By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

Australians have finally found some justice and hopefully, a sense of peace and closure. Three Islamists were executed by Indonesian authorities on Sunday, shortly after midnight, for the heinous, cowardly, and evil bombings of several nightclubs in Bali on October 12, 2002, an act which “killed 202 people — most of them young Australians — and injured more than 300.” Australians have held steadfast in the war against Islamo-fascism, and will probably become even more unwavering in defense of Western ideals after hearing the twisted and unremorseful ramblings of the three Bali bombers before their executions.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee, netwmd.com

Sareve Dukat kept her composure, even though the United States was under attack by Islamo-fascists, drunk on religion, hatred, and a lust for power. The date was September 11, 2001. An airliner full of civilians was just cynically rammed into tower #1 of the World Trade Center in New York City. Ms. Dukat would not survive the day that has become the defining moment for a generation of Americans, myself included.

Sareve Dukat, victim of 911.

Dukat, who was working on the 87th floor of tower #2, calmly called her family to tell them that she was alright and that she would stay at her desk. But the brief calm would not last, as Islamic lunatics drove another plane full of innocent passengers into WTC tower #2, and into the heart of one of the world’s greatest and most diverse cities, stealing the miraculous gift of life away from Sareve, and 2,995 other people.

(more…)

The Jerusalem Post has published an incredible interview with writer Bat Ye’or.  She is an historian and a prolific critic of the rise of Islamic extremism, especially in Europe.

She is the author of eight books, including The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (1985); The Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996); Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (2001); and - the one which captured international attention and catapulted her into the center of controversy - Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (2005). Saying that Europe is basically finished, due to its kissing up to the Arabs, will do that.

Eurabia was an instant hit, and has added real intellectual power to the counter-jihad movement.  It describes Europe as having shifted from its Judeo-Christian Post-Enlightenment grandeur, into one increasingly subservient to the oppression of Islamic law, or Sharia, where all non-Muslims live as dhimmis.

Bat Ye’or is a powerful, controversial writer, and I think the interview should be read in full at the Jerusalem Post, but I’ve reprinted a bit of it here to give you a sense of the woman’s character:

When you heard about the peace treaty that Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin signed with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1979, how did you feel?

I wasn’t following it that carefully, due to family problems. Nor was I familiar with Israeli politics at the time. But I trusted Begin to do the best thing for Israel. So, I did have hope. Still, what you have to understand is that the problem is much larger than Egypt. The whole Muslim world is becoming more and more radicalized - more rooted in Shari’a, and less open to anything outside the religion. This is due to the policies of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), with 57 Islamic member states and a permanent delegation to the UN. At its last summit in December 2005, it decided upon a 10-year plan, one of whose resolutions was to root the Islamic uma - the world Muslim community - in the Koran and the [oral tradition of the] Hadith, which, of course, means Wahabbism. They also resolved to make the Palestinian issue the central issue of international politics. This is why we see relentless pressure on Israel from different countries. Because the OIC is an extremely powerful body, demographically, politically and economically.

The OIC is an Islamic body. How has it managed to turn the Palestinian issue into a Western focus? And to what do you attribute the political and cultural success of its ideology in Europe and the United States?

First of all, a distinction has to be made here between Europe and America, which have chosen opposite paths in relation to the Middle East.

As for OIC influence on Europe: It is visible in immigration policy toward Muslims, and in the Muslims’ refusal to integrate into European societies.

The OIC considers nationalist-European movements, European history, European culture, European religions and European languages as Islamophobic. Why? Because Europeans have begun to feel that they are losing their own identity, due to their efforts to welcome immigrants who don’t want to integrate. As a result, they have adopted measures to stop illegal immigration, to control legal immigration and to curb terrorism. Europeans fear losing their historical and cultural assets - particularly those of democracy and human rights - to Shari’a law. They want one law for everybody - and it’s not Shari’a, which involves things like honor killings. It is thus that in all international forums, the OIC attacks Europe and demands that it apply multiculturalism.

Now, Europeans do not want multiculturalism. But this is a problem, because European governments - and especially the European Union - do not want to fight the OIC, and so they collaborate with it. Therefore, what we have inside Europe is a clash of interests between the European citizens and their governments.

