This is a very long article. But I recommend that you read it fully. Religion in general, is under attack in various quarters and countries. Repression by governments and religious group are extremely widespread and appear as the two primary factors. This story was very much a eye opener for me, especially in light of religious fundamentalism take place in Muslim countries which tends to get most of the media coverage.
Since often, religious and ethnicity are often tied together, one usually finds that when one is repressed, the other is sure to follow as cited by many of the examples given.
I find that not enough media attention is given to this in the West. It does not generated the same emotional impact as when the news reports on bombings and mass killings; which provide a immediate interest. It is indeed a sad reflection of times and the media.
In the last paragraph, there is a quote by the Apostle Saint Paul and the author's closing statement that is very relevant today.
"Those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." (1 Cor. 4:2) We must remember, and fight for, our brothers and sisters around the globe who can only dream of the liberties that we take for granted.
#1
Curious how some 90% of the serious repression is happening in Muslim majority nations or is being imposed by Islamists. All other religions must unite against this common oppressor. If they cannot, they do not deserve to survive. Those of faith must find the courage and will to declare Islam anathema to honest belief and peaceful coexistence.
I am always amazed at the variants of anti-Americanism in Britain, France, and Germany, because beneath the convenient left-wing sermonizing one always suspects lingers nostalgic angst, of the world of preeminence before the crass "swaggering" Americans took over.
Compare the latest example of the play "Fallujah" now in London. Most strategic thinkers thought our pullback in Falluja, Iraq in spring 2004 was a costly mistake, a half-measure that necessitated a belated reentry by the post-election autumn. Then in the fall after renewed, far bloodier fighting, our soldiers found torture cells, bomb factories, and a veritable terropolis of sorts.
Not so in Jonathan Holmes' play. Lest one thinks the drama's criticism is simply fringe left-wing, consider the review by the supposedly staid Economist of what it conceded was an "anti-war, anti-American" drama.
The audience shuffles about his landscape while the action takes place around them. Soldiers push their way through, swaggering and malevolent; a roving stage light suddenly picks out two women in the audience as Iraqi aid workers. They weave gracefully through the crowd, telling their story, placing a hand gently on someone's shoulder.
Again, lest one thinks that this is a fair and descriptive, rather than an opinionated, view of a British status quo magazine, consider the Economist's final assessment that follows disclaimers of the plays obvious bias: "...'Fallujah' can still be applauded for casting light on a shameful chapter in a disastrous war."
"Shameful" and "disastrous"? This cheap sermonizing of Western elites reflects two unspoken truths: privately, no well-heeled British subject would prefer the world of beheading, gender apartheid, and Sharia law that flourished in lawless Fallujah to the legal system and audit that governs the American military. And yet most understand that their own professional advancement, psychological well-being, and political acceptance come from praising the former and damning the latter. Thus the war to establish democracy to replace Saddam Hussein's genocidal rule must be reduced to "swaggering Americans" threatening female "Iraqi aid workers."
Swaggering indeed.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/22/2007 09:56 ||
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#1
It will better for both Western European and American psyches for the Americans to completely leave Europe and take their trade concessions to Upper Volta.
Posted by: ed ||
05/22/2007 11:32 Comments ||
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#2
Note that it is the media elite plutocrats, today's robber barons and bosses, who most cheer this insanely distorted presentation.
The most astute observers, led by VDH, increasingly realize that the western cultural elites themselves are the real enemy in this war and that the forces of the anti-jihad, pilloried by enemy media as the dupes of authority, are in fact the revolutionary and subversive element in terms of their relationship to the genuine power centers of the western world, the corporate marketing and media complex.
The entire leftist paradigm of the media culture is in fact misdirection, a Goebbels style Big Lie, designed to represent conformity as rebellion in a successful strategy to maintain the support of the masses whom they exploit so ruthlessly.
The genuinely repressive authority, the pervasive cultural authority of the elites themselves, is presented as a subversive challenge when the opposite is true.
