From Spiegel Online (h/t LGF):

The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front.

 Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos and concentration camps because they were the enemies of the people. Then they believed in the autobahn and that the Third Reich would ultimately be victorious. A few years later, they believed in the Deutsche mark. They believed that the Berlin Wall would be there forever and that their pensions were safe. They believed in recycling as well as in cheap jet travel. They even believed in a German victory at the soccer World Cup.

Now they believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran. This was the by-no-means-surprising result of a Forsa opinion poll commissioned by Stern magazine. Young Germans in particular -- 57 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, to be precise -- said they considered the United States more dangerous than the religious regime in Iran.

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country's foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a "critical dialogue" between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they've been naughty, they'll stop condemning their women to death for "unchaste behavior" and they'll stop building the atom bomb...

Ethiopia is a country which, in the past thirty years, has repeatedly known major famine. We have all seen the pictures. Yet the headwaters of the Nile begin in Ethiopia, and intelligent irrigation projects could save many lives in Ethiopia.

Yet Egypt has been threatening, and screaming, that Ethiopia's plans are outrageous. And if the threats and screams do not work, then the Egyptians try smiles, and wiles, and offers to cooperate, if only -- oh, if only the Egyptians are given a veto over what Ethiopia does, and how much water it diverts.

Never mind that it is the Ethiopians who for years have suffered, and that Egypt looks benignly on the massacres of the blacks in the southern Sudan, because it wishes to extend Arab Muslim power down to where it will immediately threaten what has always been seen, in Islam and in the West, as the celebrated Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. Securing the Sudan is one element; threatening Ethiopia from Eritrea and Somalia and from the Arabs of Egypt and the Sudan from the north, and also from within the country with a very aggressive program of da'wa (conversion) which can always become subversion, is another.

Ethiopia, in Islam, was once accorded special status because 82 families of followers of Muhammad supposedly found temporary refuge there from the pagan Meccans. Gratitude to the Christian Negus of Ethiopia entitled the country to a kind of special status, as dar al-sulh, a kind of halfway house between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. But that gratitude, and that special consideration, however minor it may have been, is not demonstrated in the slightest by Egypt's proprietary and exclusivist claims on the Nile waters.

If Ethiopia wishes to divert waters to feed people who have lacked, until now, the wherewithal and the technical assistance to use those waters for irrigation, that should be encouraged by the entire Infidel world. Egypt's threats, Egypt's wiles, should be seen in the proper context. The Arabs everywhere in North Africa essentially treat the black Africans with contempt. Indeed, in Darfur, the Arabs tried to wipe out black Africans -- as there is ample testimony from survivors -- even if they were Muslim.

It is not surprising that Egypt should attempt to arrogate to itself the water of the Nile, and deny, even in its nascent stage, the attempt of the oldest free black African country to recover its equilibrium. After all, Ethiopia is a country so celebrated for its long history of Christianity that, when Western Christendom imagined a Christian realm beyond Islam that represented an ally that might be counted on for succor and protection, they placed the Kingdom of Prester John first in India -- and then in Ethiopia.

Those in Western Europe who claim to have the interests of the Third World at heart really have to be put to the test. They sided with the Muslims in Biafra. They have not moved a finger to aid the Christian blacks in the southern Sudan, and have done nothing to denounce the Arab Muslim genocide against them that has lasted more than 20 years. They seem not to know much, and care nothing about, the continued enslavement of blacks by Muslim Arabs in Mali and in Mauritania. They do not take the side of the government of Tanzania, trying to deal with Arab revanchism in Pemba and Zanzibar. And what will they say about Ethiopia and its need for water? One suspects that the phony left, including the Anglican clergy who have never gone to the aid of the African Anglicans under attack by Islam, will say nothing – nothing whatsoever.

Really, it is important for the American government to do something dramatic -- for nothing will come from Europe, not even from, or especially not from -- the co-religionists of the black African Christians under assault in Africa.

I have repeatedly suggested that a small force could seize the southern Sudan and secure it until the local black population, Christian and animist, Dinka and Nuer and others, can vote on their own independence. Why should they not? And why should the sinister regime in Khartoum, which keeps denying it has anything to do with the Janjaweed in Darfur, be heeded in the slightest?

Why is the American government, too, hellbent on ignoring what is happening to black Christians throughout Africa, and doing nothing to help or protect them against Muslim depredation and aggression and threats?

Ethiopia is one test. Nigeria is another test. And the Sudan is yet another. Let us see.

[First Posted December 14, 2005 07:52 AM]

See here for more on The Kingdom of Prester John.

"What about the GLEIWITZ INCIDENT which was stage managed by the Germans to put the Poles in a bad light before they invade."-- from a reader

More on this important event:

"The Gleiwitz incident was a staged attack on 31 August 1939 against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany (since 1945: Gliwice, Republic of Poland) on the eve of World War II in Europe.

This provocation was one of several actions in Operation Himmler, a Nazi Germany project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which would be used to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland."

The Gleiwitz Incident has been mostly forgotten outside Germany, except -- naturally --in Poland, and mostly forgotten even in Germany, despite the recent movie about the matter. Yes, there's been a whole lot of forgetting going on in Germany, despite the efforts by the victorious Allies, those brief, often halfhearted, almost perfunctory efforts by those Allies, to force what should have been permanent remembering, and that process of German forgetting began rather promptly in May, 1945.

Those who read the American Constitution for the profit and pleasure it affords, sometimes read a phrase or two that they do not understand exactly, and ordinarily they move on, without paying too much mind, to the next phrase, which they do understand, and then the next.

