterly disorganised. Remember the Soviet economy? It ran on the same principles... Education- run by a huge and ever-increasing number of wonks who produce a fiat every day to pile on the 50,000 from last week. Also chaotic and very bad at doing its core tasks. 2/8

So by my reckoning, Tony Blairs record is abysmal. Its really only his strong line on foreign relations and going to war on our enemies that retrieves him somewhat.

But it just isn't enough. The wealth of this nation has been poured in a torrent into social security systems that breed sullen, depraved, anti-social wretches with never-ending requirements for more government hand-outs. The governing party have created hundreds of thousands of psuedo-jobs paid for out of taxes. The number of government employees minutely observing, statistically analysing and bureacratically handcuffing other people working will soon outnumber the people actually creating wealth. Rather than being the 'brain' of the civil 'body', the state has become a massive parasite on it, sucking its lifeblood at an unsustainable rate. And Tony Blair sat there and watched.

2/8 is not good enough, not by a country mile.

Simple questions, crazy answers

Tony Blair has rightly condemned a decision of a British judge to allow hijackers from Afghanistan to remain in Britain and not be at risk of deportation. When the law becomes this absurd, only the unwise refrain from saying so. Which in Britain is about 50% of the population, seemingly.

On the same day, the report on the performance of the security services prior to the 7/7 bombings of London has come out, and says that although no mistakes were made, limited resources meant that the individuals who actually did the bombings were not under scrutiny.

Lets describe the situation we have. A significant number (unknown at present) of the muslim population of Britain (at present about 1.2 million) are what the mainstream media calls radicalized. 'Radicalized' in this context means: they have been taught islam properly (all the jihadi language about killing infidels and making war on unbelievers is canonical and based on an accurate reading of the koran and hadiths) and are putting into practise what their religion teaches them must be done. 'Radicalized' actually means, proper muslim.

The implications of that for the security services is having to monitor hundreds of thousands of people. Is that sustainable? Can the 59 million non-muslims of Britain be expected to foot the bill and exert the considerable effort to monitor, patrol and imprison such a massive number of people? We need to seriously ask whether Britain can afford to have a muslim minority of those proportions within its borders. Controlling islamism in foreign countries is a matter for the governments of those countries and perhaps the international community. Controlling islamism in Britain is up to us, and doing it may entail virtually unprecedented policies. Only twice before in British history have we had a large minority population who were self-declared traitors or potential traitors to this country- the Danes in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Roman Catholics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both of those minorities were subject to harsh and bloody policies before they were finally neutralised as a threat to the life of the nation. Both received help and support from external enemies of Britain who saw them as useful adjuncts to their own efforts to destroy this nation.

Which brings us back to absurd laws. The first duty of a government is to protect its subjects from enemies external and internal. We need ministers and judges who will enact laws to allow the state to do that job. We need ministers and judges who will not spout pious politically correct claptrap that puts our lives and the lives of our descendants in jeopardy. And we need to withdraw from any agreements that tie our hands and make it virtually impossible to kick foreigners out of Britain who hate us and want to destroy us.

Ruth Kelly the apostate

Poor Ruth Kelly has been exposed as an apostate from Britain's very strict state religion, 'PoliticalCorrectitude'. Rather, she believes in something called 'Sin'. The Times is suitably appalled, as if it had been discovered that she has a penchant for bestiality. Turns out she thinks homosexuality is ... dread hush... wrong!

All was explained when it was discovered she belonged to a dangerous breakaway sect called 'The Roman Catholic Church'. This tiny sect has about 2 billion committed adherents, so its obviously some minority thing. Britian is aghast that a practising 'Roman Catholic' has managed to infiltrate the higher echelons of its government, while harboring such noxious views.

As Saint Denham of Labourtown says, 'It is obvious that the introduction of civil partnerships for gay people was one of the most significant and positive things this government has done.' (The Times, page 2, Wednesday May 10 2006) Absolutely right! A governments main responsibilities read:

1. Enabling gay/lesbian relationships
2. Promoting ministers who agree that enabling gay/lesbian relationships is GRRRRReeeeeaaaaaat!
3. Nice stuff for old people and the sick and the needy and stuff
4. ....
5. Thats about it
...
97. Defending the realm, relations with foreign powers and other trivial stuff

Fortunately, a knight in shining armour has come to save us from all this madness. His name is David Cameron! Hurrah! He'll cut through all the cant and the gibberish, and re-assert common sense and Christian ethics!

Wait a sec, oh noooooooooooo. He won't.

House the world

Does southern England need 200,000 new houses or not? Thats a huge number of new residences, all of them needing utilities and services and roads. Water is already scarce in southern England. The roads are already at near-capacity. The fabric of the countryside is battered and torn by the amount of infrastructure needed to serve the current residents.

If you add some serruptitiously revealed facts together things start to become a bit clearer. About nine months ago, in a survey of minorities, especially recent immigrants, it was revealed that there are over 200,000 Somalis living in Britain, only 12% of whom have a job. All of them presumably have a house though. Even if they are living 5 to a house, thats 40,000 properties. Somalis are just one group of recent immigrants who have been given 'social' housing en mass. There are Kurds and Kosovo Albanians and Iraqi's and Sierra Leonians etc etc. The Labour parties policy of allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Britain has meant that all housing, but especially social housing is now at a premium, especially in big cities, including London. And native English people are squeezed, especially the very poor ones, i.e. the ones who Labour claim to represent.

So its probably better for the socialists of Britain to discuss this as purely a 'housing shortage' and not start discussing the facts about whether southern England has enough residential properties or not. Because the Labour party have a secret policy of taking in all the tragic cases from around the world and giving them an English council house, paid for by the English tax payer, but very very quietly. Sustainable?

I'd better take a valium

The BBC have obviously got a stake in the high blood pressure medicine companies.

There is a steady drip drip drip of stories meant to 'broaden the minds' of the obviously ignorant and closed-minded English about Islam emanating from the bowels of the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4964222.stm

The title says it all: 'I want to open peoples minds'. How condescending and insulting is that????? I am sick sick sick of people telling me how closed-minded I am, how bigoted I am, how institutionally racist I am, how I should learn to lead a different life in MY OWN F***ING COUNTRY so that the immigrants are happy!!!!!!!!

This woman wants the WHOLE ACTING PROFESSION changed so she can keep on wearing her muslim-required clothes. Excuse me? Do you know how pompous and ridiculous that makes you sound?

I lived in the US for seven years, and NOT ONE DAY out of those seven years did I presume to tell the American people how they needed to change their beliefs, their world-view, their behaviour and their social mores to suit me. I would never have dared. That would be rude and arrogant. Yet every single frickin day I read and hear demands from muslims in Britain about how much Britain doesn't suit them in some way or other.

Well here's the surefire solution for all your many dissatisfactions and disappointments. Leave.

No no no no no no no no no no no!!!!!!!

I feel a berserker attack coming on! This country has reached a nadir I never thought possible.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/4967138.stm

So let me get this straight- its ok to damage other peoples property, constantly harangue them in the street, be aggressive towards them and try to intimidate them- the police don't care a jot. But should you dare to fight back and give them a taste of their own medicine- straight to the cells.

This country is chewing away at its own entrails with a gusto that would shame Hannibal Lecter.