This pattern, slavish conformity disguised as rebellion and individualism, has been the basis of commercial advertising since the early 1960s. Its purest symbol is the commercial canonization of the mass murderer and Stalinist authoritarian Ernesto "che" Guevara.
See Thomas M. Frank's landmark cultural history, the Conquest of Cool, for more on this vital issue.
I will say it plainly: We cannot win this war until the present media-industrial complex is recognized for the unaccountable shadow government it is, and wholly overthrown like the similarly unaccountable and arbitrary monarchist systems of the past.
#4
This cheap sermonizing of Western elites reflects two unspoken truths: privately, no well-heeled British subject would prefer the world of beheading, gender apartheid, and Sharia law that flourished in lawless Fallujah to the legal system and audit that governs the American military. And yet most understand that their own professional advancement, psychological well-being, and political acceptance come from praising the former and damning the latter.
This sort of towering denial is what will amount to Europe's death knell. It they refuse to dismiss such abject flummery as this, there's little to no hope that they will ever recognize shari'a law for the tyranny it is.
Mesbah-Yazdi is both a student of Ayatollah Khomeini, and mentor to Iranian tyrant, Ahmadinejad. His philosophy of Islam calls for constant war preparations, and genocidal conflict with "disbeliever" states. Only the morally bankrupt would want less than total annihilation of any entity, controlled by the Mesbah-Yazdi cult. Every minute that Iran's Ayatollahs are able to prep for nuclear tipped ICBM attacks on US soil, while promoting the murder of US troops in Iraq, is a minute wasted.
Mesbah-Yazdi admits to having sent "12" fanatics to Canada, in order to advance Shiite subversion. Many more pollute America. It is highly likely that the State Department will grant him a Visa for US travel. You wouldn't infest your home with termites; why allow this waste of human flesh to infest the country? Why? The Baker Report calls for regional Mid-East negotiations, aimed at conserving the violent status quo. By letting Iran make "death to America" threats, with absolute impunity, while letting him crap on the Monroe Doctrine, the State Department is sending a message to Iran's dictators: help us pretend to pacify Iraq, and we will let you nuke-prep for the "Mahdi return," and the destruction of Pelosi generation victims.
Mesbah-Yazdi is 100,000 times more dangerous than Osama bin Laden. He is the AIDS virus in human form. Link
#6
I admit to speculation about State Dept. approval of same. But Canada wouldn't allow this type of creep anywhere near its number one ally, without at least notice to the US Ambassador, hence it is possible that Foggy Bottom had no objections to same, in light of Baker' inclusivism.
Think whatever you want of Buchanan, but he has a solid point; but it's not just the USA, it's pretty much all of the West, including its marches (think south africa, or even Israel). Demography and human migrations are trends that are simply unescapable, and the odds are not playing in our favor./pessimism
Are you a fine upstanding member of the Undocumented-American community? That's to say, are you (if you'll forgive the expression) an illegal immigrant?
Great news. Being illegal is now perfectly legal. Just for being one of the about 12 million people who shouldn't be here, you can now be here indefinitely. If you were living and working in America illegally before Jan. 1, 2007, you're now entitled to one of the new Z-1 "probationary" visas. And your parents and spouses are entitled to one of the new Z-2 visas, and your children to the new Z-3 visas.
Don't worry, it's not an "amnesty." Every politician in America opposes amnesty -- if not the concept, then at least the word.
That's why the visa starts with the letter that's furthest away from the one "amnesty" begins with. "Z" stands for zellout... no, hang on, zurrender or Zapatista, or some other word way up the other end of the alphabet from "amnesty." But the point is, at a stroke there will be no more illegal immigrants. Because being illegal means you're now legal.