In the enumeration of powers belonging to Congress --Article I, Section 8 -- and remember, we possess a government of enumerated powers, not of any damn powers someone thinks the government should have -- one such phrase occurs early on:
Congress shall have the exclusive right to issue "letters of marque and reprisal."

Well, perhaps, given the bogging-down in Tarbaby Iraq, is the time for Congress to exercise that power, and exercise it world-wide, issuing to all kinds of groups and individuals permission to act against Iran and Iranian interests everywhere, and then we will all be able to learn the meaning, that is not the only thing the Western world appears to have forgotten, of the beautiful and haunting phrase "letters of marque and reprisal."

The parading of enemies, a staple of cruel and totalitarian regimes, begins with examples of Enemies of the State (domestic version), and those Soviet show trials of the Old Bolsheviks such as Bukharin, accused of the crime of being "wreckers" -- "wrecking" things built on the glorious path to Communism. The foremost prosecutor was the inimitable Andrey Vyshinsky, back in the 1930s, and along with being "wreckers" those Old Bolsheviks (old enough to have known Stalin when he was just one more young psychopath, not yet powerful enough to find a 6000-mile-wide outlet for his peculiar urges). For more see Alexander Weisberg, "The Accused" or read, still better, the actual Soviet transcripts of the trials (the paper can crumble in your hands, so watch out).

Baby versions of the Soviet trials were also arranged in the countries of Eastern Europe, once they were seized by the Red Army and its local collaborators. After the noble Tomas Masaryk (the son) was murdered, thrown out of a building's window by the NKVD in the Second (or for purists, Third) Defenestration of Prague, and the Communists came to power, there was scarcely time to hold one's breath before Rudolph Slansky, and others, mostly but not exclusively Jews, were removed from power, and charged with treason. Stalin, back in Russia, was just warming up to the pleasing idea of finishing off Hitler's unfinished symphony of mass murder of the Jews, and the idea of the Doctors' Plot, and what would naturally follow, was hatching in his wolf-like primitive brain. The Slansky Trials followed, very quick, very efficient, readings aloud by the accused of confessions prepared carefully by the NKVD, and a good time was had by all.

Then came the Parading of Enemies (foreign style). The Chinese Communists did a lot of this, and the North Koreans: the bestial Americans, whether soldiers or civilians, were captured and paraded, derided and berated. But this was still in the days before television was for the masses, so the parading was mainly for the world press.

The Iranians, in their earlier androlepsy (strictly speaking, a word that applies only to the seizure of diplomatic personnel), the seizure of the American Embassy in Teheran, and the parading of the blindfolded diplomats (one of those whom the Americans hostages saw on several occasions -- see the testimony of Don Sharer and others -- was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), to be taunted and jeered and jostled about, all for the delight of the hysterical Iranians, in the first flush of their Khomeini madness.

Now it is the turn not of the Great Satan (America) or the Little Satan (Israel) but the Old and Cleverest Satan (in the Iranian mythology), England. The letter from Turney, the abashed confession given by British male sailor was at this point willing to yield (there will no doubt be others) -- all of this is of a piece with Stalin or for that matter with those Chinese professors forced to wear dunce caps, and have affixed to their chests their own "confessions" before being paraded in the streets and then killed (or sometimes merely condemned to a lesser fate) during the "Cultural Revolution."

Any country or regime that puts on such parades, just as any country that has giant photographs of its leaders, shows its own country to be unfit for human habitation, and should be accorded not automatic respect (for its display, as the Iranian government thinks, of its might) but automatic contempt. No other proof is needed. It has conducted its own show trial. It accuses itself. It confesses to its own crimes, which it does not recognize as crimes. And it condemns itself, as Iran is now condemning itself.

And it will be punished.

Do I detect a slight 'homophobia?'"-- from a reader commenting on this post

Not from me, in the slightest, though the word "homophobia" itself is one I would not use. I was making another point: that Muslim lesbians, or Muslim women, or Muslim anything, whose situation is intolerable under Islam, should not be given undue or confused attention, and Infidels hail this or that possible victory -- that for them, the Infidels, may mean nothing.

I don't think homosexuality will be openly tolerated in Muslim societies even though it is furtively tolerated. But if it were, would that imply less of a menace for Infidels? If Islam is made safe for Irshad Manji, does that make it safe for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and all others? No.

I was thinking not so much of the Muslim intolerance of homosexuality (see Peter Titchell, in England), but about the Problem of Muslim Women, which has become an industry. Think of the number of books and seminars and courses about "Women in Islam." That strikes me as a topic that, while seeming to recognize a problem in Islam, may too easily satisfy some. What if the lot of Muslim women improves?

There's a lot of breathless talk about that happening, and a lot of silly articles, like the one the other day in The Times about some Iranian-American who has taken it upon herself, having as an adult "accepted Islam" (apparently she was not raised as a Muslim), and having read the Qur'an and been horrified by verses about women, to translate it and somehow think she can get away with simply interpreting away, by omission, the verses damaging to women -- my god, with the Qur'an, the Uncreated and Immutable Qur'an that is the Literal word of God, this lady thinks she can do that, and what's more, have it accepted by more than a dozen or two Muslims, with many of the rest ardently desiring her death. This is the kind of thing that distracts the attention of the kind of people who both write for The Times, or read The Times uncritically, and think that yes, indeed, why not simply rewrite the Qur'an in order to quickly get that little matter of "reforming" Islam out of the way, and do it in the next decade or two.

Many Muslim "feminists" are more Muslim than feminists, and are quite good at sensing attacks on Islam and immediately coming to its defense, even if it means abandonment or betrayal of their so-called "feminism."

That was, in the main, what I was discussing.

