Where indiscriminateness (or fear?) lead...to dhimmitude.

Just this week, Il Giornale reports that the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Fausto Bertinotti (a communist), removed the painting that shows a scene from the Battle of Lepanto (1571) from the Knights' Hall in Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament. This was done -apparently- so as not to offend Muslims.

The Battle of Lepanto (1571) resulted in a triumph for Christianity over the Ottoman Turks. It is in this battle that Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, of Don Quijote fame, becomes "el manco de Lepanto", having lost a hand during the battle.

What's next? How about changing the name of the Lepanto underground station in Rome?

Go here for G.K. Chesterton's poem on Lepanto.

[Italy] [Lepanto] [Bertinotti] [Montecitorio] [Muslims] [Islam] [dhimmitude]

Thank you, Power Line, for bringing to your readers the story of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, and welcome Power Line readers!

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski: member of the "decent" race.

There are few of us who can truly be categorized as heroically unique, an inspiration to others, a person to emulate, an example that righteous actions, in the long run, triumph over evil ones.

Last night, the US Embassy in Warsaw honored Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a disarmingly charming Polish octogenarian, whose story once would have been brought to the silver screen and written in boys' and girls' magazines.

By the time he was 17 years old, Mr. Bartoszewski had survived being imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau for 8 months. He was a co-founder of the Zegota movement, that saved thousands of Jews, was a member of the Underground Army (resistance movement), acted as a courier, and fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.

If this were not enough, after the war was over, he was twice imprisoned by the Communist regimes in Poland, one time such imprisonment lasting more than 6 years. He worked for Radio Free Europe for 18 years, became Foreign Minister of Poland twice, was made an honorary citizen of Israel and is a member of the Righteous Among the Nations of the World. He writes books and tells stories.

His life stories can't help some of us wonder, what would we have done under similar circumstances? What made a teen-ager rise up to the cause and fight so hard to preserve sanity in a world gone insane? What made the young man keep on fighting despite the demoralizing post-World War II events that catapulted Poland into 50 years of Communism?

He was once asked whether he regards his life as a success. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski answered, “I have been very fully rewarded, and that is no illusion. Beyond anything I deserve. Heroism? I did indeed take part in aiding the Jews, but I was also damned frightened. Terribly frightened. No one knows that, because I would have been ashamed to admit it. Other people did equally splendid things. They ran with grenades and shot at Gestapo colonels. They too, surely, were afraid. I was afraid in a different way. However, the fact that I was able to help someone to some degree, minimal in regard to my willingness, turned out in the end to make sense.”

If only more of us would learn about the heroic deeds of people like Mr. Bartoszewski, our world would be a better place.

Update: Power Line was kind enough to share this great story!

Bartoszewski Poland Israel United States Warsaw Uprising Yad Vashem Communism Jews World War II Auschwitz

Mindless indiscriminateness of thought leads to rejection of rational thought as a hate crime.

Thanks to Power Line, Evan Sayet give us an easy way to understand what's going on in the Western world. Would that high school and college kids could listen to Mr. Sayet's no-nonsense talk.




[Evan Sayet] [liberalism] [progressive] [republican] [democrat] [Heritage Foundation] [Western Europe] [anti-american]

Sometimes, the truth is very painful to hear...

[UN] [human rights] [commission] [UN Watch] [Israel] [Palestine] [Darfur]

On Zionists and hating Israel.

There are interesting excerpts of an interview of Victor Davis Hanson on the Middle East.

I can relate to a couple of Hanson's comments

...for Europeans and Arabs, hating "Zionists" and "Israel" has become an acceptable way to hate Jews without the stigma of anti-Semitism.

Israel serves today as the ethical barometer in the western collective mind. Support for it brings no oil, no ingratiation with terrorists, no psychological lift of the usual easy bullying of a small democracy, but it does reveal respect for democracy, confidence in the history of the West, and respect for a humane culture and an accomplished people under terrible assault. So, I confess, as I age I sort of judge Westerners I meet now by their degree of fairness toward Israel. I've gotten to the point when I hear
a rabid Leftist or a creepy Right-wing nut rant on Israel, I just pack it up and walk away. Life is too short for such nonsense.

[Victor Davis Hanson] [Israel] [Iran] [Middle East][Iraq]

An act of war: Iran and the taking of British hostages.

