Venezuela's nightmare.

The Bolivarian dream could turn into a nightmare... Here's historian García Hamilton's take:

García Hamilton: "El sueño bolivariano puede convertirse en una pesadilla."
La Nación
4 de febrero de 2007

El actual presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, al cabo de casi dos siglos, está logrando cumplir los anhelos de Bolívar. La actual Constitución le permite designar y remover al vicepresidente, y la Asamblea Nacional, a su pedido, está a punto de concederle la posibilidad de la reelección indefinida. El sueño bolivariano que, acaso, se convierta también en pesadilla.

Durante su fascinante y turbulenta trayectoria, Simón Bolívar tuvo una ermanente aspiración: llegar a ser consagrado presidente vitalicio de Venezuela y de los otros países que señoreaba, en lugar de gobernar limitado por un tiempo fijo, es decir, por los cuatro años que marcaban las constituciones vigentes.

Ya en 1815, mientras se encontraba desterrado en Jamaica, Bolívar escribió la famosa carta en la que expresaba su desencanto con la primera experiencia republicana de Venezuela, opinaba que las instituciones representativas no eran adecuadas a nuestro carácter hispanoamericano, y sugería establecer un "gobierno como el inglés, con la diferencia de que, a cambio de un rey, tendrá un Poder Ejecutivo electivo y vitalicio, y un senado hereditario".

Cuatro años después, habiendo liberado militarmente a casi todo el territorio venezolano, convocó a una convención constituyente a reunirse en Angostura (hoy Ciudad Bolívar), pero seguía pensando que nuestros pueblos no podían equipararse al norteamericano, y por ello exhortó a los delegados a establecer, para Venezuela, un presidente a perpetuidad, un senado hereditario integrado por los generales de la Independencia y una cámara de diputados de elección popular. Los convencionales, sin embargo, no aceptaron sus sugerencias y dispusieron que el presidente debía durar cuatro años en sus funciones.

Tras el triunfo de Bolívar en Boyacá, lo que significó la liberación de la actual Colombia, una convención reunida en Cúcuta aprobó la unión del país con Venezuela, con lo que se integró la llamada Gran Colombia, con capital en Bogotá, a la que luego se incorporó el Ecuador. Bolívar fue designado presidente de esta ampliada nación y Francisco de Paula Santander vicepresidente, pero la convención rechazó la idea del nombramiento en forma vitalicia, mantuvo el período de cuatro años con reelección, y tampoco aceptó la iniciativa de los senadores hereditarios.

Luego de entrar en Perú y vencer a los españoles en Junín, Simón Bolívar fue elegido presidente de esa nación y continuó su marcha hacia el Alto Perú. Un congreso reunido en Chuquisaca declaró la independencia, otorgó al flamante país el nombre de Bolivia, en honor al apellido del victorioso guerrero, y le pidió a éste que dictara una constitución a su gusto. Bolívar aprovechó, entonces, para redactar de puño y letra las instituciones que venía proponiendo desde hacía una década: un presidente vitalicio (es decir, él mismo), senadores hereditarios y diputados elegidos por el pueblo.

Después regresó a Lima, extendió la vigencia de este texto constitucional al Perú y se instaló en la residencia de La Magdalena (donde había vivido el general San Martín) a disfrutar de la presidencia perpetua con su amante Manuelita Sáenz.

Pretendió desde allí que la Gran Colombia aprobara también la llamada "Constitución boliviana", pero se encontró con el rechazo del vicepresidente Santander, llamado el "hombre de las leyes", quien le recordó que la vigente carta de Cúcuta no podía ser reformada antes de los diez años. "Además, no he luchado catorce años contra Fernando VII para tener ahora un rey que se llame Simón I", le escribió.

Bolívar mandó entonces un delegado militar hacia Bogotá para que, en el camino, instara unas "actas populares" para exigir la reforma de la Constitución. Santander le escribió para decirle que esas actas no eran legales, a lo que Bolívar respondió que "no eran legítimas, pero sí populares, y por lo tanto propias de una república eminentemente democrática".