And my point about the meeting of Arab (come to think of it, were they Muslims? Might they have been Christian Arabs?) lesbians in Israel, was that they might both be enjoying the tolerance of an advanced Western society, that of Israel, and yet still be unable to make the connection between Islam and intolerance, Islam and fear, and maintain their loyalty to that belief-system, and even keep intact the hostility, or even hatred, for Infidels that Islam so obviously inculcates (and some Muslims, just as obviously, may ignore -- that is, may be "bad" Muslims).

Homosexuality was not really the theme, not even tangentially. And I reject utterly your suggestion -- thus coming, by a commodious vicus, in the last sentence of this posting, right back to the first one, with which the present discussion began.

In addition to tomorrow's protest at the Iranian Embassy in London, there are several planned for the U.S.  From the 910 Group:

On Saturday March 31st Americans of all ethnicities and of all religious backgrounds are urged to take to the streets in peaceful protest of Islamic radicalism. The primary locations of the rallies will be in front of several offices of the Council on American Islamic Relations deemed by many as a radical Islamist front organization.

1. Southern California:

In front of CAIR's Southern California Office

We will be hanging an effigy of bin Laden

Location: 2180 W. Crescent Ave. Anaheim, CA 92801

Time: 1:00 PM

Contact: losangeles@unitedamericancommittee.org

2. Hawaii - Kona

Location: Along the Queen K Hwy, near the Mormon Temple, just south of Henry St., in Kona, Hawaii

Time: Starting at 2:00pm and until 5:00pm

Contact: for more info or to confirm attendance email americandefender@yahoo.com

3. Washington State:

In front of CAIR's Seattle Office

Location: 9594 1st Avenue NE, Seattle WA

Time: 1:00 PM

Contact: washington@unitedamericancommittee.org

4. New York - NYC: GROUND ZERO

MAIN RALLY AGAINST ISLAMOFASCISM DAY RALLY - BE THERE!

Location: Ground Zero - World Trade Center

Time: 12 Noon - 2 PM

Contact: newyork@unitedamericancommittee.org

5. Florida - Orlando:

Location: The corner of Hwy 50(Colonial Drive) and Bumby.

Time: 1:00 PM

Contact: florida@unitedamericancommittee.org

6. Massachusetts - Boston:

Location: Boston Common

Tremont St. in front of the Constitution memorial and across from Lowes movie theater.

Time: 1:00 - 3:00 PM

Contact: boston@unitedamericancommittee.org

7. Missouri - Columbia:

Location: Post Office on E 500 block of Walnut Street, across the street on the sidewalk.

Time: 9:45am to 11am.

Contact: ltw03y@hotmail.com

For updates, check here:  http://www.unitedamericancommittee.org/

"We are not abolishing the military jihad with the civil jihad, but appropriate statements must be made in the appropriate setting. In another place I call for military jihad and even for martyrdom operations. In the eyes of some people, my blood is permitted because of this. But at the Al-Quds Institute, I call for civil jihad."-- from Al-Qaradawi's statement

What could be clearer? Depending on who is in the audience, Al-Qaradawi tells us, he will vary his pitch. When he's at the sober gathering of the Al-Quds Institute, with too many non-Muslims possibly present, it's the presumed sweet reason of a merely "civil jihad." When he can let down his hair without any Infidels overhearing, then of course, he tells his Muslim audience, "I call for military jihad and even for martyrdom operations."

Arafat whispered one thing to the credulous Clinton, and said quite another to what he assumed were all-Muslim audiences, beginning with that one he addressed in September 1994, in Johannesburg, telling them not to worry about the Oslo Accords he had just signed, because they didn't commit him to anything; he was just following in the steps of the great Master, and then he proceeded to refer, as one might expect, to Muhammad's deviousness with the Meccans when he signed the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya. That has been the model for all subsequent treaties between Muslims with Infidels -- always temporary, always to be broken, whatever promises of friendly relations and "peace" or even "permanent peace" may be solemnly undertaken, it means nothing -- Muslims are required to break such agreements the minute they feel strong enough to do so. They know, Al-Qaradawi knows, Arafat knew, Mubarak and the Saudi rulers, all daggers and dishdashas and sneers of cold command, know this. Every single Muslim ruler or ordinary Muslim understands this, and understands that Muslims have a right to sign things and then never live up to them, or to break them with impunity whenever they feel like it. "War is deception," said Muhammad.

The only strange thing is: if this is such an obvious part of Islamic treaty-making (see Majid Khadduri, Law of War and Peace in Islam - say, do you think Dennis Ross, or Richard Haas, or anyone at all in the whole American State Department has ever looked at that book, or even read it, or bothered to inquire as to what, in Islam, the rule is on treaties with Infidels? No? You don't? Neither do I.), why don't the Israelis, even with their celebrated incompetence, begin to mention the little matter of how Muslims regard treaties. Hmmm? Might spoil Rose Garden ceremonies? Queer somebody's pitch for a Nobel? What, exactly?

Meanwhile, Al-Qaradawi is just doing what all Muslim leaders do but he, apparently unaware that everything is overheard these days, tells the truth: that is, tells the truth about the fact that he essentially lies. He calls here for "civil jihad" and makes the gullible think that's all he's calling for, but over here, with fellow Muslims only, he calls as well for the other kind, the kind with bomb belts and homicide bombers on busses, in cafés, in schools and at Passover celebrations. That's Al-Qaradawi: a nice blend of Mahmoud Abbas (the "civil jihad") and Haniya (the other kind), the Slow Jihad and the Fast Jihad, or rather, both the tactics of the Slow Jihad and the tactics of the Fast JIhad at the very same time.