Some sobering thoughts at OpinionJournal:

...the world should keep in mind that Iran has undertaken this latest military aggression while it is still a conventional military power. That means that Britain and the U.S. can still respond today with the confidence that they maintain military superiority. That confidence will vanish the minute Iran achieves its goal of becoming a nuclear power. Who knows what the revolutionaries in Tehran will then be capable of.

[Iran] [hostages] [Britain] [UK]

The European Union: a peculiar form of apostasy.

Pope Benedict XVI had very strong warnings against a continent that consistently seems to be discarding its Christian roots and denying any moral absolutes.

His speech to the bishops this past week-end was in Italian, and beautifully expressive. For example, the following paragraph, where he posits that the Christian identity of the contintent is historical, cultural and moral, and that it cannot be hidden from the people. Rather, Christian values make up the Continent's soul and must remain in the third millenium as the ferment of civiliation.

Da tutto ciò emerge chiaramente che non si può pensare di edificare un’autentica “casa comune” europea trascurando l’identità propria dei popoli di questo nostro Continente. Si tratta infatti di un’identità storica, culturale e morale, prima ancora che geografica, economica o politica; un’identità costituita da un insieme di valori universali, che il Cristianesimo ha contribuito a forgiare, acquisendo così un ruolo non soltanto storico, ma fondativo nei confronti dell’Europa. Tali valori, che costituiscono l’anima del Continente, devono restare nell’Europa del terzo millennio come “fermento” di civiltà.

You can read the whole speech here.

[apostasy][European Union] [EU] [Pope] [Benedict XVI] [Christianity]

Iran and the Jews.

A Must-See video of an Iranian scholar lecturing students on the Jewish conspiracy behind the cartoon Tom & Jerry. Check it out here, at MEMRI.

[Iran] [Jews] [anti-Semitism]

Carnal relations between Argentina and USA????

Mariano Grondona explains Argentina's anti-yankee position... The US has always known where Argentina "stood"... on the wrong side of history. While Brazil and Mexico may not love the northern colossus, they have always "been there" when the time was right. What's Argentina's option now? An excerpt:

Hoy, el presidente Kirchner parece seguir un juego de "gambetas" con Venezuela y los Estados Unidos. En las barricadas, sigue a Chávez. Cuando el desafío chavista a Bush se vuelve inquietante, como en las relaciones con Irán y con el pueblo judío, Kirchner, discretamente, retrocede. La pregunta entonces es ésta: la "gambeta" de Kirchner, corresponde a "la inteligencia de nuestros intereses"?

Algunos dirán que sí, porque de Chávez estamos recibiendo concesiones económicas que no nos ofrecen los Estados Unidos. Pero la Argentina que se obstinó tanto tiempo en una política de neutralidad, ¿tiene ahora la misma gravitación que antes? Maquiavelo analizó si la neutralidad les conviene a las naciones menores. No, dijo, porque el neutral, para evitar el castigo de los perdedores, se queda sin el premio de los ganadores. La Argentina pudo estar de pleno derecho, por ejemplo, en el gran convenio brasileño-norteamericano de los biocombustibles. No lo estuvo porque Kirchner cedió una y otra vez a la tentación de la retórica antinorteamericana. La Argentina no era pro norteamericana porque se consideraba europea. La Argentina que sobrelleva, a la inversa de Brasil, siete décadas de pérdidas de posiciones, ¿puede resignarse ahora a no ser pro norteamericana porque se considera venezolana?

[Argentina] [Kirchner] [Brasil] [Brazil] [Lula] [Mexico] [Mejico] [Bush] [Ferro][Latin America]

Journalists, kidnappings, beheadings.

Thanks to the Timesonline:

An Italian journalist who was held hostage by the Taleban for two weeks described how he was forced to watch as his captors beheaded his Afghan driver.

Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was released yesterday, told how he feared that he would also be killed after seeing the brutal execution.

“I can still see it now," he wrote in La Repubblica. “The [Taleban] commander issued his death sentence in the name of Islam. He said we were all spies and we had to die. [The translator] is crying. I don’t understand. I ask him what they said and he, in tears, says ’they are going to kill us’.

“I get off my knees. Four young men grab the driver and shove his face into the sand. They cut his throat and continue until they have cut his whole head.

“He is not able to make a gasp. They clean the knife on his tunic. They tie his severed head to his body. They bring it [the body and head] to the river and let it go,” he wrote.