Bolívar y Santander acordaron finalmente convocar a una nueva convención constituyente en Ocaña. Pero al comprobar que su vicepresidente había obtenido en las elecciones más delegados que él, Bolívar retiró sus convencionales y dejó sin quórum a la asamblea. Simultáneamente, por medio de un "autogolpe", se constituyó en dictador de la Gran Colombia bajo el paradójico título de Libertador Presidente y destituyó a Santander de la vicepresidencia.

Poco tiempo, sin embargo, pudo disfrutar Bolívar de esta "suma del poder público", buscada durante más de una década. Los jóvenes liberales de Bogotá, sintiéndose traicionados, intentaron asesinarlo, pero salvó su vida gracias a la arriesgada acción de Manuelita. Santander fue acusado de haber participado de la conspiración y fue desterrado, pero Bolívar no pudo sostener políticamente su dictadura y, en 1830, renunció y murió en Santa Marta, mientras la Gran Colombia se desintegraba.

El actual presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, al cabo de casi dos siglos, está logrando cumplir los anhelos de Bolívar. La actual Constitución le permite designar y remover al vicepresidente, y la Asamblea Nacional, a su pedido, está a punto de concederle la posibilidad de la reelección indefinida. El sueño bolivariano que, acaso, se convierta también en pesadilla.

[Chavez] [Venezuela] [sueño bolivariano] [Simón Bolívar] [Latin America]

It is essential to always go to the original source of information...

Who hasn't seen this photo these last few days all over the press? But, did you know that the photo was taken in 2004 by Amanda Byrd during an exploration project, and that the photo was captioned "Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves"?




[global warming]

Mexifornia: the Mexicanization of California. Issues to ponder regarding illegal immigration.

Check out Victor Davis Hanson's piece on illegal immigration. Excerpts:

The riots in France, the support for jihadism among Pakistanis in London, and the demands of Islamists in Scandinavia, Germany, and the Netherlands do not encourage Americans to let in more poor Mexican illegal immigrants with loud agendas, or to embrace the multicultural salad bowl over their own distinctive melting pot.

Then there were the April–May 2006 demonstrations here in the United States, when nearly half a million protesters took to the streets of our largest cities, from Chicago to Los Angeles. Previously, naive Americans had considered that their own discussions over border security and immigration were in their own hands. And while Chicano-rights organizations and employer lobbyists were often vehement in their efforts to keep the border open, illegal aliens themselves used to be mostly quiet about our internal legal debates.

In contrast, this spring Americans witnessed millions of illegal aliens who not only were unapologetic about their illegal status but were demanding that their hosts accommodate their own political grievances, from providing driver’s licenses to full amnesty. The largest demonstrations—held on May Day, with thousands of protesters waving Mexican flags and bearing placards depicting the communist insurrectionist Che Guevara—only confirmed to most Americans that illegal immigration was out of control and beginning to become politicized along the lines of Latin American radicalism. I chronicled in Mexifornia the anomaly of angry protesters waving the flag of the country they vehemently did not wish to return to, but now the evening news beamed these images to millions. In short, the radical socialism of Latin America, seething in the angry millions who flocked to support Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Mexico’s Andrés López Obrador, had now seemingly been imported into our own largest cities.

[Mexico] [immigration] [illegal] [aliens] [undocumented] [California]

Ever wandered what the mosque being planned in London will look like? Check this video, courtesy of YouTube.

[Muslim] [mosque] [London] [olympics] [Islam]

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

And now, something different, but equally important... A delightful and engrossing article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times magazine. Here are some tidbits:

At the end of the 19th century, British doctors were puzzled by the fact that Chinese laborers in the Malay states were dying of a disease called beriberi, which didn’t seem to afflict Tamils or native Malays. The mystery was solved when someone pointed out that the Chinese ate “polished,” or white, rice, while the others ate rice that hadn’t been mechanically milled. A few years later, Casimir Funk, a Polish chemist, discovered the “essential nutrient” in rice husks that protected against beriberi and called it a “vitamine,” the first micronutrient. Vitamins brought a kind of glamour to the science of nutrition, and though certain sectors of the population began to eat by its expert lights, it really wasn’t until late in the 20th century that nutrients managed to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat.

...But if nutritionism leads to a kind of false consciousness in the mind of the eater, the ideology can just as easily mislead the scientist.