And we are supposed to pretend we didn't hear this. Or if we heard it, it doesn't mean what of course any sensible person knows perfectly well what it means. It means what Muslims, speaking to other Muslims, know perfectly well it means.

For god's sake, la commedia e finita. Or ought to be. We can only stand so much wilful ignorance and stupidity exhibited by those pushing for that madness, the "two-state solution" (which must be a "solution," some will say, because otherwise why would they call it that).

How long, o Lord, how long?

I have posted before, most recently here, about the way that Nazi and other Fascist memorabilia are regarded as beyond the pale, yet Communist memorabilia are, at most, disapproved of, and are generally seen as rather amusing. This despite Communism’s much higher murder toll. I admit to sharing this inconsistent reaction – I can’t summon up the same revulsion for a hammer and sickle as for a swastika. 

Charles Moore echoes my opinion in this week's Spectator:

When Lord Turnbull said last week that Gordon Brown was like Stalin, the lack of outrage was interesting. If he had said that Mr Brown was like Hitler, many would have accused him of grotesque exaggeration and bad taste. This did not happen, partly, perhaps, because people really do think that Mr Brown is like Stalin, but also because, subliminally, people do not think of Stalin as nearly as bad as Hitler. Yet he was. The two are morally indistinguishable, though their characters were not the same. Stalin was probably personally the crueller of the two, but Hitler, being more fanatical, was probably even more destructive. Both loved death and absolute power and mass suffering. It is one of the great and subtle successes of the Left that they have managed to prevent Stalin from completely contaminating their cause, when really the red flag should inspire as much fear and disgust as the swastika.

Nobody seems to be able to explain why it doesn't. Perhaps it is simply that the Germans have – officially at least – acknowledged the evils of Nazism. Supporters of Communism have yet to admit, that they were wrong. Sadly, we in the free world take them at their word. The Chinese under Mao, in particular, have got away with murder on a scale that makes the Nazis seem quite puny, for motives no less hateful, and, like the Germans, with the enthusiastic participation of ordinary people. Even the sensible Charles Moore seems unwilling to knock a hole in the Great Wall of Silence.

Just in from the 910 Group:

URGENT:  Saturday, March 31: UK London Protest at Iranian Embassy for the Capture of the 15 Marines

From the 910 Group Forum:  Assuming the Marines are still captive, we are organizing a protest for Saturday, March 31 at 3pm outside the Iranian Embassy. It will be in Kensington Road (South side) 200 yards east of the junction with Prince's Gate - that's as near the Embassy as you are allowed to go to protest. Nearest tube is South Kensington - it's a 10 minute walk from there, but also on several bus routes.

Please come and bring placards. We will bring some leaflets, but please bring your own. Best is a copy of the front page of Thursday’s Sun, maybe with the email address of the Iran Embassy and postal address too, so people can write. The objective will be to get people to write/email the Iran Embassy to protest, and get press coverage of the public’s outrage.

If you can make placards, please do. For example, the smirking face of Ahmadinejad with "International Criminal: Release the 15 Marines Now" on it - can anyone do that?   Contact aeneas@vigilantfreedom.com right away.  Time is very short.

(h/t: Atlas Shrugs, seen above.)

MADRID (Reuters) - A woman who lost her husband in the 2004 Madrid train bombings displayed an infamous cartoon mocking the Prophet Mohammad on her T-shirt in front of 29, mostly Muslim, suspects on trial for the attacks on Monday.

The woman's white T-shirt showed Mohammad wearing a bomb as a turban -- one of a series published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten which unleashed violent protests by some Muslims last year.

Ten bombs ripped through four commuter trains on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people -- attacks which public prosecutors blame on a group of Islamist militants inspired by al-Qaeda.

The woman sat in the front row of the court wearing the T-shirt for around half-an-hour before getting up, walking up to the glass cage containing the defendants and finally walking out of the court, judicial sources said.

As reported in The Telegraph

The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers "non-offensive" phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist".

The word "jihad" is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.

An EU official said that the secret guidebook, or, "common lexicon", is aimed at preventing the distortion of the Muslim faith and the alienation of Muslims in Europe.

"The common lexicon includes guidance on a number of frequently used terms where lack of care by EU and member states' spokespeople may give rise to misunderstandings," he said.

Details on the contents of the lexicon remain secret, but British officials stressed that it is there as a helpful aid "providing context" for civil servants making speeches or giving press conferences.  "We are fully signed up to this, but it is not binding," said one.

However, Conservative MEP Syed Kamall hit out at the lexicon. "It is this kind of political correctness and secrecy that creates resentment among both the mainstream in Europe and in Islam," he said.

Meanwhile, UK Independence Party MEP Gerard Batten claimed that the EU was in denial over the true roots of terrorism. "This type of newspeak shows that the EU refuses to face reality," he said. "The major world terrorist threat is one posed by ideology and that ideology is inspired by fundamentalist jihadi Islam."

Even that falls short, but is an improvement.  Mary has written at great length on the EU so I will not repeat myself here.

From LGF:

UN Watch has now put together another must-see video, showing the kinds of disgusting, evil speeches that are NOT banned by the UN Human Rights Council—including support for the execution of homosexuals, support for terrorist groups, Holocaust denial, and the inevitable demonization of Israel (to a frightening degree).

The United Nations at work.

It's a little hard to admit that the Sunni-Shi'a split has been around for a long time, is observable in countries far from Iraq, was observed in Iraq by Gertrude Bell and others, and owes its origins to events that took place in the first century of Islam, with consequences that have never been exactly hidden from view.