A similar claim is often made about Muslim-Arab citizens and their governments - that a majority of the former is moderate, while the latter is extremist. Do you agree with this assessment?

No, I don’t agree with it at all. In fact, the opposite is the case. In the Arab world, it is the governments - as we see so well in Egypt - that are at the mercy of the radicalized, Islamized, anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel masses who are in a dynamic of jihad. Certainly the majority of Muslims follow the ideology of conquest; it is in the Koran and the Hadith! And every time they go to the mosque, they hear it. I mean, the first shura, that is recited five times a day, is anti-Christian and anti-Jewish. So they cannot escape from it.

Unfortunately, the Muslims who are against this trend don’t have the courage to make the effort to change it. And those who do have the courage are threatened with losing their jobs and having harm done to them and their families. So Islamism is the natural culture of the Arab-Muslim world. Even in Turkey an Islamist government has taken over. So, how can we deny the reality? And anyway, if the moderates were in the majority, they would be making protests and issuing manifestos against Osama bin Laden, instead of against America and Israel.

The environment is one of jihad on the one hand and of dhimmitude [the state of being a non-Muslim subject living in a country governed by Shari'a law] on the other. European countries are becoming dhimmi countries, and people don’t realize it, because they don’t know what jihad and dhimmitude are, so they don’t recognize what condition they’re in. When you have an illness, but are unfamiliar with its symptoms, you don’t know that you are sick. You feel sick, but you don’t know what you’ve got. You therefore can’t make a diagnosis or embark upon a method of treatment to cure yourself. This is the current condition of Western civilization right now.

How, then, do you explain the electoral victories of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and London’s replacement of mayor Ken Livingstone by Boris Johnson? Wouldn’t you consider this phenomenon as indicative that Europeans are making a diagnosis of and seeking a cure to the illness you say they suffer from?

Oh yes, they are extremely important developments which prove what I am saying about European citizens having had enough of this attempt to merge - culturally, religiously and demographically - the Arab and European sides of the Mediterranean. But the pressure exerted by the OIC on European governments is very strong. In addition, there is the pressure of terrorism inside and out of Europe, and that of the oil. So the task of these new governments you refer to will not be easy, to say the least. I don’t doubt their good intentions. But I don’t know if they will succeed in bringing about the change their citizens want.

Furthermore, unlike President Bush - who recognizes that Israel has a legitimate right to exist as a normal nation in its homeland - the Europeans think that Israel’s legitimacy should be granted by the Palestinians and the Arab states. In other words, Europe is putting Israel into a position of dhimmitude, whereby it will be recognized by Muslims if it abides by certain rules and duties.

This is in keeping with its own mentality. When the European community, in December 1973, published its document on European identity in the Copenhagen Declaration, they themselves were adopting a dhimmi mentality toward the Arab League countries. After World War II, Europeans decided that they didn’t want any more wars. Then, when they suffered aggression, such as the oil boycott and Palestinian terrorism that emerged in Europe in the late 1960s, instead of fighting, they joined their aggressors. This was their concept of multilateralism - thinking that by joining those who attacked them, they would be protected. This is when a tremendous Muslim immigration into Europe began.

Read the rest at the Jerusalem Post…

As you can see, Ye’or is not one to play into the hands of apologists.  She describes the Muslim world as being in a “dynamic of jihad” wherein the it is the governments themselves “as we see so well in Egypt - that are at the mercy of the radicalized, Islamized, anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel masses.”

Brilliant interview all around–and important words.  Europe has let the thief in through the front door, and now they have no way of turning him out again…

Read about this at EuropeNews and it should be a shocking reminder of just how perverted the justice systems of the West have become.

The picture is an affront to all victims of terrorism and their families. Abu Qatada, Al Qaeda’s ambassador in Europe, strolls along a busy London street fondling his prayer beads.

This is the first photograph of the greying 47-year-old - said to be one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist suspects - since he was released on bail from a high-security prison after the courts ordered that he could not be sent home to Jordan because his human rights would have been breached.

It was taken on July 7, hours after the families and friends of the 52 innocent people killed in the London transport suicide bombings three years ago remembered their loved ones at a memorial service.

The radical cleric was freed three weeks ago when a judge ruled that there were no grounds to detain him after previous attempts to deport him to Jordan, where he was convicted of terror attacks and bomb plots, were defeated in the courts.