...No one likes to admit that his or her best efforts at understanding and solving a problem have actually made the problem worse, but that’s exactly what has happened in the case of nutritionism. Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural. What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

...Today, a mere four crops account for two-thirds of the calories humans eat. When you consider that humankind has historically consumed some 80,000 edible species, and that 3,000 of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the food web. Why should this matter? Because humans are omnivores, requiring somewhere between 50 and 100 different chemical compounds and elements to be healthy. It’s hard to believe that we can get everything we need from a diet consisting largely of processed corn, soybeans, wheat and rice.

...when it comes to food, culture is really just a fancy word for Mom, the figure who typically passes on the food ways of the group — food ways that, although they were never “designed” to optimize health (we have many reasons to eat the way we do), would not have endured if they did not keep eaters alive and well.

[nutrition] [diet] [omega-3] [omega-6]

Abdul Saleem: 'UK you will pay, Islam is on its way."

'UK you will pay, Islam is on its way," is the chilling slogan favoured by Muslim radical Abdul Saleem, who was convicted this week of stirring up racial hatred at a rally in London last year. Addressing the crowd in Belgravia Square, near the Spanish and German embassies, Saleem was filmed saying: "There will come a time when we will stand inside these embassies. There will come a time when we will remove that flag. There will come a time when we will raise the flag of Islam – whether you like it or not, Islam is superior and cannot be surpassed."

Another must read article that came out this week-end in the UK: Sleepwalking with the enemy by Ruth Dudley Edwards.

[Islam] [Muslims] [jihad] [western civilization]

Bernard Lewis: This is the third time Islam is trying to bring its faith to the rest of us.

Excerpts of an interesting series of lectures given by Bernard Lewis, the renowned historian, at several Israeli institutions:

Muslim believers consider themselves 'the fortunate recipients of God`s final message to humanity and it is their duty not to keep is selfishly to themselves ... (but) to bring it to the rest of mankind,' Lewis noted.

In their first attempt to do so, they emerged from the Arabian Peninsula and conquered vast territories from Iran across North Africa to Spain, Portugal and parts of Italy. Converts conquered Russian lands and established an Islamic regime in Eastern Europe. There are even reports of an Arab raid into Switzerland. But that attempt to conquer Europe failed, and the Crusaders recovered the Christian holy places in Jerusalem.

In the second round, the Ottoman Turks crossed southeastern Europe and reached Vienna. Twice they tried to capture it and failed. Western imperialism halted and reversed the Ottoman push.

The current, third invasion, is not done by armed conquest or with migrating hordes, but by a combination of migration, demography, 'self denigration and self abasement, totally apologetic,' Lewis said.

Nevertheless, it arouses a fair and very alarming possibility that it could lead to a long, dreary race war between different communities in Europe.

Signs of it are already visible in the form of neo-Fascist racist movements. If that 'is going to be the only response of Europe, apart from self-abasement, the outlook is grim,' he predicted.

Meanwhile, among Muslims there is a competition over who should lead their cause. This is one of the keys to understand the present situation, Lewis continued.

On the one hand stand Osama bin Laden and his movement. He is a Saudi-Wahabi; in other words an ultra-conservative puritan Sunni-Muslim. The Saudi establishment considers him a rebel but they all belong to the same branch of Islam.

And then there are Muslim Shiites. They assumed a modern form and new vigor since the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1978.

Read it all here.

[Bernard Lewis] [Islam][Muslims][Iraq][Iran][Crusades][Sunni][Shiites]

This editorial from Investor's Business Daily is a must read.

Drop The Gloves

Global Jihad: The ghastly plot by Muslim terrorists in Britain to kidnap and behead a British soldier to blackmail the U.K. into leaving Iraq is a grim reminder of the enemy we’re fighting. And sadly, we need reminding.

While the bare-knuckled British press condemned the “evil Muslim terrorists,” our media by and large shrugged, preoccupied as they’ve been with more important news, such as the sandbox spat between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump. You’d never know we were at war with a barbarian culture bent on destroying our way of life.

Though we’ve so far avoided another attack here in America, there’s been no shortage of terrorism around the world. You might say there’s been a silent rampage. The thwarted British plot coincides with no fewer than 655 Islamic terror attacks across the globe in just the past three months. The full list appears on the Web site thereligionofpeace.com.