The pope: Catholic. Bears: poop in the woods

Yes, the BBC's coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is tilted to one side on a continuous basis, according to an independant panel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4964702.stm

What is curious though, is this conclusion: 'The BBC fails to always give a "full and fair account" of the Israeli Palestinian conflict but is not deliberately biased.' What exactly is the nature of the bias then? What is conspicuously absent is any statement of the actual content of the bias; which is that the Palestinians are always the innocent victims, and the beastly state of Israel is always the bully, the agressor and the villain. Why isn't that mentioned at all? Because when it comes to issues like the poor ickle Palestinians, lefties lose any vestiges of objectivity or professional distance. They go into 'empathy' mode, tutting at the horrible jews (the bad father figures) and making every weak justification of the behaviour of the Palestinians (the oppressed juveniles). Its like the normal rooting for the little guy against the big bully but on steroids.

Lost in the BBC's mish-mash of hardly-researched half-truthful reporting of the Palestinian conflict is any concerted effort to learn the REAL history of that busy part of the world. How many BBC journalists or indeed the legions of Israel haters across Britain, know anything about the Ottoman empire, the fall of it in the 20th century, and the British protectorates (established under League of Nations mandate) that replaced it? I have never heard either group talk about these huge salient facts AT ALL, and presume they neither know nor care about them. What has become a characteristic of all politics in the 21st century is peculiarly pronounced when it comes to the 'Palestinian Issue': the passionate promotion of a cause or issue that you know almost nothing about. I think of it as the Lady Di principle.

Michael Grade, chairman of the BBC, says that he finds the report 'reassuring'. I reckon if the report had said that the BBC journalists kill and eat babies he would also find that 'reassuring'. Another signal feature of our age is the utter impregnability of organisations like the BBC when faced by genuine criticism. Shame and a sense of duty are as rare as unicorn dandruff.

"We are confident we have the right editorial structures and processes in place to provide high quality, impartial journalism and to ensure we continue to make progress in developing the authority and comprehensiveness of our output."

You can get software that produces stock rubbish like this- corporate gobblydegook that does nothing to address the actual fact of the bias that has been identified, and is interchangeable with corporate gobblydegook from any other day or any other issue.

The British publish deserve better than this for their 3.7 Billion pounds.

Update: Turns out that the report said the bias was AGAINST the Palestinians... un-frickin-believable. What were they watching??? Which BBC were they scrutinizing? Not the one I watch...

Start printing up the Israeli army 'hunk' posters

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the most astute commentators in the US. This article about the traditional role that Jews have played in the pyschology of both the Muslim world and Europe is an absolute gem.

www.victorhanson.com/articles/thornton042606.html

Particularly striking is his damning indictment of the academic and journalistic communities in the US, something that is mirrored in Britain.

I pledge to start a crusading mission to bring these facts to the attention of the British people, and to help re-shape the public mind regarding them.

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth

I wish our Queen the happiest of Birthdays, and thank her with the utmost gratitude for the sterling service she has put in during her long and turbulent reign. She has been a beacon of sanity, common sense and tradition in a raging sea of cynicism, mindless 'modernism' and cant. The long fight for the English nation is beginning, and she is a constant touchstone for those rising to the challenge.

Three cheers for her majesty!

Cameron, Heseltine and the Conservatives

The three cup trick doesn't wash with the electorate any more.

Michael Heseltine very recently set up his own straw man- Conservatives need to stop hating public sector workers, he said. I reckon he did this at Mr Cameron's behest. It appears that Mr Cameron has made a list, which he is working his way down presently. The list is all the groups of people in Britain who pretty much don't ever vote Conservative. And he is, in the vernacular, 'reaching out' to those groups. So the little old Grannies who think the Tories want to privatise the NHS and take away most of their pension have heard from him, the yummy mummies who spend their idle hours cursing the capitalist economy and wishing for an eco-utopia have heard from him, and now, via the magic of a Heseltine intervention, Mr Cameron has the opportunity to reach out to the public servant- all 7 million of them.

Now, I'm sure they are entirely right in believing that those people 99% vote Labour. Various tranches of evidence all point to that. And Mr Cameron seems bent on reaching out in a generalised way to all the recalcitrant bits of Britain, to remind them of the existence of the Conservative party, and to let them know that there is now no discernable difference between them and New Labour. Why that would be of interest to them, I'm not really sure.

But my firm belief is that 'Potemkin Village' politics is no longer viable (if you're not sure what the Potemkin Villages were, look here ). The electorate have too much information about what is really going on, too much experience of deliberate obfuscation on the part of politicians who don't really want the public nosing around in their policies, and are too cynical about the political process to just give window dressing due respect.

What would be of interest to them would be occams razor. A conservative analysis of Britains situation, followed by policies that would transform the country into a conservative landscape rather than the current soft-soap socialist one. Sharp policies truthfully presented, by someone with the steel to make people believe they could actually bring them about. Like they have in Australia for instance; and Canada; and the US. Yes, as far as the Anglosphere is concerned Britain is very much the odd man out.

And thats where my primary proposition comes in: Britain needs an English political party; one that embodies the cardinal principles of governing in the conservative style, and is not afraid of its own history. David Cameron has accepted the grotesque misrepresentations of the Conservative party in the last 20 years as if they were accurate, and has gone into a kind of apologetic genuflection before the electorate. The sublimal messages are 'you were right to think of us as disgustingly greedy, pompous, venal, corrupt slayers of Britains traditional industries and its beautiful trade unions. We're sorry, very sorry, and we'll change out of all recognition as a consequence'.

The only trouble with that kind of obsequiousness is that it really puts off pretty much everybody. Traditional-minded conservatives will know that the lefty misrepresentations were utterly inaccurate, lefties would never leave the safe, cosy Labour nest for the cold ugly conservative one anyway, and most uncommitted observers will get a vague sense of unease at the slimy shifting about of this new tory boy.

The principles of conservative politics are being turned into successful policies all over the Anglo-Sphere, just not in Britain. Remember, all you geniuses of the Conservative party, the facts of life are conservative. When you disgard genuine conservative policies for trendy rubbish, you are putting your party and your country at risk.

Freedom fighters of Iraq

Over and over again, I read left-wing commentators saying that the insurgents in Iraq are freedom fighters, fighting a completely justifiable self-defense war against a vicious invader. Some even add that if it were their country, they'd be out there taking pot-shots with their own AK-47. There is a certain huggable humanity to the lefties descriptions of these 'peoples warriors'.

All I can say is, read this article:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-04-19T124108Z_01_GEO942966_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-TEACHERS-KILLINGS.xml&rpc=22

Remember now, these are primary school teachers in a primary school. Tell me how hacking the heads off primary school teachers advances the cause of freedom and self-governance in Iraq?

Looking into the miasma

I always wanted to use that word in the title of something, 'miasma', ever since I owned an album back in the mid-eighties by the celibate Rifles called "The Turgid Miasma of Existence". Even back then when I was a down-faced college boy I thought 'Holy crap, thats a pretentious title for some low effort punk music'. What brought that little vignette of my college days to mind was reading some of the posts on the Daily Kos, the most prominent of the left wing blogs in the US. What strikes me first of all about many of the posts is confusion- lack of logic, lack of clarity, lack of facts to support arguments, lack of analysis that seems to fit the stated scenario and most of all cogency. Cogency is the appropriateness of supplied facts to to the argument you want to make.

