Articles worth reading:
The Silent Scream of the Asparagus
Honor Killing Victim Wanted to Live Like other German Girls
"If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this."
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Honor killings, non-Christian England, plants' rights...
Monday, May 26, 2008
MEMORIAL DAY 2008
"Whether they served in peace or war, the Marines we memorialize today were not so impoverished of spirit that they were unable to surrender the pleasures of life.
None of them excused themselves from hard service even though a softer lifestyle could have easily been gained. They deemed that their love of country and duty to freedom were of greater value and more important imperative, so they reckoned that if dangers must be faced, they would face them in the most desirable way, by placing their own mortal bodies "between their loved homes and the war's desolation."
They determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorable in their young adulthood, to make sure of their duty, and to leave everything else for later, if later ever came. They gave over to hope their chance of lifelong happiness and the uncertainty of final success, and in mortal danger they relied only upon themselves, their buddies and the Corps itself.
They chose to risk death young as free men rather than live long as conquered ones.
And when fearful lethality loomed they resolved to resist and suffer, rather than flee to save their lives; they ran away not from danger but from dishonor. On the battlefield they stood steadfast, and in an instant, at the height of their resolve, they passed away from this life but not from our lives or the destinies of generations yet to come."
None of them excused themselves from hard service even though a softer lifestyle could have easily been gained. They deemed that their love of country and duty to freedom were of greater value and more important imperative, so they reckoned that if dangers must be faced, they would face them in the most desirable way, by placing their own mortal bodies "between their loved homes and the war's desolation."
They determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorable in their young adulthood, to make sure of their duty, and to leave everything else for later, if later ever came. They gave over to hope their chance of lifelong happiness and the uncertainty of final success, and in mortal danger they relied only upon themselves, their buddies and the Corps itself.
They chose to risk death young as free men rather than live long as conquered ones.
And when fearful lethality loomed they resolved to resist and suffer, rather than flee to save their lives; they ran away not from danger but from dishonor. On the battlefield they stood steadfast, and in an instant, at the height of their resolve, they passed away from this life but not from our lives or the destinies of generations yet to come."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Germany, demographics, and the financial crisis.
The world financial market made simple to understand:Who leaves countries? Mobile people, young people. Which brings me to The Asia Times, and Spengler's take on the subprime fiasco:
Related items: here and here.
Germany's President Horst Koehler has denounced the world financial market as a "monster" using "highly complex financial instruments" to make "massive leveraged investments with minimal capital". Koehler, formerly head of the International Monetary Fund, seems perplexed about the causes of the present crisis, but I can explain them in a way any German can understand.
And he does. In essence, Germany does not have enough young people for its old people to lend money to. So its financial institutions went to where the young people are: America. As Spengler says:
There is nothing complicated about finance. It is based on old people lending to young people. Young people invest in homes and businesses; aging people save to acquire assets on which to retire. The new generation supports the old one, and retirement systems simply apportion rights to income between the generations. Never before in human history, though, has a new generation simply failed to appear.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Iran: a sewer spewing out infected cokroaches...
does the cartoon below convey a powerful message? Or is it bigotry and does it dehumanize?
Barbarism.
Gateway Pundit has the horrific accounting on the barbarism taking place in Johannesburg. WARNING: Photos are terrifying.
Monday, May 19, 2008
In Afghanistan, Germans can't shoot to kill.
From Der Spiegel: German special forces had an important Taliban commander in their sights in Afghanistan. But he escaped -- because the Germans were not authorized to use lethal force. The German government's hands-tied approach to the war is causing friction with its NATO allies.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Oh!... that the world would have more like Irena Sendlerowa...and Hallelujah for our youngsters...
Irena Sendlerowa’s story is poignantly moving, and there are many versions in print now that she has finally gone to meet her Creator. What struck me about her story, is how forgotten it was by the world at large, including her native country. And here is where I discover the power of good that young people can generate just because they found an inspiring story and became determined to undo an injustice! If it had not been for these American High School students, Irena Sendlerowa’s story might have stayed in the dusty annals of history. Irena Sendlerowa is now in the company of all those tortured parents who know that it was thanks to this Polish citizen that their children, grand-children and great-grandchildren could go forth and multiply.