We can’t vouch for the list’s accuracy, but based on a quick survey, the data seem correct. We commend the list to your attention because it puts the war on terror in the proper light.
That is, this war is truly a worldwide clash of civilizations and not, as the cut-and-run crowd keeps telling us, simply a “situation” that requires “managing.”

Following is a sample of atrocities from the list, showing how peace-loving and tolerant Muslims are. They:

• Blew up three Israelis at a bakery.
• Slashed the throat of a non-Muslim teenager in Thailand.
• Butchered a Buddhist man in Thailand as he drove his 7-yearold son home from school.
• Murdered a teacher on her way to a girl’s school in Baghdad.
• Gunned down an “infidel” advocate for the victims of Armenian genocide in Turkey.
• Slaughtered at least 70 students at a mostly women’s university in Baghdad, using a car bomb followed by a suicide bomber on foot to kill survivors.
• Murdered a married couple in Thailand, pinning a note to the beheaded body of the husband reading, “We kill all Buddhists.”
• Beat to death an Indonesian police officer at a funeral for a fellow terrorist.
• Beheaded a newspaper journalist in Pakistan.
• Beat to death a Christian with a metal bar in Ethiopia.
• Shot and set on fire two Buddhist teachers in Thailand.
• Killed three Afghan police officers with a bomb.
• Decapitated 26 Afghan men and strung their bodies from trees.
• Killed 15 civilians in Chad, including a man who was disemboweled and a woman set on fire.
• Hacked to death a Hindu leader in India.
• Blew up a passer-by outside the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, using a bicycle bomb.
• Blew up two dozen innocents at a Shia wedding in Baghdad.
  

As we say, reading the full list (our download of the data filled 47 computer-screen pages) puts this war into cold perspective.

We are at war with an enemy that is driven by a religion that is far from peaceful. And the battlefront is worldwide, in what looks more and more like a clash of civilizations — the “mujahedeen” of pan-Islam vs. the “infidels” of the West. We don’t divide the war that way, but they do. And that’s the problem.

For us, this is a technical war, one from which we hope to quickly extract ourselves so we can go about our business. For them, it’s a perpetual holy war, led by fanatics who are patient, counting on us tiring of the fight as it becomes too savage and costly.

The 2004 work, “Management of Barbarism,” by Abu Bakr Naji, a rising star in the jihadi movement, is instructive for anyone who doubts their commitment and ruthlessness.

“O people! The viciousness of the Russian soldier is twice that of the American soldier. If the Americans suffer one-tenth of the casualties the Russians suffered in Afghanistan and Chechnya, they will flee and never look back,” Naji rallied fellow jihadists in his Internet-posted screed. “They have reached a stage of effeminacy that makes them unable to sustain battles for a long period of time, a weakness they compensate for with a deceptive media halo.”

Our troops are tough as nails, hardly effeminate. But our leaders — those who set the rules of engagement, and targets and strategies — often hold them back and tie their hands.

Meanwhile, politically correct politicians and media don’t do anyone any good by downplaying the Islamic threat we face. They may be costing us victory.

“We are losing in Iraq and Afghanistan,” asserts former senior CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, “because the political leaders of both parties — and their politically correct acolytes in the media, the academy and the general officer corps — refuse to square with the American people about the enemy’s motivation.”

That motivation is their 1,400-year-old faith, said Scheuer, who closely tracked Muslim terrorists like Osama bin Laden over the last decade.

Indeed, the biggest myth going is that Islam has been “hijacked” by the terrorists. No, the only thing that’s been hijacked is the truth about fundamentalist, radical Islam, which makes holy war against infidels a sacred duty for Muslims.

The terrorists are getting all their violent ideas — the jihad, the martyrdom for virgins, even the beheadings — right out of their holy book. To pretend otherwise, to brainwash soldiers and cops on the home front into thinking the enemy is simply a ragtag network of random thugs and not part of a larger movement — is to set them, and us all, up for failure.

The almost endless stream of terrorists we’ve seen committing almost unspeakable acts of violence all over the world aren’t the irrational fanatics they’ve been portrayed to be. Hard as it is to believe, they have a calculated worldview based on religious and historical assumptions. They don’t act willy-nilly. These aren’t common street hoods who will mug their own mother for drug money.