Its a well known fact that an excess of emotion makes it difficult to argue coherently. What is immediately obvious from the Daily Kos is that many of these people are in the throes of violent emotion- hatred for President Bush, hatred for right-wing Christians, hatred for the traditional virtues (and vices) of America, hatred for the particular place America has in the world and at least a partial hatred for themselves. Additional to the hatred is frustration that a large majority of Americans DON'T have the aforementioned hatreds and self-loathing, and keep voting in Republicans who support Christianity, traditional values etc. There is also a rising petulance about them, which in previous era's led some liberal Americans into treason and such activities as spying for the soviet union.

Reading their rants is painful. I'm guessing that pot-smoking is rampant among these people; anyone who has spent time talking to people who smoke a lot of pot will know how uniquely boring it is to try to converse with people who think what they're saying is profound and organised, but is in fact the dribblings of a smoke-addled brain. There is no ability to go from point to point with purpose, or to adduce facts to back up assertions. Wild statement after wild statement, it becomes tiresome after just a few minutes.

The most annoying thing of all though is lack of seriousness. When you are a teenager, you think that the most important thing to do is criticise what other people are doing. You don't need to do anything yourself, nor do you need to provide alternative plans or guidance or solutions. Its enough to sit on the sidelines and tell everybody how wrong they're getting it. When you leave the teenage years, and get a job, take on responsibilities, maybe start a business, you start to understand how much harder it is to DO than to talk or write; how making judgements may directly affect the existence or not of your job or enterprise or family. You get serious, because there are serious things to do, and serious matters to make a call on.

What seems to mark out the political left in both Britain and America is an almost complete lack of seriousness. They seem to be people whose most important decision in their whole life seems to be which Issue of the Day shall I champion. I wish I could make each and every one of them start a business, run a farm, build a building from scratch or organise a public transport system- something difficult. How differently would the narrative run then?

The urge to kill yourself (and maybe everybody else)

The power is strong in this one! Whichever scientist (or academic functionary) wrote this, I think we can all guess their political affiliation:

Man appeared roughly 4 million years ago. Then about 4 million years ago a fairly small creature appeared in the valleys of Africa. This little guy was really a little "guy" - a recognizable human ancestor. It walked upright, had a really large brain relative to its body, and ate both meat and plants. Unfortunately, it wasn't very strong, had small teeth and no real claws. Just about anything that found one of these things could eat it if it wanted to. There was just about no way it could survive, except for one thing - it had that big brain. It was apparently smart enough to stay out of the way (most of the time) of all the things that wanted to eat it. And while it was hiding, it figured out how to fight back. This began man's ascendance to the top of the natural world. In fact, many would argue that man is the most prolific killing machine ever to inhabit this planet.

http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/science/dinosaurs/after.html

Idiotarians just can't abide people really. You can sense the guys overwhelming urge to add a bit to that last sentence "...most prolific killing machine ever to inhabit the planet, but especially the Conservatives/Republicans/Fanatical Christians." Sneaky, depraved, murderous. The left believes that we are all those things. Their will to self-harm (I think thats the latest psycho-babble terminology) is only exceeded by their will to harm us.

Brrrrrrrrrrr!

We are all Americans now

If I said this:

"I would agree that in general Pakistanis are a loathsome, naive, petulant bunch, but then the fact that we in Britain allow ourselves to be so influenced by them makes us 10 times worse."

How much would you wager me that I could get that comment posted by the BBC on any part of their website? $50,000?

Second case.

"I would agree that in general Americans are a loathsome, naive, petulant bunch, but then the fact that we in Britain allow ourselves to be so influenced by them makes us 10 times worse." Craig Eastman, Liverpool, UK

This comes from this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4881474.stm story on the BBC website, the first time I've ever seen a story about Anti-Americanism. There is NO WAY you could get away with talking about any other nations citizens like that on the BBC. I'm not going to call it racism, because there is no American race. America is a fantastic amalgam of races. However, it IS hostile beyond anything acceptable in public discourse. If its good enough for the Pakistanis, its good enough for the Americans.

Don't expect a great upsurge of sympathy though- most Britons are now incorrigably anti-US and the problem is getting much worse. But I would recommend that Americans:

1) avoid vacationing in Britain
2) avoid buying British products
3) publicise any antagonism and hostility they meet if they do come here as widely as possible

Collective action can go both ways!

How then should we act?

"Laughing rather than hanging around."

Thats the crucified Jesus, they're mocking by the way.

"This is Popetown, where money, power and corruption are the name of the game, and everyoneís playing. With an all-star cast, Popetown takes you into the side-splittingly surreal world of the Vatican as the long suffering and good-hearted Father Nicholas struggles to walk the narrow path of righteousness, whilst surrounded by money grabbing cardinals and a pogo-stick-riding infantile pope."

http://newsbusters.org/node/4902

Translate this scenario into the Muslim world for a moment... take the defining moment of Mohammeds life, and turn it into crap television. Then show a Madrassah where a bunch of venal, corrupt Imams hang out and that some of them have extreme sexual perversions which go un-remarked by the rest. Then stick a niave lowly Imam in there for comic effect. In how many countries would that TV show get shown?

Not only are extreme double standards in effect now, but the audacity of the 'satirists' has become the biggest joke. It is the audacity of the schoolyard bully, kicking and punching the little boys, but servile and obsequious when the really deadly hardcases come round. I just posted a comment on the Comedy Central public website about the utterly reprehensible censoring of the latest episode of South Park, which (would have) showed Mohammed for a few seconds. YOU CAN'T DO THAT. LISTEN TO ME, PEOPLE. YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

South Park only gets away with being so utterly blasphemous and disgusting because its understood that THERE ARE NO SACRED COWS. If you rubbish and trash and piss and shit on 98% of peoples sacred beliefs and religious shibboleths, thats really NO GOOD. Exempting 2% means you have given them a special dispensation in the world of satire. And thats NO GOOD. We, the 98%, are not going to let you get away with that. Here's why. Because if its not satire, its grotesque and unpardonable insult of things that we hold to be sacred, beautiful and pristine. And then things will get interesting.

I promise.

Whingebag Simpson Update

John Simpson has a message to you and the world: Nyah Nyah nee Nyah Nyah, We Told You So.

Its not a sophisticated message. Its not a subtle message. Its not a very important message.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4894148.stm

But it does get pride of place on the BBC news website. Stage center.

Essentially, before Saddam was evicted the saudi foreign minister told the old whingebag that invading Iraq would cause trouble, and would upset people. Wow!!! Run that by me again. Thats a worldwide newsflash folks!!!

The only thing about the middle east that is truly predictable is the ranting and posturing of the Arab Street. You remember 'The Mother of All Battles' don't you? Which if you stayed up late enough you could catch all of because it was over so quickly... Remember Comical Ali? Remember every foreign minister of every Arab state telling us how we were bringing about Armageddon times 50? Remember all the Vox Pops of arabs in the streets of everyplace in the middle east predicting awesome and titanic consequences of messing with Iraq?

It turns out that in three years John Simpson has found nothing new to say about the liberation of Iraq. Just mulling over conversations with fat, rich, spoilt Saudi's. The same Saudi's who host the largest and richest groups of Islamists on the planet. Try to remember this John: the Saudi's are NOT OUR FRIENDS. They don't want the experiment in democracy in Iraq to succeed, any more than the dictators in Tehran, Damascus and Cairo want us to succeed. So for just once, try to see the situation from our side, huh?

Its just too too much

I am almost speechless. I say, almost. When was the last time you laughed out loud at a Guardian article?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1163436,00.html

I keep on remembering bits and laughing. I'm sorry.