Did Bush know about Sipah-e-Sahaba, the Sunni terrorist group that targets Shi'a? Did he know of any history of Sunni-Shi'a conflict in Yemen or Lebanon? Is he aware that in Afghanistan the Sunni Taliban massacred the Hazara (an ethnic group descended from Mongols) and would have killed all of them, because they were Shi'a (see Rory Steward, "The Places In-Between" for an account in a hard-to-miss best-seller).

No, apparently he did not.

And because he did not, nor did others in his Administration, they are not about to say, at this point: well, it was there all along. We just missed it. Chalabi didn't tell us. Bernard Lewis underestimated the problem (for god's sake, Lewis co-wrote an article proposing a Sunni monarch - his friend Prince Hassan, without naming him -- to be set on a throne created for him in Iraq by the Americans.

But if the Administration and its loyalists argue that this conflict was not inevitable, and that no one foresaw it, much less thought it was something to welcome and exploit, they have two problems:

1) Why, in 500-600 postings here, was that conflict steadily described as the inevitable outcome of the removal of Saddam Hussein, one that would occur whatever the Americans did or did not do?

2) If it was NOT inevitable, than presumably this outcome was the result of human error. Whose error? Why, the error of the Americans of course. Haven't they been the ones who have irrupted into Iraq, and mucked about with Iraq's otherwise splendidly harmonious sectarian and ethnic arrangements?

So the Bush Administration is going to have to choose what whipping it prefers. Does it wish to be accused of merely making mistake after mistake in "execution" of a perfectly sensible, rational policy, with goals that if achieved would have furthered American and Infidel interests, and weakened the Camp of Islam, but that here and there -- Bremer dissolving the army and accepting de-Ba'athification, for example -- "mistakes were made"?

Or should it choose to take the blame, that it deserves to take, for not understanding very much about Islam, and thus identifying the enemy wrongly in that phrase "the war on terror," and furthermore, not knowing much about Iraq, or how deep and intractable were, and are, and will be, the sectarian and ethnic fissures, and why that is not a bad, but a good thing for us, something that the Bush Administration just cannot seem able to comprehend.

Perhaps it is more than mere obstinacy, an inability to admit how wrong it was (and thus, what a waste most of those trillion dollars, and so many of those soldiers' lives, that were expended after the invasion and the first, possibly justifiable year). Perhaps it is also sentimentality: we can't "just leave these people to kill each other." Of course we can. Our loyalty should be singlemindedly to ourselves, to Americans and to the other Infidel victims of Islam, those threatened most immediately, and those that still have a decade or two to do something to protect themselves.

Iran has released a second letter from kidnapped British marine Faye Turney in which she calls on Tony Blair to withdraw British troops from Iraq.

The letter was released by the Iranian embassy in London, which stated that Turney was the author. The veracity of the letter could not immediately be determined. But it is so obviously balderdash. Anybody can make a spelling mistake but the idiom is not current English. She would write to her MP, not "the representitive of the house of commons"  And why have they waited 2 days before releasing it? It is dated, under her signature, a strange place in itself, 27/3/07. Only released late today, the 29th.

responded furiously tonight to the letter.

Britain

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett accused Iran of an "outrageous and cruel" attempt to use the young mother-of-one for propaganda purposes.

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said: "This is an abuse of the rights and dignity of our service personnel.

"The content of the letter is not credible and it represents a grotesque, cruel and counterproductive act of propaganda."

There were immediate fears Leading Seaman Turney wrote the letter under duress, with Mrs Beckett expressing "grave concerns" about the circumstances in which it was prepared.

Some language experts are already questioning the letter's validity, the suggestion being that the language used indicates the letter is an English translation of a Farsi original.  And look at her signature, cowering in the bottom corner, half the size of the rest of the writing.

And Captured sailor Faye Turney was "clearly coerced" into writing a letter in which she apparently called for British troops to withdraw from Iraq, a former hostage in Iraq said.

John Nichol, an ex-RAF navigator who was shot down in 1991 and held captive during the first Iraq War, said the 15 seized sailors and marines would be trying to placate their captors.

It was wrong to attempt to second guess why Leading Seaman Turney might have written the letter because she was in a "parlous situation", he added.

Mr Nichol told Sky News: "Faye was clearly coerced into making the TV broadcasts that we saw yesterday and today.

"She was clearly coerced into writing the letter, and she was clearly coerced into writing the letter that's been released this afternoon. No serviceman or woman is going to volunteer to do that sort of thing.  No serviceman or woman is going to pick up a pen when captive and write to their dearly beloved MP. It's a nonsense.

I don't know what level of coercion was used, and in many ways it doesn't matter.  But she was under duress when she wrote those things and said those things. The captured service personnel will be trying to keep the situation calm.”

From Rush Limbaugh's website:

HAGEL:  America finds itself now in a dangerous and isolated position in the world.  We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims.

RUSH:  You idiot!

HAGEL:  This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed, as the world seeks a new center of gravity for this new century.

RUSH:  You, sir, are... I'm going to refrain from name-calling.  He says we are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims?  Senator, you are an elected senator.  You are one of 100 special people in the world's greatest deliberative body.  It is Muslims who are at war with us!  Does 9/11 exist in your memory bank, sir?  What did we do to cause this?  I want Senator Hagel to explain this.  What in the world did we do to cause it?  He must have the view that if we're at war with Muslims, we must have attacked them at some point.  The problem is we didn't defend ourselves against their attacks for 20 years.  Now all of a sudden we are, and we've got senators in the United States, from the Republican Party, who are concerned the world thinks that we are at war with Muslims -- and so the only way to make the world love us is to surrender and give up!  It was just a few short weeks ago that this very Senator, Chuck Hagel, rejected any concept of a timeline for withdrawal.  