[Daniele] [Mastrogiacomo] [Afghanistan] [Taleban] [kidnap][behead]
[journalist] [Daniel Pearl]

The moral case for stopping Iran.

...Europe's vast superstructure of collective atonement for the Holocaust has been hollowed out from within. The calumny that Israel--the most liberal and egalitarian country in the Middle East--is an "apartheid state" has hardened into a conviction. The mud has stuck.

Yet if Israel is attacked and--God forbid--destroyed by Iranian nuclear bombs, then European civilization will have perished, too. The destruction of Israel would signal the demise of the Judeo-Christian morality that ennobled Greco-Roman culture to create the only Europe that was ever worth preserving. I for one could not live in a society that could even contemplate such a second Shoah. I would turn my back on such a Europe, shake the dust from my feet, never to return.

Read the rest of it here.
[Israel] [Holocaust] [Jews] [Europe] [Iran][apartheid] [Middle East] [Judeo-Christian][Greco-Roman]

Reagan's Star Wars lead to the missile defense shield of today...

Wonder how the missile defense shield will work? Check this out. Everything you need to know about the threat the shield will thwart is here.

[Star Wars] [Reagan] [Poland] [missile defense] [shield]

"National figures may talk conservative or liberal, but they both are more likely to act like libertines."

Check out Victor Davis Hanson's piece on "Bipartisan Hypocrisy".

[politics] [American] [US] [Democrat][Republican]

Absolutely sick interview of the children of suicide bomber mother:

Go to http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1398 to view the interview.

[Rim Al-Riyashi] [Al Aqsa] [Hamas] [suicide bomber] [Israel] [Jews]

Wise words from Senator Lieberman:

I understand the anger about Iraq, but I am deeply troubled by how this anger, and the feelings of animosity that many people have for President Bush, have begun to affect the way we talk and think about what is happening in the world beyond Iraq and America's role in it.

There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism.

There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran.

And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies.

Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says "yes," their reflex reaction is to say "no."

That is unacceptable.

It's time to step back and start thinking together about our national interest again, to say "yes" when we agree and "no" when we don't, and to find ways to disagree without dividing ourselves from one another.

It's time to step back and remember that there is a real enemy out there—an enemy violently opposed to human rights and women's rights and gay rights and the basic political rights of each one of us.

It's time to step back and see that America's interests lie with the interests of free people everywhere, and that the response to radical Islam is not to abandon them but to stand with them—whether they are in Baghdad or Teheran or Jerusalem.
...
You know that the struggle for freedom is indivisible. You know that freedom itself is indivisible.

That is why we stand united—as Americans, as Israelis, as children of God, as children of freedom.

The esteemed historian of the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, was in Washington this past week. He said that, when he looks at the world today and the threats we face, it reminds him of the 1930s—and that he hears far more voices that sound like Chamberlain than like Churchill.

And so I challenge each of you to find the voice of Churchill inside yourself, and let it be heard this week on Capitol Hill and throughout the nation in the days and years ahead.

Stand up for your arguments. Stand up for your principles. Stand up for your values.

Stand up for America. Stand up for Israel. Stand up for freedom. And have confidence that in the end, our cause will, with God's help, prevail.

Read it all here.

[Lieberman] [Iraq] [Islam] [Israel]

European anti-Americanism.

Interesting article on the foundations and the premise of European anti-Americanism at The American Thinker. Here are excerpts:

The groundwork for moral equivalence between democracy and murderous tyranny was laid over two generations of willful post-modern obfuscation of the difference between "the fire and the fire brigade," as Churchill aptly called it. Unsurprisingly, the intellectual paragons of such ethical primitivism included Nazi admirers like Paul de Man, Martin Heidegger and Francois Mitterand, and Stalin worshippers like Jean-Paul Sartre. Many Sixties radicals in Europe were totalitarians in spirit, taking their cues from fascist as well as Leftist forerunners. Just as before the war, "les extrêmes se touchent (the extremes converge)." When the violent past of famous Green politician Joschka Fischer was exposed, he simply explained that, yes, "we (radicals) were drawn to the totalitarian temptation."

That's a nice way of putting it. As late as the 1970s the people of Cambodia were subject to the gentle ministrations of a French-trained Leftist intellectual who gave in to the "totalitarian temptation," someone named Pol Pot. Perhaps three million Khmer people never survived to tell the tale. Mao Zedong killed tens of millions of Chinese in the 1960s, even while American college airheads were parading with Mao's "Little Red Book." In recent memory two million North Koreans were starved of food by another Stalin-Mao devotee, Kim Jong Il, and nobody in the West really knows if the starvation has ended yet.