The Guardian sent reporters to the darkest remote mountains of Afghanistan on the trail of the three young guys who were the youngest taliban/Al Qaeda captured and interned at Guantanamo bay. They have now been released and of course your average lefty is hot for the burning hatred and resentment sure to spill from the mouths of these wronged children. Ooops!

Here are some direct quotes from these young men:

"I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great."

"Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them,"

"If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

"Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

Now you know why I'm laughing. The great Satan? Who he?

And hows this for real actual lefty crow eating? "This might seem to jar with the prevailing opinion of Guantanamo among human rights groups," said the Guardian reporter. Dya think? But this paragraph, quoted in full, is the killer.

"Naqibullah, Asadullah and Mohammed Ismail were moved into one large room, which was never locked. They were taught Pashto (their own language), English, Arabic, maths, science, art and, for two months, Islam. 'The American soldiers ate pork but they said we must never do that because we were Muslim,' said Naqibullah. 'They were very strict about Islam.'

I almost cried I laughed so hard... have you seen the rantings of the anti-war crowd about Gitmo? Have you read their outrageous lies about what goes on there, about the torture and the koran-abuse? One day those liars will feel shame about themselves, shame brought to them by the testimony of people like Asadullah and the people who have been released from Gitmo who are not dedicated liars and committed haters of the west.

One side in this war tells the truth.

(Hat Tip: SondraK and LGF)

Denial of Downside

What a depressing experience- I just completed what the Conservative Party website calls its Built To Last online 'survey'. Its an odd sort of survey; there are a series of mind-numbingly banal propositions which you have to rate, from 'strongly disagree' to 'strongly agree'. The propositions go along the lines of 'We modern, compassionate Conservatives are for beautiful modern flats for all 18 year olds'. Who on earth is going to 'strongly disagree' with that? None of the propositions were 'We want all Grannies beaten to within an inch of their lives', strangely. If you've been reading a lot of Lib Dem literature lately none of the ideas espoused will be new to you. Why isn't David Cameron leader of the Lib Dems again? This whole 'right leader, wrong party' lark is getting old...

Sadly, for conservative Conservatives its all bad news. That is mainly because along with all the denial of reality we have come to associate with the Lib Dem world, David Cameron has added a new denial- denial of downside. Most effective policies have a downside for somebody. Many really essential policies may have a downside for everybody in the short or even medium term. Thats just how the world is. But not in the half-light world of DC. Its cake and pies for everybody, a veritable garden of Eden, a wonderland where nobody has to pay the gas bill and its always the first day of spring.

Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, most conservative people in Britain are just too darned boring and sensible to believe in that hogwash. They know that very often a necessary measure will bring pain to some part of the nation. And thats how it should be presented to the public. Honestly, and with humility, but out front.

Over and over again, Mr Cameron says he wants to empower people, give them more control over their lives. Sensible, practical people know there are only two ways to do that: first, don't take away the money that gives them the power in their lives and second, don't hem their lives in with the machinery of government. Simple. Thats what conservative people have been saying for many years now, and some, like the great M Thatcher, actually did it. It was painful, and often outraged the lovers of the cushy life paid for out of the public purse, and the occupant of the job for life in some vast bureaucracy. But it was necessary. Mr Cameron never wants there to be any more pain- he never wants there to be a downside for anyone ever again. But thats just not going to happen.

Back in the 90's there was a name bandied about for the guy who wants to be everybodies buddy- he's a people-pleaser. Mr Cameron is one of those. Winston Churchill: compare and contrast.

Countdown to the great launch

On the 23rd of April 2006, a great political organisation will be born which will transform British politics.

Remember, you heard it here first!

Repent ye while there is still time

Quite good if over-the-top warning about our possible future-

http://www.dansimmons.com/news/message.htm

Most pertinent and timely is the commentary about the wests preoccupation with human rights and religious liberties, while seemingly oblivious to the fact that if we are dead, or weak, or defeated we won't have any 'rights' at all. Our enemies like hacking peoples heads off with rusty knives and machinegunning schoolgirls- I don't suppose legalistic entreaties to them about the geneva convention and the universal agreement on human rights are going to stop them in their tracks. Can you imagine the islamists setting up a Guantanamo Bay with individuals copies of the Bible for each inmate? Can you see them getting first rate medical treatment for our wounded soldiers? Can you see them letting militant Christians set up propaganda and misinformation organisations in their capital cities?

Hard to see, no!

French denial of reality

There is an excellent video blog at www.bonjour-america.com by the estimable Cyrille de Lasteyrie. He has a great sense of humour, and is no mean actor. In episode #13 of his video blog, he asks a bunch of people in what looks like the interior of a bar or club questions about America. They turn out to be mainly well-informed about US politics, and in fact about America in general. The absolute head turner though is the question about the US moon landings. All but two people said that they had been faked.

So here we have a group of above-average intelligence, well informed youngish people most of whom refuse to believe that America's space endeavors were actual, and were faked by the film industry (their words not mine). Capricorn 1 was an American movie made in 1978 that shows a desparate NASA faking a Mars shot so as to preserve its funding and its reputation. From this source, the conspiracy theories derive. Most conspiracy theories are virtually impossible to refute, as they are based on missing evidence rather than observable facts. The moon landings however are not susceptible of conspiracy theory. Anybody with a large enough telescope can show you the remains of the Apollo missions still sitting on the moon where the astronauts left them.

So why would these young French people not believe the Americans capable of these feats of engineering and human derring-do? As the French nation has diminished, so has its generosity of spirit and its belief in achieving great deeds. Had the French landed men on the moon, it would probably be a constant topic of their boasting, along with the military deeds of Napoleon and the great French empire. Sadly, mixed into the French psyche is a very strong denial of that which is painful, humiliating or hard to stomach. And American success is all of those things. So is the fact that the French economy is incapable of producing new jobs. There is a direct link between the denial of reality which says that no American ever set foot on the moon, and the denial of reality that if you are guarunteed a job from age 18 by whichever company takes you on then that company is highly unlikely to take you on in the first place.

Many criticisms can be made of the Anglo psyche, but one that can't is a refusal to face uncomfortable facts. The French better swallow their pride and start facing facts before the facts bite them on the arras.

What do they know of England...

One particularly painful memory of the late eighties is a song by Billy Brag, called The Few, although most of us will only recall the refrain, which goes

"what do they know of England, who only England know?"

Its message is that we have to know all about our oppressive Empire history if we are to understand our particular awfulness as a nation. Upbeat!

But there is another, even more basic ignorance in Britain, which may be much more damaging than the ignorance of skinheads who don't know about the Seige of Ladysmith or the Great Game.

http://www.currentviewpoint.com/cgibin/news.cgi?id=11&command=shownews&newsid=826

This excellently written article has more than one highly informative anecdote.

"After the event I went to get some fresh air upstairs and as I looked out at a quaint old mill on the Quay a young English Muslim in a long robe and head covering asked me about this place where we stood, Canary Wharf. I told him it had been decimated and nearly obliterated by the Luftwaffe in the Blitz and that the conflagration could be seen as far away as Hertfordshire. I pointed out the lone mill and said it had miraculously survived the relentless wartime bombing raids. He looked at me and said, 'Who did you say did the bombing?' I replied, 'The Luftwaffe.' He said 'Who are they?' I said, 'The Germans.' He said 'Really? Well, I've learned something today.'"