They are disciplined soldiers in a holy war.

While their bloodshed may seem random, they have a purpose, a religious purpose, sick as it may be. And they are relentless.

Denying this unpleasant truth so we can feel nice and tolerant is politically correct suicide. We need an honest assessment of our enemy. Wishful thinking is not going to win this war.

Jihadists have declared war on America and the West, yet we are reluctant to even identify them with the religion in whose name they kill us. It’s time to take off the gloves.

We must declare war on jihad — and all its participants and supporters — before they can make even deeper inroads.

[jihad] [Islam] [muslim] [terror] [war] [Iraq] [Iran] [Middle East]

The man behind the book that unmasked Stalinism.

Christoper Hitchens has a great piece on Robert Conquest, the prescient author of "The Great Terror", " the volume that tore the mask away from Stalinism before most people had even heard of Solzhenitsyn."

Here are some excerpts:

A few years ago [Rober Conquest] said to [Christopher Hitchens] that the old distinctions between left and right had become irrelevant to him, adding very mildly that fools and knaves of all kinds needed to be opposed and that what was really needed was "a United Front against bulls--t."

For all that, his life has been lived among the ideological storms of the 20th century, of which he retains an acute and unique memory. He was himself a communist for a couple of years in the late 1930s, having been radicalized while studying in France and observing events in Spain.

"I was even a left deviationist--my best friend was a Trotskyist and when King George V was crowned we decorated the college at Oxford with eight chamberpots painted in red, white and blue." He left the party after asking what the line would be if Chamberlain ever declared war on Hitler, and receiving the reply: "Comrade, it is impossible that the bourgeois Chamberlain would ever declare war on Hitler." This he found "oafish." "I didn't like the word 'impossible.' "

Wartime service in Bulgaria, which made him an eyewitness to Stalin's takeover of the country at the end, was proof positive. From then on, working as a researcher and later as a diplomat for the British Foreign Office, he strove to propose a social-democratic resistance to communism. "I'd always been a Labour man and somewhat on the left until the 1970s, when I met Margaret Thatcher and she asked my advice." That advice--which translated into the now-famous "Iron Lady" speech--was to regard the Soviet system as something condemned by history and doomed to fail. If that sounds easy now, it wasn't then (though Mr. Conquest insists that it was George Orwell who first saw it coming).
...

On the events of today he is always very judicious and reserved. "I have my own opinions about Iraq, but I haven't said a great deal about the subject because I don't know all that much about it."

An agnostic in religion ("did you know that Milton Friedman was an agnostic, too?") Mr. Conquest is likewise suspicious of anything too zealous or systematic in human affairs. He is also refreshingly empirical in his judgments. Asked why he, the great anatomizer and accuser of Stalinism, still regards Nazism as morally worse than the Gulag, he replies mildly but somehow irrefutably: "I simply feel it to be so." In his most recent books, "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" and "The Dragons of Expectation," he goes beyond the usual admonitions against Jacobinism and more recent totalitarian utopias, and argues for "the Anglosphere," that historic arc of law, tradition and individual liberty that extends from Scotland to Australia and takes in the two largest multicultural democracies on the planet--the U.S. and India.

Read the whole article in Opinion Journal.

[Conquest] [The Great Terror] [Stalin] [Soviet Union] [Gulag]

Sick, sick, sick...

The Daily Mail's headline is "'Wave of hatred' warning as attacks on Jews hits record high".

Attacks on Britain's Jews have risen to the highest level since records began.

A study published today shows the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents has almost tripled in 10 years, with more than half the attacks last year taking place in London.

The findings prompted the report's authors to warn of a "wave of hatred" against Jews.

...

The Anti-Semitic Incidents Report 2006, compiled by the Community Security Trust (CST), responsible for combating anti-Semitism in the UK, blames the huge rise on a number of factors ranging from Israel's invasion of Lebanon last summer to the jailing of the historian David Irving in Austria for denying the Holocaust.

[anti-semitism] [Israel] [UK] [lebanon] [David Irving]

Sleep-walking.

According to Barry Casselman:

...the West, for a few centuries the dominant force on the planet, is in a political trance. The East, which dominated much of the civilized world 1,000 years ago (when Europe was paralyzed in its "Dark Ages"), now appears to return as a pivotal force in the world as the ancient countries of China and India, by force of their populations and skills, assert themselves.