Unless, of course, you came to America after Jan. 1, 2007, and thus aren't covered by the zamnesty. But in that case why not apply for the Z-1 anyway? After all, you're here illegally so how would U.S. Immigration know when you arrived? Especially with 12 million to 15 million or 20 million urgent applications tossed in on top of what is already a multiyear backlog. They're won't exactly be doing a lot of in-depth background checks, especially not for a visa category whose only entry requirement under U.S. law is that you broke U.S. law when you entered.
By the way, when I said "came to America," if you're visiting Toronto for a weekend break from Yemen or Belarus, don't be deterred by the fact Canada is not technically in America. Why not just head down to Buffalo and apply for the old Z-1, too? After all, it's not such a stretch to regard every single person on the planet as a Z-1-in-waiting. This being America, pretty soon -- a court decision here, a court decision there -- the presumption of every school district and hospital and welfare administrator will be that they're obliged to treat everyone who walks in through the door as if they were a Z-1. You zee one, you've zeen 'em all.
As for the notion that dumping a population the size of four midsized European Union nations into the lap of America's arthritic "legal immigration" (please, no tittering; apparently there is still such a thing) bureaucracy will lead to tougher enforcement and rigorous scrutiny and lots of other butch-sounding stuff, well, if that were the case, there would be no problem in the first place. You can declare that "illegal" now means "legal" very easily; to mandate that "incompetent" now means "competent" is a tougher proposition.
But, as John McCain declared, "This is what the legislative process is all about" -- and in the sense that it's a sloppily drafted bottomless pit of unintended consequences on a potentially cosmic scale whose sweeping "reforms" will inevitably require even more sweeping reforms of the reforms in a year or two, he's quite right. Also, as Mr. McCain says, "This is what bipartisanship is all about."
I'm not a fan of "bipartisanship" for its own sake. This is a very divided political culture in which bipartisanship is all but nonexistent on everything else, starting with war and national security. So, when the political class is in lockstep bipartisan mode, that's sufficiently unusual all by itself. When it's in bipartisan mode on an issue on which the public is diametrically opposed, that looks less like bipartisanship and more like the lockstep myopia of an out-of-touch one-party state.
America is not Europe, which is being transformed by a fast-growing Muslim population profoundly alienated from the broader society. Nonetheless, fast-moving demographic shifts are always a huge challenge. Last year, National Review's John Derbyshire noted the enrollment statistics for his school district on suburban Long Island, 1,400 miles from the southern border:
Those figures would have stunned any Long Island school superintendent 40 years ago. Mr. Derbyshire's numbers suggest that at some point not far away every school board in America will have to factor in bilingual education programs and ever-swelling Special Ed budgets, making one of the highest cost-per-pupil/lowest scores-per-pupil education systems even more expensive and less educational.
At some point, it's worth trying to climb over the rubble of the 2007 Z-1s and the 1986 amnesty and the 1965 immigration act, and going back to basics: What is immigration for? In the modern Western world, to question immigration in even the most cautious way is to risk being demonized as a racist. Most of us like to see ourselves as nice people, and so even to raise the subject of immigration -- even illegal immigration -- feels like an assault not on distant foreigners so much as on our self-image. Yet whatever the virtuousness of immigration for the host society, a dependence on it is a sign of profound structural weakness, and, when all the self-congratulation about celebrating diversity has died down, that weakness should be understood as such. The unspoken premise behind this bill is that the socioeconomic order in America now so depends on the vast apparatus of a giant shadow state of illegal immigrants that it can not be dismantled but only legitimized and thereby expanded. If true, that is a basic structural defect that should be addressed honestly.
Meanwhile, Washington's reluctance to be seen enforcing its own borders is very perplexing. From the "Washington sniper" to September 11, 2001, there has been for a generation a clear national-security component to the illegal immigration issue. To present it only as a matter of "the jobs Americans won't do" is lazily reductive. The economists may see the vast human tide as an army of much-needed hotel maids and farm workers and nurses and plumbers, but to assume everyone on Earth sees himself as primarily an economic entity is complacent and (post-September 11) obtusely deluded. The political class' urge to capitulate on the integrity of the national border sends as important a message to the world about American will as their urge to capitulate on Iraq.