By the way, we're going to start a new game on this program, and I'm going to include Senator Hagel in this game.  It's called Let's Play "Guess the Religion!"  Two stories. The first is a story out of France. There were riots on a Frech subway yesterday by "youths." Youths rioted. What youths? Who besides militant Muslims are rioting in France?  So Let's Play "Guess the Religion!"  Here's another story: "Students Held Hostage in the Philippines -- Gunmen who say they have grenades seize group near Manila's city hall.  Gunmen demanding improved housing for children seized a busload of day care students and teachers Wednesday as police surrounded the stalled vehicle in downtown Manila.  Hostage takers scribbled in large letters on a sheet of paper taped to the bus windshield, they were holding 32 children and two teachers, were armed with two grenades, an assault rifle and a pistol.  They said they were demanding improved housing and education for 145 children in a day care center where the incident appeared to have begun."  

It would be hard to house kids when they've been blown up.  You have to admit that.  

So I wonder what religion these people are.  "Guess the Religion!" of these "gunmen" in the Philippines.  The Philippines is a hotbed for Islamofascism, as well as much of that region of the world.  Yet here is the brilliant Senator Hagel suggesting that we are "perceived as a nation at war with Muslims."  I'm going to tell you something, folks. You go through life governing your own life on the basis of what you think others think of you, and you are a failure, and you will amount to nothing but a hill of beans.  Who wants a hill of beans?  You will be nothing, if your whole life is devoted to trying to be everything somebody you respect wants you to be, or somebody you don't even know wants you to be.

In this case, Senator Hagel is concerned about a bunch of small fry countries who depend on us for much of what they have and much of their progress.  He's concerned what they think of us.  He's concerned what they think of him.  This is a recipe for disaster. It's a recipe for failure. In individual terms, it's a best-guaranteed way to make sure you never amount to who you really are, because you're going to spend your whole life trying to meet the expectations of others, make others happy, make others not angry, not offend them or whatever.  This is embarrassing that somebody who apparently has this degree of intelligence, to be elected to the United States Senate, has this kind of an outlook and worldview.  

New word, to go with "androlepsy": Gynolepsy.

Definition:

The seizing of female hostages, civilian or military, by the forces of one government, in order to engage in diplomatic blackmail of another government.

I hope the boys at Walton Crescent are reading this. If they look, they'll find a lot at here and at JW, especially in the Archives, that will come in handy for their purposes.

This site, they will discover, has singlehandedly and singlemindedly brought back into modern circulation by using correctly a great many words once deemed archaic, or too rare to be usefully employed.

Among them is Shakespeare's beautiful "bezonian" ("Under which king, bezonian? Speak, or die."). For example, there have been many variants of the following phrase:

"Kalashnikov-clutching black-balakalava'ed bezonians, goosestepping smartly down the boulevards of Beirut or Baghdad."

Along with its slow but steady turning around of the S. S. Narrenschiff just before it turns into the S. S. Naufragium, this website offers, at no additional cost, possible immortality by way of its proffered uses, on a well-visited website, of certain unusual words, the archaic, the rare and -- as one can see from the initial paragraph above -- even the words that are products of sudden flights of lexicogeny.

Your every mental need, or almost every need, attended to right here.

Accept no substitutes.

As Robert Spencer says, there is no "effective theological response to Muslims" who take their Islam seriously. That is, there is no effective Islamic theological response to Muslims who take their Islam seriously enough to want to individually participate in the Jihad. But what is most troubling to the Pakistani authorities is not the fact of Jihad.

After all, Parvez Musharraf, the other generals, and the I.S.I. have all been waging Jihad in any way that they could. These many and various ways have included surreptitious support for terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir and India for many decades. They have also helped bring up the baby of the Taliban and then, when it was ready, sent it back to Afghanistan -- not on spring break but to stay and to bring "stability" through murder and mayhem, just the way that Hitler did, or to a lesser degree, Mussolini. Stability, stability.

No, what worries the Pakistani authorities about the jihad-preaching madrasa in Islamabad are two things:

1) The open declaration of Jihad demonstrates to Infidels by the silence of the other Pakistanis that indeed, there is NO effective theological response to the jihadist version of Islam, none whatsoever. For those who are learning about jihad in this mosque are good Muslims, believing and perhaps acting on orthodox teachings of mainstream Islam. And this is embarrassing, for eventually even the stupidest or most blind of Infidel governments and reporters might begin to figure out the realities of this situation. Why, even some people in the 1930s figured Mr. Hitler out -- and told the world exactly what he was about. But few listened, until events made it impossible any longer for them to stop up their ears and minds.

Unfortunately, the progress of Islam, and of the worldwide Jihad, has at this point a great many agents in place. Those agents have the ability to confuse and bring lawsuits and distract and act aggrieved. And so many local Infidels seem to be altogether willing to act as helpmeets in this effort, out of stupidity, or cupidity (there is a whole lot of Arab money being spread around), or timidity (can you imagine rulers in the E.U., or in North America, openly identifying the menace of Islam and listing the various instruments of Jihad, or the goals of Jihad, which is a central duty imposed on all Muslims?). Some Infidels, of course, suffer on the other hand from rigidity (we can't change our policies, we can't see things afresh, we can't analyze things anew. It would take too much effort, and we're just too busy).

2) Authorities in Pakistan, as in other Muslim countries, are also worried that open jihad preaching such as what goes on in this madrasa will ultimately manifest itself as opposition to the government, whether to the illegal arrogation of power by Parvez Musharraf (who remains both President and head of the army, which violates the Pakistani Constitution), or the corruption that is such a noticeable feature of almost every Muslim country, where inshallah-fatalism prevents real economic development -- so the road to riches is to seize and retain control over the state, and then to help themselves to whatever wealth may be available.