Europe is now being subjected to daft "Third Way Socialism" by a new ruling class that is trying to recreate a Soviet Lite version of the same old political con-job, using the same old scapegoating propaganda that worked so well for Bismarck in the nineteenth century. The goal, of course, is to serve themselves while proclaiming ever-lasting compassion for others.

Hence German hectoring against "the Anglo-Saxons" --- a phony racialist term from the 19th century --- and its implicit reversion to the dark, rejected past. Throw some really scary Islamic-fascist head-choppers into the mix, lubricate the whole mess with billions of euros in Saudi money, and you have today's witches' brew in European politics.

[anti-American] [Europe][Saddam][Iraq][Iran][France][Germany][totalitarian][fascism]

Pobre Argentina... tomar parte en este "charade"...

Courtesy of Investors Business Daily:

As Bush prepares a milestone visit to five Latin American democracies, expected to draw a warm welcome from their leaders, a left-wing clown show is getting ready in the wings, courtesy of the regional bully.

...

Note that the Chavez rally will not be held in any of the five countries that are hosting the president — Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico — but in probably the only country whose state-paid protesters, known as piqueteros, can fill a stadium with anti-Bush protesters.

For the countries Bush is visiting, something much better than fist-waving rallies will be offered.

Chavez Venezuela Latin America demonstrations Kirchner Argentina piqueteros

More on global warming...

It seems that there is universal consensus of opinion among scientists about the horrors of climate change. But, a meteoroligst at MIT, Professor Richard Linzen, writes that this is a lie: there is no such unanimity among scientists.

[global warming] [climate]

America-bashing from a German perspective...

A fascinating insight into Germany's views of the US. Worth reading, not only James Lewis piece:

A neurotic obsession is like a bone stuck in your throat. You can't swallow it and you can't spit it out. That is how the German media are hooked on America. It doesn't look quite sane. For Americans, the best web guide to the German media is davids medienkritik. (David's media critique).

but also the German website, which is written in English.

[America] [USA] [media] [Germany] [Europe] [EU]

Israel may be ranked the country with the worst image abroad (as per BBC poll), but it has good friends.

Which European country is said to be one of the most favorably inclined toward Israel? Which has students organizing Israel Days at major universities? Whose president made the first visit by a head of state to Israel immediately after the war with Hezbollah?

Amazingly, that country is Poland.

Surprised? Even if a Google search on ``Poland and Israel'' generates 177 million hits, the news highlighted above is not what you find when you open your morning paper. More often, you are likely to read that a Polish member of the EU Parliament published an anti-Semitic pamphlet -- but it is seldom mentioned that the Polish president and other government representatives condemned him. Bad news travels fast -- especially if it is bad news we have been conditioned to hearing. And Poland has seldom been the beneficiary of good news.

Read the rest of the story here.

[Israel] [Poland] [Holocaust] [Kaczynski ] [Peleg] [Kwasniewski]

On death and dying.

An excerpt of Charles Krauthammer's piece:

No one grasps more greedily--and cruelly--the need for agency in death as does the greatest moral monster of our time: the suicide bomber. By choosing not only the time and place but the blood-soaked story that will accompany his death, he seeks to transcend and redeem an otherwise meaningless life. One day you are the alienated and insignificant Mohamed Atta; the next day, Sept. 11, 2001, you join the annals of infamy with all the glory that brings in the darker precincts of humanity. It is the ultimate perversion of the "good death," done for the worst of motives--self-creation through the annihilation of others. People often denounce such suicide attacks as "senseless." On the contrary, they make all too much malevolent sense. There is great power in owning your own death--and even greater power in forever dispossessing your infidel victims of theirs.

[suicide bomber] [Islam] [Muslim] [Iraq] [Israel] [death]

Global warming, carbon offsets and the boy from Ipanema.

Tall and tan and young and lovely, the boy with carbon offsets goes walking and when he passes each one he passes goes aaaiiieeeeeeeee!

Mark Steyn at his usual!

[global warming] [carbon offsets] [Al Gore]

Man's intoxicating vanity.

From Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park:

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity! Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.

It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

[global warming]

UFOs to the rescue of planet Earth...

News24.com reports that

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said on Wednesday.

"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet," Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

[global warming]