THOSE PEACEFUL MUSLIMS

Training women for jihad: "Our main mission: push our children to the battlefield, like Al-Khansaa," declares a newly-launched online magazine teaching women how to contribute to jihad, or holy war. The monthly, published by the "Women's Information Office in the Arabian Peninsula", champions the ideology of Al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden: "Drive infidels from the Arabian Peninsula," or Saudi Arabia, which hosts Islam's holiest sites in Mecca and Medina."

There is an interesting article here saying that Iran considers itself "encircled" by U.S. forces and allies. Wayne Lusvardi thinks they're right: "Sure, Democracy may never come to Iraq given its autocratic culture. But focusing on that has diverted our attention away from what is the classic encirclement strategy using "silent alliances" with neighboring states rather than those with the U.N. The Afghanistan-Iraq Wars have encircled Iran and Syria on two sides. But, of course, the mainstream media has been focusing on the dubious achievements in Iraq and missing the bigger strategic picture. This has led to the selective misperception that the Iraq War is "phony." This begs the question, what is the Bush administration supposed to do? - announce to Iran, Pakistan, and Syria that "we've got you surrounded now!" No can do. All they can do is keep focusing everyone's attention on WMDs etc while they quietly get on with their real aims. Iraq is a preliminary, a staging ground for what is likely coming (probably after the U.S. elections)".

The Iranian bomb: The London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an op-ed by its former editor, Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, claiming that Israel is merely used as a pretext for Iran's nuclear build-up, and that in fact this build-up principally endangers the neighboring Arab countries.

The Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) has released a new report detailing the diversion of unprecedented sums of financial aid from the Palestinian people towards corruption and violence. The FPC report is called "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency". It publishes evidence, which substantiates a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism. It also highlights the utter failure of European organisations to monitor where these funds have been directed.

Arlene Peck: "The Arabs are bombing, murdering, mutilating, raping and causing havoc all over the Judeo /Christian world. Israel has nothing to do with it.nothing! The front page of my L.A. Times today headlined, (besides the Israelis who were savagely bombed in Beersheba) that that these same sub-human savage "militants" who had killed twelve Nepalese workers want more! More concessions and more blood! ...... On a personal level , I believe a plan should be implemented where announcements are made that anyone who even tries to bomb anyone in the Jewish state will be shot by bullets soaked in pig blood. Then they will be returned to their families who raise these homicide bombers wrapped in pig skin for burial".

Brink Lindzey has an insightful article showing the common origins and common features of Communism, Fascism and Islamofascism. He points out that WE (modern Western industrial civilization) are the revolutionaries by historical standards and the totalitarians are an attempt to return to the past that we have overturned. I made a similar point in the last third of a 1988 article here but was more pessimistic about the outcome of the conflict than now seems required.

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ELSEWHERE

The Anti-Chomskyite has a powerful and moving account of how he moved from being a fanatical Leftist in his youth to a much more conservative stance now. It might actually convert some Leftists if you could get them to read it. The self-contradictions and intolerance of Leftism were what finally got to him. Just a few quotes: "Ultimately it was the idea of universalism.... that disturbed me the most. The demand for an absolute uniformity of thought and opinion... My family life was deeply troubled, I was unhappy, I had blamed society. It was as simple and as cliched as all that..... It is not mere armchair psychology to see radical politics, in fact all politics which sees the world as inherently flawed and in need of overturning, as, in truth, the cry of unhappy and angry people; people for whom politics has become a desperate attempt to satiate a pain which is, in fact, deeply personal". I have put up a good excerpt on LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS too. (Via Peg Kaplan).

A great anti-Chomsky article by Windschuttle points out that even Chomsky's original claim to fame in linguistics is hollow. Linguistics professor Marc Miyake would emphatically agree.

Mike Jericho has a good sense of humour. In response to the recent multiplication of my blogs, he describes me as: "the man who is to conservative bloggers what Moses was to the Israelites". And The Yobbo gave me a good laugh with this comment: "When John Ray was 17, Thomas Aquinas was still on the bestseller list." Aquinas died in 1274 so I am not quite that old! Keith Burgess-Jackson has just put something up on Aquinas, as it happens. And The Usurer puts in a plug for Aristotle -- very Straussian!

Amusing that the Germans are finally getting around to humanizing Hitler. Even anti-Nazi prewar writers such as Roberts and Heiden conceded that he was the most popular man in Germany at the time so he was human all right. The ploy of saying that he was insane or inhuman is just a means of distracting attention from what he really embodied -- the Leftist form of nationalism. Giving ANY Leftist unlimited power is catastrophic.

Like myself, Bjorn Staerk is an atheist but with a Christian background. But I don't think I entirely agree with his view that atheists have no business interpreting the texts of a given religion. It seems to me that the teachings of Christ are what all Christians bow before and I can read those teachings in the Gospels as well as anybody else. And I still find great wisdom in them -- as my not infrequent quotations from scripture attest. And I certainly reserve the right to disparage those who claim to follow the teachings of Christ when they clearly do not. Atheists in mitres particularly offend me.

I think Maverick Philosopher is a bit hard on Nietzsche. One of the few wise things that old Fred said was: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies". Maverick takes that a bit too literally. I unpack the statement as saying that convictions can be such a barrier to the recognition of truth that they send you off in the wrong direction more often than lies do -- which I take to be what generally happens with Leftists, in fact.

GREENIE WATCH has the Greenie answer to the recent Muslim barbarism in Russia: Stuffed Koalas!

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and EDUCATION WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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