Such wealth comes from two sources, oil and Infidel aid:

1) The oil money. Think of the Al-Saud grabbing large amounts of the oil revenues for the princes, princelings, and princelettes of one particular family, a family that even named the whole country after itself. Or on a lesser scale, think of those grandiose sheiklets of the Gulf sheikdoms.

2) The disguised Jizyah of aid given by Infidel donors. How do you think Arafat, or his henchmen including Abbas, have the apartments and villas and bank accounts they all do? Or how do you think Mubarak pays for his Family-and-Friends Plan? Who pays for Queen Noor, or Abdullah's mediagenic wife's dresses, or their stays in hotels around the globe? (Abdullah, to be fair, does not have his father's tastes, and doesn't quite run up the "hotel-or-residence" call-girl tab that, through the C.I.A., American taxpayers were paying for for decades, as they also did for Sukarno and others, all in order to please the "plucky little king" Hussein of Jordan.)

Hussein’s proclivities may have been embarrassing, but they never embarrassed Jordanian officials the way this madrasa embarrasses those in Pakistan. For Hussein’s call-girls never threatened the whole deceptive edifice. This madrasa does.

27 Sep 1990, Abadan, Jazire-ye Abadan, Iran --- An Iranian soldier watches as smoke billows from multiple burning oil refineries in Abadan, Iran. Abadan, which contains a high concentration of oil fields and refineries, became a front-line city during the Iran-Iraq War, resulting in most of the city being destroyed by Iraqi attacks. Image by Henri Bureau/Sygma/Corbis

And Iran invites the 7th Century for itself, as Sadaam well knew.  Its surprisingly paltry oil refineries, easily reached by fighter and/or bomber aircraft based on carriers now in the Gulf, are all it has gas-wise:  Iran imports most of the gas it uses. 

Dozens of young women from a religious school in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, have broken into an alleged brothel and kidnapped the owner.

The women, from the nearby Jamia Hafsa madrassa, burst in late on Tuesday, demanding the premises be shut down.

The women say they have a right to end immoral activity under Islamic law. --from this news item

Was this one of those brothels specializing in offering virgins to visiting rich Arabs? No, probably not. The Arabs prefer their girls to be non-Muslims. It adds so much to the pleasure. A little symbolic victory, over the Infidels, who allow "their women" (that's how the Muslims think: "our women" and "their women") to be treated so. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of Iranian girls who have been forced by the conditions of the Islamic Republic into prostitution, and many tens of thousands are now servicing Arabs. And that's fun too -- it's fun for the Arabs to have those Persian girls, those Persian Shi'a girls, to play with and despoil, every which way.

Teheran is full of prostitutes. And young Iranian girls are sent by the tens of thousands to the rich Arab states of the Gulf. This is a matter that could, and should, be emphasized by Western propaganda, to foment fury, by the Iranians, at the primitive Arabs, or to foment fury, by embarrassed Iranians, at their own lords of Muslim misrule who have so mismanaged everything as to create the situation that forces these girls into prostitution in the first place -- not least because of all the money going into the nuclear project, and now, the further sums that will be incurred in order to buy goods and services that the U.N. will embargo.

But is this made much of by the Americans in their broadcasts into Iran, to merely report the truth -- a truth which all Iranians have had hints of, in any case -- in order to increase the hostility and rage of Shi'a Persians against Sunni Arabs.

No. Of course not. That would be wrong. That would "increase tension." That would cause "instability" in the Middle East, and we can't have that. We don't want to do anything that would further divide Shi'a from Sunni, Persian from Arab. Nor, heaven forfend, would one not wish to make Iranians more anti-Arab, lest some of them also begin to translate their anti-mullah views into something else, into seeing Islam as that "Arab gift" that represents a more primitive people, who brought a "gift" that alas, keeps on giving, and that some Iranians may wish at this point to give back, or throw into the wastebasket of history, and possibly rediscover their own pre-Islamic roots.

Zoroastrianism as the fashionable belief-system of choice? Impossible? A crazy idea? Are you quite sure? Wasn't Bahai'ism a way for both non-Muslims, especially Jews and Christians, to seek, as it turns out vainly, a way to better their status, and a way for Muslims disenchanted with Islam to find another way, a way that seemed to offer a family resemblance to Islam, and thus perhaps, they may have thought (they didn't know Khomeini or his epigones), would save them from the wrath of true-blue Believers.

 WASHINGTON, Mar. 29 /Christian Newswire-(thanks to the Poetess): The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just learned that an Ethiopian evangelist named Tedase was beaten to death by militant Muslims on Monday, March 26th, as he and two young women were on a street evangelism assignment in Jimma, Ethiopia. This marks the second time in six months that Christians residing in Southeast Ethiopia have been attacked and killed by extremist (Wahabbi) Muslims.

On Monday afternoon Tedase and two female coworkers were conducting street evangelism on Merkato Street in Jimma, Southern Ethiopia. Merkato Street runs by a Wahabbi Mosque. As the team was walking by the Mosque, a group of Muslims exited the Mosque and began to run after them to confront them. Tedase's female coworkers ran away from the mob but Tedase continued on. The Muslims caught up with Tedase, pulled him into the mosque, and savagely beat him to death. Sources from Jimma reported that Tedase was beaten with a calculated intention to kill him. This was no accident or case of mob frenzy getting out of control. His body was later taken to the hospital for an autopsy and he was buried Tuesday, March 27.