Mark Steyn is the senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for the Spectator, and a nationally syndicated columnist.
James Taranto, Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web"
As a great man once said, there he goes again! "Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is 'the worst in history' in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy," the Associated Press reports . . . .
President Bush, naturally, didn't deign to answer Jimmy Carter's latest cavils, but a spokesman, Tony Fratto, did say this: "I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless personal criticism is out there. I think it's unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments."
This prompted the following hilarious observation from Reuters:
Carter has been an outspoken critic of Bush, but the White House has largely refrained from attacking him in return. Sunday's sharp response marks a departure from the deference that sitting presidents traditionally have shown their predecessors.
In the fun-house world of Reuterville, Osama bin Laden is a "freedom fighter," and the tradition of ex-presidents to defer to the current president is flipped on its head.
The Carter problem was anticipated by Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in Federalist No. 72:
Would it promote the peace of the community, or the stability of the government to have half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the people like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place which they were destined never more to possess?
Hamilton was actually arguing against term limits for the president--the idea being that bitter exes, barred by law from seeking the office again, would, well, go around acting like Jimmy Carter.
But what's Carter's excuse? He served only one term, so there is no constitutional bar to his being elected again. Why doesn't Carter put his money where his mouth is and seek the Democratic presidential nomination? After all, he's only a few years older than Mike Gravel, and he may be the only guy who can beat Hillary Clinton. He's been against the Iraq war since at least 1991, when Barack Obama was in diapers and Al Gore was a neocon war monger.
As Hamilton noted, "There is no nation which has not, at one period or another, experienced an absolute necessity of the services of particular men in particular situations; perhaps it would not be too strong to say, to the preservation of its political existence." Jimmy Carter, your country needs you!
The Instapundit posts a poll asking two questions:
Should Jimmy Carter run for President in 2008?
Would you vote for Jimmy Carter if he ran for President in 2008?
UPDATE: Okay, with around 2,500 votes, there's a very large majority in favor of Jimmy Carter running, and an absolutely crushing majority in favor of not voting for him if he does. I can only conclude that the vast majority of InstaPundit readers either enjoy watching train wrecks, or feel that Jimmy Carter hasn't been humiliated enough. Or, possibly, both.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader suggests I should drill down further. Good idea!
Which best describes your feelings?
* I enjoy a good train wreck.
* I want to see Jimmy Carter humiliated further.
* Both!
As of 0615 Eastern time this morning: Should Jimmy Carter run for President in 2008?
Yes - 73% (4,767 votes)
No - 27% (1,791)
Would you vote for Jimmy Carter if he ran for President in 2008?
Yes - 3% (197)
No - 97% (6,026) (Should that perhaps be "Hell, no!"?)
Which best describes your feelings?
Want a train wreck - 5% (189)
Further humiliation - 21% (829)
Both - 74% (2,912)
Vox populi, vox deus. Hit the link and add your $0.02.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/22/2007 05:59 ||
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Carter is 34 out of 40; W is 19, just above Slick Willie, at 22.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/22/2007 6:48 Comments ||
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#2
I saw that yesterday, Bobby. Interesting bit, from further in the original BotW:
To be sure, one has to take Bush's ranking here with a grain of salt. Bush came out "average," but that's because he was so highly rated by Republican-leaning scholars (who put him 6th from the top) and so poorly rated by Democratic-leaning ones (who put him 35th, or 6th from the bottom).
It will be interesting to see whether History finally records the Dem-leaning as correct, or the
Repub-leaning.
At this year's graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address. This brave woman, who has been imprisoned for her criticism of the Iranian government, had many good and wise things to say to our graduates, which earned their applause.
But one applause line troubled me. Ms. Ebadi said: "Democracy cannot be imposed with military force."