I think we've all learned something today. A very large tranche of immigrants in Britain know nothing of its history, culture, traditions and folkways. Not only that, they disdain to learn them. As Ms Gould reveals in the rest of this piece, they are lauded in doing so by a largish contingent of socialists, liberals and academics- men and women who wear their hatred of their own people and culture like a badge of pride. I am no reflex patriot, and I believe that nationalism should always be balanced by humanitarian concerns and friendliness to other peoples, but there is something highly disfunctional about hating your own folk, your own kith and kin. Billy Bragg did, Michael Mansfield QC does, George Galloway does, many individuals in the Liberal Democrat party do, including my MP Lynne Featherstone. What must we do about that?

We must make sure that this alliance between our self-proclaimed enemies, and the people of Britain who would help them towards their goals, are prevented from achieving them.

Tony Blairs strategy for the war on Islamism

Tony Blairs strategy for the war on Islamism is to mobilize 'moderate Muslims' against 'fundamentalist or Islamist Muslims'. There is a growing consensus in the fact-based community that the existence of 'moderate Muslims' is only theoretical. A moderate Muslim would be an individual who ignored sizeable chunks of the Koran in favour of enlightenment beliefs about the nature of man, and the best structure of a society; one where no religion would hold decisive sway over the machinery of government. They would believe in the primacy of secular law, and would hold as their first allegiance the polity in which they lived, and only secondarily to the strictures and enactments of their religion. They would have the habits of tolerance and rational argumentation, and of obeying the law even when it is difficult to do so.

I know of no sizeable body of Muslims anywhere where these hold true. Britain, my home, is particularly unhappy in this regard. Most Muslims in Britain retain most of the cultural world-view they came here with. Despite us treating incomers like long-lost children, giving them homes, food, money and government jobs, they are increasingly hostile to Britain and to its interests. The youngest generation of Muslims living here are the most committed in their hatred of Britain, and the least enamored of its way of life. But every other nation I can think of with a sizeable Muslim population is similarly situated. The US, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Holland and Spain all have this problem. France is the worst case- 10% of its population are young Muslims- France will be lucky not to become part of the Ummah in my lifetime.

From all the available evidence, I would say that the number of moderate Muslims is falling, rapidly. Islamists have found extremely fertile breeding grounds everywhere where Muslims are a minority. In Britain, only 3.6% of the population are Muslim, but you would never believe it given the amount of discussion they provoke, and the amount of money they cost us to protect ourselves from their homicidal children.

Tony Blairs strategy would appear to be based on a fallacy. It makes sense from one angle, in that it keeps the moral high ground with Britain, but then so did Neville Chamberlain's. Mr Blair is a smart man, and knows both the political landscape and what is possible, but I don't think this strategy will be good enough for long.

Another strategy would be removal. Given their small numbers at present, it would be entirely possible to repatriate Muslims to their countries of origin. The Pakistanis would be the first object of this policy, as they seem more receptive to the principles of Islamism than the other ethnic groups that make up the Muslim population. Without their presence, much of the day-to-day workload of MI-5 would be reduced, and we could concentrate on the Somali's, Saudi's and Bangladeshi's, fewer in numbers.

My fear is that Britain has got used to not solving problems, but managing them. We chose not to go hammer and tongs to defeat the IRA, and they are present in Irish politics to this day, poisoning the body politic with their thuggery, organised crime and strong-arm tactics. Instead, we cosied up to them to stop them blowing up all our office blocks. The Islamist threat is different in many ways, but this is an enemy that can be beaten. So far, the cosying up method has born no discernible fruit, and dividing and conquering doesn't seem like its going to work this time either.

US Forces attack Mosque- wait, no thats all lies

On 27th March 2006, I blogged about a completely biased BBC online news story that seemed even from first reading to not coincide with the rest of what I'm hearing from Iraq, and also to coincide with the facts as related by the US official authorities. Now of course, the BBC is entitled to not believe what the US official authorities say without checking the facts independently if they can, but if you read that article you will come to the conclusion that nobody at the BBC tried to do that.

Subsequently, this http://www.mnf-iraq.com/Daily/Mar/060331.htm article on the official site of the international force in Iraq has some very interesting FACTs in it, presumable verifiable by the BBC if they care. Which they don't.

"The Iraqi Special Forces commander who led a weekend raid on a kidnapping cell in Baghdad spoke with Time magazine March 29. Local media [and Al-Arabiyah in Dubai] had made an assertion earlier in the week identifying the location of the operation as a mosque. However, according to Iraqi and U.S. official reports, the targeted complex was six blocks away from the closest mosque, the Mustafa Mosque. “The target was a Baghdad office complex used by an armed militia and not a mosque,” the unidentified commander said."

"A hostage freed in the operation confirmed the U.S. and Iraqi Special Operations Forces account, contradicting claims that U.S. and Iraqi troops targeted a Shiite mosque and killed unarmed worshipers."

"U.S. military officials have insisted no mosque was entered nor damaged in the raid, and that those describing the raid as a massacre faked evidence by moving bodies of gunmen killed fighting the Iraqi troops."

The BBC gave credence to the original accusations by reporting verbatim from Al-Arabiyah, and by not reporting the accusations as possible propaganda and by giving no context within the story about Al-Sadr and Mahdi armies previous form. Do you expect them to do another story now, and reveal the quite startling effort that went into making this propaganda story fly? That in fact, rather a lot of gory corpse-play went on and a prayer room in an office complex was touted as a mosque?

No, that really is expecting too much. The BBC is no longer a voice of British people, reporting in the interests of the British nation. It is a platform for our enemies to launch their shabby propaganda.

Go where the heart feels free

My commiseration with any of you readers who also peruse the BBC Online Have Your Say forum. You will already know that the quality of most of the comments is sub-grade school. And the politics of the moderators means that the visible political spectrum on the forum would encompass slightly right-wing right across to venomous left-wing communist anarchist. The absence of the moderate to far-right is not surprising. All political voices can be heard in Britain but the conservative/rightist. If you don't believe me, find me a genuine full-blooded right-wing comment on any topic in the Have your lefty Say forums.

The reason this irks me particularly today is I posted a comment which I thought highly pertinent and well presented, which was ignored ignominiously.

So I'll repeat it here.

The forum discussion was about whether Iran should get to have a nuclear weapons program. My view is I'd rather that Muammar Ghaddafi had nuclear weapons than Iran, thats how stupid it would be. But what struck me most in reading through the comments was the hatred for Britain and America that was endlessly repeated, especially by the foreign settlers on both our shores and those of Canada and the US. And my comment was, please go and live in these countries whose interests you promote (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria etc.), and when you get there go out and have a good long public rant about what pisses you off about THEIR societies. Your life may end shortly thereafter but you'll die in a place where your heart feels free!

Mr Kipling makes exceedingly good points

Dane-Geld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
--"We invaded you last night
— we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
--"Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!"

By Rudyard Kipling

Hark ye, quisling BBC;
listen up, pusillanimous Daily Telegraph, Times, Guardian, Daily Express et al.
You haven't got that much more time of getting this stuff ALL WRONG.

Palestinians have money troubles...

The contrast between the world of building things and that of blowing up things has never been starker. On one side Israel, booming and building and trying to solve things, and on the other, the Palestinian non-state, busting and bombing and trying to kill people.

The outcome of these respective ways of going about life is spectacularly different of course. One of which is that people LIKE to give money to Israel because it goes towards positive ends. And increasingly, the Palestinians are finding that people are becoming resistant to giving them money to buy missiles and detonators and mortars and AK47's. Certainly westerners are.