After centuries of raging strife, war and violence against itself, Europe seemed to be on the verge of political transformation by inaugurating the European Union. But the end of the Cold War has brought back many of its contradictions, pretensions and prejudices, as prosperity drew so many from its impoverished former colonies to settle in Europe. Its resentment against the United States, after enjoying the New World's protection and assistance for much of the 20th century, portends a difficult relationship in the 21st century, as the two foundations of the West face the competition from the East, and the threat from Islamofascist terrorism.

I am increasingly convinced that the West is in denial of what is truly happening in the world. This self-delusion is the most dangerous response possible to the intense and rapid change all over the planet. This self-denial takes many forms, including obsessions with abstract issues of little real consequence, e.g., animal rights, capital punishment, celebrity gossip, political correctness, etc. It is accompanied by the rise of secular mandates and the suppression of spiritual values. It exhibits excesses of greed that threaten both capitalism and representative government.

... Every great civilization has its day. A few have more than one day. But no civilization or people has all the days to themselves.

[west] [europe] [civilization]

At stake in the war on terror is nothing less than preserving Western civilization.

Has the Western world lost its courage and willpower to win against Islamist terror? Senator Jon Kyl posits that question originally issued as an admonishment by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the West for its lack of moral spine to fight communism. Read the piece in The Christian Science Monitor. Some excerpts:

Solzhenitsyn's beliefs in faith and courage undoubtedly drew the attention of a new generation of leaders. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II – like the giants of America's founding – came to their positions of authority at a historically propitious time and helped supply the essential willpower of which Solzhenitsyn spoke.

...Unfortunately, our respite from ideological confrontation was short-lived. And, once again, the same lack of courage has inhibited the West's struggle against global terrorists, many of them state-sponsored.

...[Solzhenitsyn] observed that "Political and intellectual bureaucrats ... get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists." Consider, for example, the UN's weak resolutions against Iran. Solzhenitsyn also observed: "When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists' civil rights. There are many such cases."

...At stake in the war on terror is nothing less than preserving Western civilization, as Solzhenitsyn sensed almost 30 years ago: "The fight, physical and spiritual for our planet, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started."

The fate of future generations depends on how we answer the enemy's challenge today. To do that, we must clearly understand the nature of the threat we face – and we must marshal the courage and character necessary to prevail.

[Solzhenitsyn] [communism] [West] [Islam] [terrorism] [courage]

A public figure calls for wiping Israel off the world...isn't that incitement to commit genocide?

There is a petition circulating to indict Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to commit genocide, under Article 3(c) (Direct and public incitement to commit genocide) of the UN Genocide Convention, which was adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948.

[Iran] [Ahmadinejad] [genocide] [UN] [resolution] [convention]

The real story behind the 2 state solution for Israel and Palestine...

Very interesting article by Caroline Glick. Excerpts:

In the world of international diplomacy few issues receive more wall-to-wall support than the notion that it is essential to establish a Palestinian state. Leaders worldwide are so busy speaking of how essential it is for a State of Palestine to be founded that none of them seems to have noticed that it already exists.

This state was officially founded in the summer of 2005, when Israel removed its military forces and civilian population from the Gaza Strip and so established the first wholly independent Palestinian state in history. Israel's destruction of four Israeli communities in Northern Samaria and curtailment of its military operations in the area set the conditions for statehood in that area as well.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

….
Of course, neither Livni nor Peretz, who insist that Israel's most urgent priority is to establish Palestine, is willing to recognize that Palestine exists already. They refuse to acknowledge what we already know: Palestine is a terror state and an economic basket case fully funded by the international community. Indeed, over the past year since Hamas won the Palestinian elections, international assistance to the Palestinians has increased dramatically.

As Ibrahim Gambari, the UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, noted last Thursday, official Western aid to the Palestinians, not including Arab and Iranian support for Hamas and Fatah, increased by 10 percent in 2006 over 2005, and stood at $1.2 billion.

The Palestinians, who receive more aid per capita than any people on earth, are needy not because they lack funds. They are poor because they prefer poverty, violence and war to prosperity, peace and moderation. So it is that 57 percent of Palestinians support terror attacks against Israel.