Our sources also reveal that Jimma Christians were conducting an evangelism campaign, and news of the outreach was spreading among Jimma residents as well as militant Muslim groups in the area. The Muslims that belonged to the Wahabbi sect purposefully beat Tedase to death as a message to Christians that they are ready to combat evangelism.

Aftershocks of the September 2006 Pogrom

This most recent incident in Ethiopia confirms ICC's decision to include this country in its Hall of Shame list, which highlights nations where Christians are enduring the most severe persecution. It is important to note that the Muslims who attacked Tedase belonged to the Wahabbi brand of Islam, an extremist sect imported from Saudi Arabia. It is clear that the Christians in Ethiopia are feeling Saudi Arabia's influence, particularly in Jimma, a Muslim dominated area where local authorities are almost exclusively Muslim. It was only six months ago, in September of 2006, that Muslim extremists burned down a number of churches and parishes, as well as Christian homes. As many as 2,000 Christians were displaced by the attack, an attempt to intimidate Christians with the hopes of converting them to Islam...

If we "succeed in Iraq" -- and according to President Bush we "must not, we dare not, fail" (words to that effect) -- then all manner of things shall naturally be well. The Arab lion will lie down with the Israeli lamb, no doubt just before Eid al-fitr. The Muslims in southern Thailand will suddenly discover that those origami-birds dropped on them from on-high, as a goodwill gesture, meant a lot to them, meant so much that they will stop decapitating Buddhist teachers and monks and villagers. The Muslims of Bangladesh will stop beating Hindus to death, and the Muslims of Pakistan stop killing Christians, and the Muslims of Kashmir and the rest of India stop putting bombs in Mumbai, or attacking the Indian Parliament. In Indonesia the Hindus and the Western tourists in Bali on whom they depend will no longer be bombed, and the Christians under sustained attack in the Moluccas will also suddenly be objects of affection by the circumambient Muslims.

It will be wonderful. Muslim swords, into Muslim plowshares, everywhere you look.

And not least in Spain, Al-Andaluz -- still remembered in street names and other toponyms all over the Arab world. Why, the American consulate in Jiddah sits at the corner of Al-Andaluz and Palestine Streets (convenient for attackers to remember).

Yes, if we bring "democracy" to the "ordinary moms and dads" in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, do you doubt that not only will "they" not "follow us home" (because "they will follow us home" if we fail to achieve the mission of the Bush Administration, and bring that "democracy" to the "ordinary moms and dads" of a unified Iraq), but that in Cordoba, they will forget about their sinister demands and practically become Christians themselves.

Oh, it will all work out. Just keep focussing monomaniacally on Bush's "plan" for Iraq, and they just won't follow us home.

But what are all those Muslims doing in Cordoba now? And in Grenada? And in Paris and London and Amsterdam and Malmo and Marseilles and Brussels and Antwerp and Leeds and Bradford and Madrid and New York and Houston and Hoboken and Los Angeles and Dearborn? It looks as though "they" have already been "following us home" -- we the Infidels -- for quite a while now. Apparently they didn't even wait to find out how Iraq would turn out before "they" decided to "follow us home."

HAIFA, Israel - Arab lesbians quietly defied Islamist protesters and a social taboo to gather at a rare public event Wednesday in a northern Israeli city. --from this news item

Query: are these "Arab lesbians" loyal to Islam? Do they, that is, take advantage of the tolerance of Israeli Jews, or for that matter other Infidels when they meet in the West, but never quite connect the ferocity of the murderous hatred directed at them, by other Muslims, with Islam itself?

One is made uneasy by too great attention given, say, to the mistreatment of this or that subset of the general Muslim population - Muslim women, or Muslim homosexuals, say -- and not to what is surely the main problem for Infidels: the treatment, or attitudes, or teachings, or tenets, in Islam, about not Muslim women or Muslim homosexuals, but of all Infidels.

For we have seen too many cases where those who claim to be "Muslim feminists" quickly become defenders of Islam, turning away criticism of it (see Fatimia Mernissi, see Leila Ahmed) because they will not permit, cannot tolerate, non-Muslims being critical of Islam, or being allowed themselves to connect the mistreatment of women in Muslim countries with the texts and attitudes of Islam, as clearly revealed in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira (yes, of course, Muhammad was a great lover of women, he treated all nine or eleven of his wives so very well).

One wonders how many of these "Arab lesbians" have made the connection between the Total System of Islam, its ferocious intolerance, and their fear of meeting anywhere in the Middle East except in advanced, Western, tolerant Israel? Do they support the continued existence of the one state that offers them the freedom to meet? Do they make the connection between the ferocious intolerance and violence in so much of Islam (see Ayaan Hirsi Ali on this, in her recent memoir) or do they simply refuse to ponder that matter, to make the connection?

Infidels should keep their interest focussed on how they, the Infidels are treated, and not give exaggerated attention to the way that any particular subset of Muslims are treated by Islam. It is not a victory for Infidels if this or that Muslim state, like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, allows women, too, to acquire the skills necessary to participate in harming Infidels. One thinks of "secular" (but under it all, still very Muslim) Saddam Hussein, who allowed "secular" Iraqi women to study abroad and thus become experts in chemical and biological weapons (remember Dr. Germs?), which from the Infidel point of view is not an advance at all, but a greater menace.

Snow drops are long gone, but crocus and dafs are now in bloom down the street on the grounds of Borough Hall, Brooklyn.  And witch hazel is still in bloom:

Now, consider: Had Islam overrun Europe in the 8th Century or even as late as the 17th Century, would the camera have been invented?  The Internet?  The eyeglasses or contact lenses through which many of you are peering at your screen?  This English language?