What troubled me about this statement--a commonly heard criticism of U.S. involvement in Iraq--is that those who say such things seem to forget the good U.S. arms have done in imposing democracy on countries like Japan and Germany, or Bosnia more recently.
Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were "over there." It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the "head of the snake." But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.
As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.
No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.
Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.
The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.
Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.
American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.
The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically "yes."
This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory.
Those who argue that radical Islamic terrorism has arrived in Iraq because of the U.S.-led invasion are right. But they are right because radical Islam opposes democracy in Iraq. If our purpose had been to substitute a dictator who was more cooperative and supportive of the West, these groups wouldn't have lasted a week.
Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it. Upon that truth I believe it is possible to build what doesn't exist today in Washington: a bipartisan strategy to deal with the long-term threat of terrorism.
The American people will need that consensus regardless of when, and under what circumstances, we withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. We must not allow terrorist sanctuaries to develop any place on earth. Whether these fighters are finding refuge in Syria, Iran, Pakistan or elsewhere, we cannot afford diplomatic or political excuses to prevent us from using military force to eliminate them.
#1
The problem is, Senator, that your party's powers that be consider George W. Bush the only enemy, and they';re perfectly willing to ally themselves with radical Islamic terrorism (and with garden-variety tyrants and dictators) to defeat their domestic political enemy. It's too bad for our country that guys like you are no longer in charge, and are all but unwelcome, in the Democratic party today.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/22/2007 9:27 Comments ||
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#2
"Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it."
And how pray tell does that work? Do we try and buy the dictator of the country off? Terrorists are generally not going to seek bases in stable democracies. They will hide in the likes of Afghanistan under the Talibs or in the NWP or in the Sudan and other African shit holes. How are we going to fight the terrorists in these places?
Or, does his word "occupy" just mean that he is supporting the laundry approach to military force?
#3
American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government. Much of Iraq's middle class has fled the country in fear.
With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power.
Ya know, Bob, you have a point there. The dhemmis are in hyperclusterf*ck mode just about all of the time. Come to think about it, I can't think of a time when they are not.
#4
"Finally, Jim Webb said something during his campaign for the Senate that should be emblazoned on the desks of all 535 members of Congress: You do not have to occupy a country in order to fight the terrorists who are inside it." He might mean simply that having troops fighting in a nation does not mean you are occupying that nation. Nobody seriously (outside of the warsaw block) claimed we were occupying South Vietnam after all and we had a lot more troops there.
Im never particularly surprised when the United Nations seems to oppose human freedom rather than promote it. At least a third of its member nations arent democratic themselves. Many that claim to be, are only barely so.
An organization that treats democracies and dictators equally cannot be expected to be a pure force for good. When Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il have as much say in U.N. matters as the entire populations of Poland and New Zealand, youre going to have problems.
One was the Oil-for-Food scandal. We ought to remember that the U.N. let Saddam steal tens of billions of dollars money meant to be spent on food and medicine for his own people. Much of that money was used to pay off U.N. officials and buy support for Saddams regime.
Still, people keep telling me that the U.N. is a force for good and Id like to believe it. The world could use an organization capable of dealing with international problems like slavery. According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people are sold across national borders annually. More are enslaved within nations. Most are women; about half are children, and the majority are sexually abused.
Thats why accusations made by former U.S. ambassador John Miller are so disturbing. Miller accuses the United Nations of promoting human trafficking by failing to punish U.N. officials and peacekeepers who have engaged in the trade.
Often, the offenders trade U.N. food and aid to desperate people for personal gain. Such incidents and the weak response to them, Miller says, cripple U.N. efforts to end human trafficking.
U.N. officials disagree, of course. They say theyve instituted reforms; but weve heard this sort of thing for over 50 years. I didnt see many resignations or firings over Oil-for-Food, so I think Ill wait for some evidence.
Posted by: Mike ||
05/22/2007 11:54 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