The multitude of protesters worldwide who demand an end to the so-called "occupation" and the establishment of Palestine should be made aware of the fact that Palestine already exists. The hordes of political leaders mindlessly squawking about "visions" and "two-state solutions" should know: This is Palestine. Enter at your own risk.

[Palestine] [Israel] [Middle East]

"There are only two races, the decent and the indecent." Viktor Emil Frankl

An uplifting story:

JERUSALEM, Jan. 30 - At the height of World War II, Khaled Abdelwahhab hid a group of Jews on his farm in a small Tunisian town, saving them from the Nazi troops occupying the North African nation.

Now, Abdelwahhab has become the first Arab nominated for recognition as "Righteous Among the Nations," an honor bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.

Read the rest here: AP.

[arabs] [jews] [nazis] [holocaust] [yad vashem] [righteous among the nations]

Europe, the West and Islam. Have we already surrendered?

Der Spiegel has excerpts of a new book by Henryk M. Broder entitled "Hurray! We're capitulating."

Today everything has changed, except the resolve not to hurt the feelings of Muslims. The issue today no longer revolves around a group of Berlin pupils with an "immigration background," but around 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide --many of whom are thin-skinned and unpredictable. At issue is freedom of opinion, one of the central tenets of the Enlightenment and democracy. And whether respect, consideration and tolerance are the right approach to dealing with cultures that, for their part, behave without respect, consideration or tolerance when it comes to anything they view as decadent, provocative and unworthy -- from women in short skirts to cartoons they deem provocative without even having seen them.

...Objectively speaking, the cartoon controversy was a tempest in a teacup. But subjectively it was a show of strength and, in the context of the "clash of civilizations," a dress rehearsal for the real thing. The Muslims demonstrated how quickly and effectively they can mobilize the masses, and the free West showed that it has nothing to counter the offensive -- nothing but fear, cowardice and an overriding concern about the balance of trade. Now the Islamists know that they are dealing with a paper tiger whose roar is nothing but a tape recording.

..."Nowadays acts of terrorism are not committed for their own sake, but in the name of an ideology one could call Nazi-Islamism," Romanian-American author Norman Manea told the German daily Die Welt in March 2004. The only difference, in Manea's view, is "that this ideology invokes a religion, whereas the Nazis were mythical without being religious." Manea believes that what he calls a "World War III" has already begun. "The Europeans are putting off the recognition -- as they did in the 1930s -- of the tremendous tragedy that awaits them and that has, in fact, already arrived."

[west] [islam] [jihad] [war] [nuclear weapons] [iran]

The second holocaust.

Newt Gingrich is not the only one to speak bluntly about the seriousness of our present-day threats:

"Israel is in the greatest danger it has been in since 1967. Prior to '67, many wondered if Israel would survive. After '67, Israel seemed military dominant, despite the '73 war. I would say we are (now) back to question of survival."

... the United States could "lose two or three cities to nuclear weapons, or more than a million to biological weapons."

...in such a scenario, "freedom as we know it will disappear, and we will become a much grimmer, much more militarized, dictatorial society."

"Three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust...People are greatly underestimating how dangerous the world is becoming. I'll repeat it, three nuclear weapons are a second Holocaust. Our enemies are quite explicit in their desire to destroy us. They say it publicly? We are sleepwalking through this process as though it's only a problem of communication."

"Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany, and more determined than the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get. There is no rational ability to deny that fact. It's very clear that the problems are larger and more immediate than the political systems in Israel or the US are currently capable of dealing with."

..."citizens who do not wake up every morning and think about the
possible catastrophic civilian casualties are deluding themselves."

Benny Morris, a famous Israeli intellectual, provides us with a scenario:

The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will convene in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go-ahead.

The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Front Command units. With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 20,000 square kilometers), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel.

[holocaust] [Israel] [Iran] [nuclear weapons] [war on terror]

Of gay sheep, slaughtered sheep, and abortion: The Belgian demographic advance story and the Oregon technological advance story.

