Sunday, October 28, 2007

Power Line: Osama's Call For Unity Goes Unheeded


For those of you who don't read Power Line, this may be one reason why you should. While there are philosophical and historical reasons why we shouldn't be in Iraq, there are temporal reasons why its good that we are at this time. John H. at Power Line neatly summarizes a few of them.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The velvet underground - Femme fatale (live)

I've had a crush on Nico from the from the time I was 15 or 16 years old. Hers is a fascinating story, but ultimately culminating in her accidental death in 1988 at age 50 on the island of Ibiza where she had lived off and on. I prefer not to think about her long and tawdry descent into a heroin addiction. Images of her from those times look as though her soul has spilled out of her eyes and on to the floor into a shrinking puddle of muddy pond water. Here, though, on one of my favorites, she is bright-eyed, vulnerable and sexy as hell. Like I remember her.

Blogger won't let me do a link within a video upload, so for more on Nico, paste this into your browser: http://smironne.free.fr/NICO/bio.html

Saturday, October 13, 2007

PATHETIC


According to an official statement: "This is the first time that the Empire State Building will be illuminated for Eid, and the lighting will become an annual event in the same tradition of the yearly lightings for Christmas and Hannukah."
Another word that comes to mind would be ignominious. In strict muslim societies only muslims are allowed to wear green clothing as an indication of their superiority. For a non-muslim, wearing green was punishable by death. Christians and Jews were relegated to not-green and in addition had their own religion-indicating colors of clothing and mandatory cloth patches to identify them as non-muslims in the islamic heirarchy of being. This was a fashion innovation the Nazis stole and used in the 1st few years of their 1000 year reich.
Green is the symbolic color of Islam. Green was also the color of the banners used on the battlefield when conquering and enslaving our cultural ancestors, the Egyptians, the Judeans and the Greeks, and the color of the first Islamic flag. And Mohammad's turban.
Now it is for non-muslims to become the color of capitulation and cultural self-abnegation. If only we hadn't made them so angry they wouldn't have attacked the twin towers. Or something like that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Friday, October 12, 2007

England bends over, the Dutch stand up

Good news from Holland, bad news from England, in this brief comparison piece from The Gathering Storm:

"Now that Tony Blair and his hard line stance against terrorism has been removed because his stance sparked Muslim anger, now the UK pledges to work more closely with local communities to fight terrorism.

God forbid that we should take a hard line stance on those that want to kill us. But we sure don’t want to insult those that wish to impose Sharia law on us all – do we?

Tony McNulty also described the phrase "war on terror" as "crass". Naughty. Naughty.

I mean, according to liberals, what creates terrorists is not their blind devotion to jihad – but a few simple words. But on the Continent – some Dutch are not buying it.

In a joint opinion piece in newspaper De Volkskrant, Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders and Ehsan Jami, founder of the Committee for ex-Muslims, warned yesterday against what they see as an attempt by Islam to conquer the world. They compare the Prophet Mohammed to Adolf Hitler.

Wilders and Jami suggest that a hushing-up culture reigns in the Netherlands on Islam. They criticise National Anti-terrorism Coordinator Tjibbe Joustra, who recently warned that radical statements about Islam could give the final push to individuals poised on the edge of violence.

"We consider that Joustra should catch terrorists instead of trying to muzzle politicians," according to Wilders and Jami. "His remarks are inappropriate for this reason alone. But we also wonder whether what Joustra claims is actually true. (...) Does Joustra really think that religious maniacs who want to use violence to please Allah need Jami or Wilders as an extra spur to move into action?

Wilders and Jami refer to the 1960s and 1970s, when "Christianity and Jesus Christ were heavily insulted and criticised" in the Netherlands. (...) Did Christians then commit violence en masse? (...) Of course not. Such processes are unique to the Islamic ideology of hatred, violence and intolerance."