But according to Dr Omar Abel Razeq, Hamas finance minister of Nowhere, "the whole issue is not actually real. We hope that Europe at least will change its mind and talk to us, and respect the choice of the people."

This mellifluous drivel actually tells us quite a lot. First, Hamas have no intention of changing their stated goals of destroying Israel and killing all its citizens, and have the expectation that the largely Jew-hating, Palestinian-loving Europeans will give up their official positions of not funding terrorist organisations. Second, the Palestinians understanding of the concept of peaceful resolution of conflicts is completely debased. And third, it is Palestinian policy to split the western world into Europe on the one hand and Britain the US on the other, and go on from there to use westerners against each other in the diplomatic war effort against Israel.

The smell in the air is of European resolve (weak from the beginning) falling away, and the coffers being re-opened to be poured into the missile workshops and mortar factories of the West Bank and Gaza. What Europeans won't see for their money is any other kind of workshops or factories being built, or indeed anything positive at all.

US Citizens: Don't come to London

This is an urgent message to all US citizens: don't come to London. Spending money in London is against you and your nations interests. The communist anti-semite Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London has these things to say about your country:

- The US Ambassador is 'a chiseling little crook'
- George W Bush is "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The Policies he's initiating will doom us to extinction"
- Denounced the Bush Administration as "a gang of thugs."

Whatever your views on the Iraq war, the language used is extremist and imflammatory. And this is a guy with one of the most prestigious and important jobs in Britain.

My suggestion is, take your dollars to somewhere where they appreciate them.

Red Ken with Ma Moonbat

BBC decides to join the insurgency

This is an absolute disgrace, and steps over the line from moral equivalency to the straightforward reporting of propaganda as truth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4850108.stm

"Approximately 18 innocent men who were inside the mosque performing sunset prayers were killed and became martyrs," Bayan Jabr added in an interview on Dubai-based al-Arabiya television. "They were killed unjustly and wrongfully." Some members of the ruling Shia Islamist alliance repeated allegations - denied by US officials - that Americans and Iraqi troops under their command had tied people up at the Mustafa mosque in north-east Baghdad's Sadr City up and shot them in cold blood.

News footage taken after the attack seemed to belie US assertions that troops had not entered or damaged any sacred building during the raid.
The room where the killing occurred appeared to be a prayer hall. The floors are carpeted and the walls covered with religious posters.
The tape showed a tangle of male bodies and spent 5.56mm bullet casings on the blood-smeared floor - the kind of ammunition used by the US military.

Not that anybody is going to believe them, but,

The US military said the bloodshed happened after Iraqi commandos and soldiers from the Iraqi counter-terrorism force came under fire during a house-to-house search for insurgents.
Members of the US special forces were present but only in an "advisory capacity", officials said.

So the BBC is perfectly happy to have the major impact of this story be "US soldiers murder poor ickle muslim men in their mosque while they're praying".

There is absolutely no context written into this article. Any attempt at sane and balanced reporting of this incident would state the following facts: ever since US forces arrived in Iraq, Moqtada Al Sadr and his cadre of self-styled martyrs have been fanatically opposed to their presence in Iraq. Al Sadr has already attempted one holy war against the coalition forces, which failed dismally. Even Sistani, the senior Shia cleric in Iraq, has trouble dealing with Sadr and his thugs. And of course, the one overriding consideration in Iraq, that all gangs and private armies have to be disarmed or destroyed before peace and development can come to Iraq.

But these are explanatory facts, and facts no longer interest the America-haters at TVC.

Crazy crazy Goddamn world

What society on the face of planet earth goes hell bent for leather to persuade its people that the comforting lies peddled by foriegners about themselves are actually... facts?

We do, here in Britain. Or rather, the Independent newspaper/propaganda mouthpiece.

http://crypticsubterranean.blogspot.com/2006/03/islamic-invention.html

Muslims, especially arab muslims, are famous for lying. They lie all the time, about everything. Its a way of life. It eases the pain of not being very important, powerful or creative. So they've made up loads of lists of things that they have contributed to world civilization.

1. Shoe bombing .....ah, no wait, that didn't make it onto the list!

1. Coffee
2. Photography
3. Chess
4. Human flight
Etc. etc.

Problem is, anybody with 10 minutes and access to a good encyclopedia or the internet will be able to whittle that down to... 9 out of 20. Then there's the small matter of, what does the religion of a particular individual have to do with whether they invent something really cool? If I invent something right now, would the western world get to chalk that up for Christianity? Utter bulls**t. Lastly, you have to ask what the motivation is to compiling the spurious list in the first place? Could it be that Islam presents such a dismal, backward, ignorant face today that onlookers would never guess that anything of worth was ever invented or discovered under its aegis?

Making up a non-sensical and easily rubbished list to try and persuade the average Brit that the Moslem world is abrim with intellectual vigor and creative zest is highly unlikely to be taken seriously. Especially given the average date given for the various 'inventions', over 1000 years ago.

Back to the drawing board, ye propagandists of Mohammed and Mohammedans.

No exit

It sounds like a joke, but its not. What links the CIA, the mafia and islam? Once you've joined, you can't ever leave, not really.

http://frontpagemag.org/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16829

Prince Charles, the man who really digs islam, convened a conference to discuss the slightly embarassing matter of the murder of people who want to leave islam.

He was told by the muslim attendees that this was not something they could really approve non-muslims discussing, so please shut the hell up. And I think he did.

Lots of muslims in Britain say that we are ignorant about islam and muslim life. They will probably soon wish we were more ignorant...

Chickens and Eggs

Whose fault is Islamaphobia?

Before Sept 11, 2001 I never thought about Islam at all, just like 99% of people in the west. Why would I? It was the religion of a number of squalid backwaters dribbled across the middle east and into the dingy corners of South East Asia. Those backwaters contributed nothing to the world except that by chance nature had placed large amounts of oil under some of them. Not all, some. So I, like most people in the world happily living in advanced nations boosting ahead culturally, economically and technologically, spent exactly 0% of my life thinking about islam and muslims.

But with the bloodbath of the world trade centers, I could not continue to ignore islam. It turned out that there were 1.2 billion of these people, a significant portion of whom wanted to blow up our buildings, trains, buses, subways and people in the baddest way possible. They were trying to build nuclear weapons, poison our water, attack our infrastructure, murder us on holiday and lop off our heads on video.

Now, WEIRDLY ENOUGH, poeple didn't like it! They actaully felt that this quite bad show, just not on, really not cricket. Some of them wrote letters to their MP's, some them went to the extraordinary lengths of writing to the Times. Quite, quite extraordinary.

Now of course, this onslaught of tutting and letter-writing was bound to have its unequal and non-opposite reaction in the muslim community, who have invented Islamaphobia. Islamaphobia, for those of you who didn't know how you felt about islam, is the deep prejudice felt by all westerners against islam dating back to... probably the crusades. Its pervades our thoughts, and becomes concrete in our violence towards muslims.

Sadly, the actual evidence for the existence of Islamaphobia is very scant indeed. In fact, the evidence for its existence before 9/11 is nil. So if there is Islamaphobia now, its been caused by one thing alone- the actions of muslims across the world, but in particular those living in the nations of western europe like Britain, Spain, and France. All three have been attacked by muslim residents of their countries as punishment for 'crimes' they are supposed to have committed against muslims, crimes that don't exist and are simply the fantasies of delusional paranoics.