Mark Steyn provides humor to a not-so-funny debate:

The first story is about the 25,000 sheep in Brussels that a few days ago found themselves pointed toward Mecca and then slit through the throat and bled to death. Muslims do this to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God and God's willingness to settle for a ram in lieu. The Belgian Muslim population has grown so fast that there aren't enough places in the city to perform the ritual sacrifice, and come Eid it's like sheep drivetime at every Brussels slaughterhouse, with rams backed up ram-to-ram as far as the eye can see. As reported by the Journal, Mohamed Mimoun grabbed his sheep, took a number and realized he was in for a two-hour wait. Even worse, en route to the slaughterhouse, he was stopped by a cop and fined for having the sheep in the trunk of his Toyota. By law, the sheep is supposed to ride in the rear passenger seats. Baa, baa, back seat.

On which note, let us turn to the gay sheep. Apparently, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon State University have been experimenting with ovine hormonal balances in order to persuade homosexual rams of the error of their ways. It seems they've had "considerable success" with injecting hormones into the rams' brains. Suddenly the lads are playing the field and crooning a couple of choruses of "Embrace me, my sweet embraceable ewe."

Read the whole story here, and there's more here.

[science] [homosexuality] [abortion] [demographics] [Muslims] [Europe]

Terrorism tracker map.

Check out http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php: A global display of terrorism and other suspicious incidents. Thanks to Free Republic.

[terrorism]

The decline of the US?

Victor Davis Hanson concludes that

there is real danger from the fallout from Iraq. But it is not that the United States must pack up, in an admission of its new limitations. Rather the daily mayhem and its attendant criticism have tired Americans to the point that the notion of pulling in our horns and letting the world be seems attractive and guilt-free as never before.

[Iraq] [war] [Europe] [stagnation]

The Jihad may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting.

To understand the war against Islamist terrorism one must begin to understand the Islamic way of war, its philosophy and doctrine, the meanings of jihad in Islam—and one needs to understand that those meanings are highly varied and utilitarian depending on the source.

With respect to the war against the global jihad and its associated terror groups, individual terrorists, and clandestine adherents, one should ask if there is a unique method or attitude to their approach to war. Is there a philosophy, or treatise such as Clausewitz’s On War that attempts to form their thinking about war? Is there a document that can be reviewed and understood in such a manner that we may begin to think strategically about our opponent. There is one work that stands out from the many.

The Quranic Concept of War, by Brigadier General S. K. Malik of the Pakistani Army provides readers with unequalled insight.

Joseph Myers explores The Quranic Concept of War.


[Islam] [War] [jihad] [Iraq] [Iran] [Quran]

Some changes to the war in Iraq.

First, a New Yorker article on Knowing the Enemy.

Second, commentary by a military man: A Strategy for the Long War.

Here's a quote:

...it was the best thing I've read on the kinds of changes we need to bring to the war. It is that, but let me say why I think so, and elaborate on some of the good concepts at work in the article.
There are three concepts to understand. The first is "information warfare." The second is David Kilcullen's concept of "Disaggregation," which the article asserts may be the grand strategy we need for the Long War, the equivalent of Containment in the Cold War. The third is consequences: the need for sticks as well as carrots.

[Iraq] [Islamists] [jihad] [muslims] [tribes] [war]

A BBC undercover production.

Jihad preaching in British mosques: thanks to Jihad Watch.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

UPDATE: YouTube pulled the video, but you can see it all at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24026_Busted_Islamic_Leader_Reacts&only.

In today's leisured world it is apparently better to be inactively perfect than actively good.

Victor Davis Hanson: ...by any measure of fairness, Saddam's fate was singular in the annals of recent murderous dictators. The world seems to forget that usually such killers are either given statues, villas in exile, or, even when tried, rarely convicted and punished.

The mass-murdering Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao together killed off nearly 100 million people. Yet both died in their sleep. They are still heroes to many in Russia and China.

Worse yet, examine the fates of more recent killers. Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the savage "cannibal" president of the Central African Republic, was given sanctuary by the now hypercritical France. He was even on friendly, gift-exchanging terms with then French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

...Why, then, blame the nascent democracy in Iraq--and the United States--for his conviction, however clumsy and crass the execution? ... there is an even more disturbing paradox--the very moral contradictions of contemporary international justice itself. In today's leisured world it is apparently better to be inactively perfect than actively good.

Read it in RealClearPolitics.

[Sadam Hussein] [Iraq] [execution]