And from Andrew Bostom:A remarkably brave and noble woman, Irena Sendlerowa left us yesterday, at the age of 98. Although recognized by Yad Vashem in 1965, Sendlerowa’s heroic story only became widely known when re-told and popularized 9-years ago by Kansas schoolgirls. Unlike proud Antisemites such as the murderous pederast Yasser Arafat, and or his increasingly grotesque supporter Jimmy Carter, Sendlerowa was actually quite deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, for which she was nominated last year, but did not receive.
Read it all here.
Megan Felt, one of the Kansan authors of the play, recounted the unparalleled exploits of Sendlerowa (“Sendler”), this so-called female Oskar Schindler....
Austria, Fritzl and Evil.
À propos the post below, here's an interesting article written by the perspicacious Theodore Dalrymple, that addresses the issue of knowledge of neighbor and wife alike regarding the horrors the Fritzl children and grandchildren experienced:It was inevitable, I suppose, that the ignorance both of Frau Fritzl and of the townspeople of the evil taking place under the very eyes, as it were, or in the midst of their placid, well-ordered and comfortable existence, should have been taken as a real-life metaphor for Austria’s attitude to its own past: for, in fact, no one really believes in his heart that either Frau Fritzl or the people of Amstetten could have been genuinely and totally ignorant of what had been going there on for so long. No, they both knew and did not know, or rather chose not to know: and choosing not to know something implies a degree of knowledge of it. Their ignorance, if such it can be called, of Herr Fritzl and his cellar was culpable.
"Why is your name Assud (lion) if you are a rabbit?" ... "Because I, Assud, will clean up the Jews and devour them."
Beirut's and Gaza's exports to Germany (and beyond): anti-Semitism.
...it is hard to overlook how hatred imported from Beirut and Gaza resurfaces in the form of daily acts of anti-Semitism in schools and athletic clubs, on streets and in the subway. Young children raised to be anti-Semitic are already using the phrase "You Jew!" as a derogatory expression in kindergartens and on playgrounds. Schoolchildren berate their teachers, calling them Jew dogs, for not offering Sharia-compatible instruction, and Jewish schoolchildren are attacked and feel compelled to switch to Berlin's Jewish high school and to hide the insignia of their Jewish faith -- the yarmulke and the Star of David -- when in public.
German leftist extremism.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency has warned of "extremist structures" within the Left Party. A new report lists a number of left-wing extremist factions within the party, including the Communist Platform, the Marxist Forum and a pro-Cuba group.
Tags: left party German extremists
Thursday, May 15, 2008
The need to paint Americans as a greedy, selfish, war-mongering superpower cannot be disturbed by facts.
An Australian journalist trying to set the record straight: It matters not that, in the year before the tsunami, the US provided $2.4 billion in humanitarian relief: 40 per cent of all the relief aid given to the world in 2003. Never mind that development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion during the last year of Bill Clinton's administration to $24 billion under George W. Bush in 2003. Or that, according to a German study, Americans contribute to charities nearly seven times as much a head as Germans do. Or that, adjusted for population, American philanthropy is more than two-thirds more than British giving.
There is a teenaged immaturity about the rest of the world's relationship with the US. Whenever a serious crisis erupts somewhere, our dependence on the US becomes obvious, and many hate the US because of it. That the hatred is irrational is beside the point.
We can denounce the Yanks for being Muslim-hating flouters of international law while demanding the US rescue Bosnian Muslims from Serbia without UN authority. We can be disgusted by crass American materialism and ridiculous stockpiling of worldly goods yet also be the first to demand material help from the US when disaster strikes.
The really unfortunate part about this adolescent love-hate relationship with the US is that, unlike most teenagers, many never seem to grow out of it. Within each new generation is a vicious strain of irrational anti-Americanism. But unlike a parent, the US could just get sick of it all and walk away.
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