So what should we, as natives of these countries, think? For me, the historical perspective is informative. The last time England had a large population of non-English people living in it, who had no feelings of allegiance to it and felt its laws did not apply to them was 1130 years ago, when large numbers of Danes decided to borrow about 1/4 of the eastern side of England. It took about 50 years and lots of big battles before the English completely ruled their own land again, because every time a new Danish army wandered onto English shores, the Danes living in eastern England would give them aid and assistance. And boy, did that upset the locals.

The numbers are different this time, and we've got most of the guns, but if muslims living in Britain keep trying to kill the English, there's going to be trouble. And then running off to the European court of human rights to complain about Islamaphobia is going to be moot.

We killed the life affirmers, and brought in the death dealers

Thanks SondraK for this absolute gem-

All European Life Died In Auschwitz
By Sebastian Villar Rodriguez - Spanish Writer, September 23, 2005.

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims.
In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.
And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.
Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.
We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

How many Jewish artists, physicists, architects, writers, philosophers and political leaders have enriched our society?

How many Pakistani? How many Palestinian? How many Iranian? How many Egyptian?

Thank God that Britain has done a better job of protecting its Jews from the anti-semitic hordes than the rest of Europe. Long may it continue.

How vast is the cultural chasm?

To get a glimpse of how vast the gap between the ignorant islamic world and the West is, consider this:

http://www.newkerala.com/news2.php?action=fullnews&id=28322

In Pakistan a woman is raped. She then has her throat cut for bringing dishonour on her family. Or is perhaps stoned to death by the villagers.

Feminists of europe, re-train your guns.

Analysis worthy of a third-former

Oh dear. John Simpson. Tut tut tut.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4825200.stm

How can you have access to so much real information, so many facts, so many people who could give you the real lowdown, and miss the big story by such a huge margin? If you or I wrote this article, or perhaps a third-former, we would never get it published anywhere. In fact, whoever sub-edited it would probably query our credentials for submitting this kind of work.

But Mr Simpson has all the credentials you really need to get to the top of the BBC: A vague left-wing bias, a haughty disdain for America and a rock-like faith in his own anecdotal experience. Forget burrowing into large amounts of data like the documents revealed recently by the US congress, interviewing military personnel as well as Iraqi civilians, or going outside Baghdad for a wider picture of Iraqi life- base your analysis of the whole of Iraq by interviewing a few Iraqi's in a local cafe somewhere in downtown Baghdad.

"If you see a US patrol, you should brake sharply and keep away from it. The gunners on the vehicles kill people every day for getting too close to them. Every Iraqi has a horror story about a friend or relative who misunderstood an instruction, often in English, and was shot at. "

No mention of the very active Sunni insurgency in Baghdad who never miss an opportunity to IED, bazooka and snipe into oblivion those same trigger-happer gunners. In fact, John Simpsons articles never miss an opportunity to omit the evidence that would explain the situation to his readers.

No building work in Baghdad? Hmmmm. Wonder why that might be? Do you remember the US contractactors hung from the bridge in Fallujah? I sure do. There have been many attempts at rebuilding all over Iraq, many of them successful, although you'd actually have to leave Baghdad to notice that. But in the four provinces of Iraq where the insurgency still exists, the possibility of doing peace-time activities like large-scale infrastructure and building projects is just out of the question. That is something that any reasonably intelligent person could deduce from the many military and civilian organisations reporting out of Iraq, but is beyond Mr Simpson. He would rather leave his readers with the distinct image of an Iraq that is completely broken, patrolled by lethal psychopath redneck American soldiers who don't bother to learn even basic Arabic for their work, with civil authorities who can't be bothered, or don't want to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by war.

This is his closing paragraph:

"Few Iraqis will even think about the anniversary of the invasion. Many are still glad that Saddam Hussein was taken off their backs.
But there is a real, abiding anger that the richest nation on Earth should have taken over their country and made them even worse off in so many ways than they were before."

You could have made the same argument in Germany after Hitler was finally smashed, when Germany itself was utterly destroyed, I suppose. For most Germans the eventual outcome of the war was utterly disastrous. So who do you blame? The Russians, the Americans and the British who undoubtedly destroyed Germany? Thats not what usually happens. Mostly, people apportion blame on those who provoked the entire situation in the first place. But thats not good enough for John Simpson! So we hardly hear about Saddam Hussein any more, nor the Baathist Socialist murderer party that he led.

I know that John Simpsons ludicrous mis-representation of the real narrative of Iraq will be disregarded when history comes to be written; but he still makes me very angry for his obtuseness and his lazy journalism.

Absolute humdinger

If you want plain speaking in front of a hostile audience, it doesn't get any plainer than this:

http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

I'd like for anybody to contradict this woman on any point of fact in her entire spiel, and why our own politicians and public figures can't bring themselves to say the same things. Notably, the Dutch and the Danes are starting to voice the same view, but nobody in Britian that I know of will call a spade a spade.

Wafa Sultan may have a short career, so hark her words well.

War, Huh, What is it good for?

I am officially sick to death of hearing peacenik anti-war claptrap.

“War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol-- Well, okay.”
“Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I'll grant you that, but…”
“Saving civilization against a horde of…”
“It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together,” said Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?”

That is from Terry Pratchett's “Thud!”.

(Hat tip: Mark Steyn)

There are about x zillion ways that anti-war prattle from the Socialist Workers Party, various alleged anarchists and the Green party sucks, but here is my major beef.

These people are not against war as such- there were no anti-war marches when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, when Putin invaded Chechnya (again), when the Rwandan's took the long route to major genocide, when Serbs and non-serbs in Bosnia spent 4 years trying to eliminate each other, when Eritrea and Ethiopia went hammer and tongs over 100 miles of desert, when Liberia and Sierra Leone went into fratricidal death spirals, when the Sudanese recently murdered perhaps 200,000 black Christian tribesmen in Western Sudan and displaced a million more, and most notably when the Democratic Republic of Congo hosted Africa's first world war (3 million + dead and counting). You could have heard a pin drop from the Specialist Wankers Party and the other dullards. No marches, no petitions, no vigils, no debates, no sit-ins, no descent on parliament, nothing AT ALL. And why is that do you suppose? These events have all taken place since 1980. The estimates of deaths number perhaps FIVE MILLION.

Deaths in Iraq: 31,000 approx.
Reason for deaths: 98% fratricidal brutalities between Shia and Sunni

But of course the REAL difference between those 31,000 deaths and the FIVE MILLION disregarded and ignored deaths is, the US had nothing to do with them.

Tell me, what is the UN for if FIVE MILLION people can die on its watch?

Its time for the UN to say goodnight, and good luck, and for the moral nations of the world to take on the jobs that need doing.

Tell me they're kidding- ok, they're not kidding

I'm beginning to think there's life in the old French beast yet...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06065/666058.stm

If you thought that the cartoon controversy was a one-off, and that we'd all be back to our bingo and soap opera's before too long, forget about it. Precedents have been created. A huge campaign of subtle and un-subtle coercion is going on, and its not going to stop anytime soon. Somebody needs to start cataloguing this in a concerted way.

Doing right, doing wrong

The changed situation in Iraq since the US and Britain ousted Saddam Hussein is a difficult one for the many enemies of our nations. Because doing right is doing right, no amount of lying, misdirection, obfuscation and misrepresentation can change fact. The more that Iran and Syria send agents and enable Islamist supremacist fighters into Iraq to murder muslims; the more that the desparate peaceniks in Britain and America invent new reasons why we must always be oppressive and wrong; the more that corrupt and evil politicians across the world use Britian and America as useful lightning rods for the righteous anger of their peoples- the more clearly it shines forth that freeing the Iraqi people from a tyrant, and giving them the opportunity to create a new and successful life for themselves was right. Look at the lengths Iraqs neighbors will go to to make this experiment fail. Look how much they are willing to destroy. I predict that it will be discovered that the bombers who blew up the al-askari shrine were agents of a foreign power, not Sunni insurgents from Iraq.

When Hariri was blown up along with the rest of that street, many commentators said it couldn't be Syria because it was patently against Syrian interests to do something so obvious to distort the politics of its neighbor. They were wrong of course, it was the Syrians. They lied and lied but in the end the evidence emerged. The same is true of al-askari.

BBC website answers those topical questions for you

One of a long series on the BBC website, who don't bother covering other religions AT ALL, but who seem to be obsessed about the muslim element of Europes population to the exclusion of any other minority. Lets have a look, shall we.

Europe's angry young Muslims

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4781290.stm

Shamsul Gani sits in his home, in the northern English city of Leeds, a proud father not just a father, note cradling his six-month-old son.
I ask him about the three young men from Leeds who carried out the London bombings last year.
"You'd have left your house keys with them and gone away for a year," he told me.
... during which time they would have set up a bomb factory and used his sink to make explosives, presumably. This guy obviously has no conception of how bitterly non-sensical and non-sequitural that comment is going to sound to an average British person.
For many people, what motivated the bombers is still a mystery.
Which people exactly? Make that "no matter how plain and simple the bombers, their cheerleaders in the muslim community, and the websites that tie the ummah together make the motivation, we are determined to pretend that we don't understand their motives." Ah, the mighty intellectuals of the BBC
But Shamsul grew up with the three - all British Muslims from Pakistani families. (The fourth was a Caribbean convert to Islam.)
Shamsul admires the courage of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the group, even though he condemns what he did.
Unbelievably, the journalist does not appear to challenge this comment, or check out with him what for the British reader would be the obvious import of this statement, i.e. that the condemnation is a sham, a going-through-the-motions fraud. Blowing up completely unsuspecting people on a tube train is BRAVE? In whose world?
Khan left a videotape explaining his action as a response to Western policy in Iraq and other parts of the Muslim world.
"I have no reason to doubt the credibility of that tape," Shamsul told me.
So we now have our first concrete piece of evidence: Mo Khan believed that 57 Londoners should die because his muslim brothers in Iraq were being murdered. So what does Shamsul believe? We want to know, do you agree with Khan's justifications for mass-murder? But neither the BBC nor Shamsul want the rest of Britain to know the answer to that question, and for roughly the same reason, so the journo didn't bother asking. Instead, he gives us the answer to a completely dull and un-asked question.
"What you have to understand is his belief in what he was doing. He was prepared to put his life on the line for that."
Now we're getting somewhere. This guy is never going to get a job in PR or diplomacy, but his naivete is our gain. We DO have to understand about these peoples belief in what they are doing. What he was also prepared to put on the line, the journalist might have pointed out at this point, was any kind of decent life for muslims in Britain. At no point does the obvious fact that sh**ing on your own doorstep brings about solid, demonstrable consequences like much increased hostility from the native populace of Britain emerge from this guys words.
Is a new angry, alienated generation of European Muslims now being drawn to radicalism?
That's certainly a widespread fear. Hmmm, I wonder why
The London bombings were followed a few months later by the Paris riots. And then, more recently, the controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. All these have reinforced that fear. The first teeny tiny inkling that maybe the MSM are putting 2 and 2 together, and not getting 1.5
In the suburbs on the northern rim of the French capital, I found young Muslims, from Arab and African families, who feel excluded by the French state. Amazingly, we have segue'd from Leeds to Clichy- Sous- Bois. Did you spot the missing part? Are we just going to take the couple of paltry comments from a guy called Shamzul as a decent representation of the topic "Europe's angry young muslims" for Britain? Dumbing down has got very dumb indeed. So so far we've got '... a response to Western policy in Iraq' as cited evidence as to why young muslims in Europe are angry. Why does that seem so... thin?
At a youth club, an audition was under way for budding stand-up comedians.
Fifou, a lively young French-Algerian student, did a sketch poking fun at the "double culture" in which she and her friends live.
At home they must be good Muslim kids; but outside they want the good life, just like their non-Muslim friends.
Blah Blah Blah, yadda yadda.
For a moment, I forgot about those thousands of cars, and hundreds of buildings, destroyed in three weeks of rioting last year.
But not for long.
Sitting in the youth club was Samir, a young activist who has set up a group to keep alive the memory of the two dead teenagers.
Unbelievable. The first muslim martyrs for France, but I'm sure not the last. And how appropriate- two small-time criminals running away from the police, jumping into an electricity sub-station and dying there like the Darwin award candidates they were. Not exactly up there with the jihadis blowing up American tanks, but never mind.
I asked him what his aim was. His answer: "To give voice to the pain."
There have been riots before, and nothing changed. This time he wants the message to get through.
What message? Give me a job, a house and some money, and make it fast? I came to your country decades ago, and the social security payments have only gone up 25%! What is this guys message? I think we all know that really, his message is, no peace til you're all in the ummah.

When is somebody going to ask (and perhaps answer) some basic questions, ones like - are muslims kids in France excluded from French life, or have they just not bothered to integrate? Do they behave like immigrants who have no love or respect for their new home? What exactly is the deal they believe has been struck between themselves and the French state? When do you think you'll hear a journalist asking these questions?

A priori

One of the first things I learned at University was that everybody starts out with a priori assumptions. Education moves everybody on from their a priori assumptions by introducing them to other points of view, mainly by revealing new facts. All pretty simple really. Trouble is, what if you never ever in your life have your a priori assumptions challenged?

All over the muslim world, yes the same muslim world which is allegedly the fount of our knowledge and learning (if only!), people grow up, live, and die without ever hearing any viewpoint than the orthodox islamic line.

Lets have a look at some of their a priori assumptions. Any territory that EVER has islam foisted on it is forever part of the Ummah. So apologies to 9/10's of the Spanish who grew up believing that Spain was a Christian country; Wrong! It used to be part of a muslim empire so it can NEVER GO BACK. Same with Israel. Why are there Jews all over the world? Because in the first bounding enthusiasm of islam back in the 8th century, so many of them were slaughtered when their country was invaded by the muslims that they took refuge wherever they could, often ending up thousands of miles from their homeland. But of course once Israel had been incorporated into the great maw of the Ummah, it could NEVER GO BACK. Which is why Israel should, in Mr Ahmadinejads handy phrase, be 'swept into the sea' because it is occupying muslim land. Same goes for much of the Balkans, Hungary, Central Asia and on and on.

Now we folks in the west who went to get an education had our own a priori assumptions challenged, one of the big reasons why each and every time we hear something that we think is stupid, insulting or blasphemous we don't go off and burn something down, or try to hang somebody. In a situation as lop-sided as this, the only good response is to make sure that we don't allow our own way of life and sophisticated polity to be battered into submission by a bunch of ignoramuses.

This should become our declaration of independence

Five cheers to the great minds below for this staunch statement of intent:

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.
The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.
Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.
We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.
12 signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Be the next person to sign on to the real values of the Enlightenment rump.