So apparently if you’re a terrorist and you can’t be deported that also means you can’t be detained.  Hell, it’s much easier just to let you go so that you can do it again–perhaps your freedom will inspire other would-be terrorists to blow up innocents as well!  What a win-win situation all around…

The fanatical preacher, who was 20 stone but slimmed down on prison food, was pictured on a shopping trip near the £800,000 home he shares with his wife and children.

Exact details of the location where the Qatada family are living on benefits of an estimated £50,000 a year are protected by court orders.

Indeed, the more one reads the more one thinks to oneself…hmmm…the life of a radical Islamist cleric/terrorist doesn’t sound so bad.  Sure, one could find oneself hiding in the Pakistani hills, but then again, if one could only make it to the UK, one could instead lead a life of luxury and relaxation…

Neighbours who came forward soon after Qatada was freed spoke of their outrage over having such a man in the area while British soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The decision to free Qatada has left Britain’s anti-terror laws in tatters and the taxpayer facing a bill of tens of thousands of pounds to keep the preacher under surveillance by the security services.

Truly, nothing is certain but death and taxes, and Abu Qatada is surely the man who will make both those outcomes far more likely for far too many innocent people…

Read the full article here.

I’ve long thought of Agnosticism as the lazy thinker’s way out of cerebral toil. Whilst not personally sharing the militant atheism of Richard Dawkins, I had concluded before I read his fascinating book, The God Delusion, that people who declared there might or might not be a divine being, were as bad as those who caught splinters sitting on the political fence. Surely if the agnostic in question has delved into the history of man’s belief in Gods and the religious and cultural evolution of such concepts, then there would appear to those with doubt, that indeed God does not exist, except as a mental construct. Add to the melting pot, the imperfections of life, from the mass extinctions through to the tendency for one in three people to get cancer in their life times, then one has to ponder that if there is a God, He is as imperfect as we are, and therefore not worthy of praise and worship.

I might be seen to be attacking Theists but that is not my agenda. In my view, religious belief in a higher being is perfectly natural to humanity and it is therefore pointless and perhaps damaging to fight against such a phenomenon. If a person is to hold a devout belief in God, whilst I might disagree, they are at least prepared to sink and lay foundations of moral absolutes and principles.

We’ve been taught in modern society that there is no such thing as right or wrong, only different perceptions. I fully believe this nihilist relativism is in danger of undermining our identity, our cultures, our principles and indeed our freedoms. When we cannot be prepared to stand up for something that is morally right, of which I believe there is only one course, then our whole system is weak to the attack of those with wrong, but unfortunately strong, moralistic absolutisms.

When we start to equate Islamic suicide bombers to noble and brave freedom fighters, or the Communist tyrant Fidel Castro to a saviour of his people, then we must assume our morals are in danger of rotting away. In my humble opinion, it is a mixture of self-gratifying pomposity and dire intellectual fraud to suppose the ‘rights’ we have cultivated over centuries are open to question from the morally corrupt and retrograde forces of, for example, Socialism, or worst still, Islamism.

Whilst a belief in God is not a necessity, the concept of the religiously inspired battle of ‘good versus evil’ is vital. There is not, in my eyes, a giant intellect in the Universe setting the standards of what is right or wrong. However, if democratic and free values are to be defended on our insignificant planet, then humanity in the West must grasp and champion the morally correct universal human rights set out in both the Judeo-Christian scriptures, in the works of the Philosophers of old and indeed, the likes of the American Constitution.

Otherwise we let our comfortable Liberalism self defeat itself and open the doors to those with no doubts about what is right and wrong, but who are in fact, entirely morally bankrupt.

~from Beaman’s World

from Churchill’s Parrot

“Our loyal, brave people… should know the truth. They should know that there has been a gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses… This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of the bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.”

- Sir Winston Churchill, 1938
A remarkable document has been produced by our good friends at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the leading forum in the United Kingdom for national and international Defense and Security, founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. So pointed and soaring are its words and concepts we are surprised we did not author it ourselves. In fact we did, in so many words. But as many seem apt to regard the word of high ranking British officials weightier than that of a 108 year old blogging parrot, we shall defer, for their clout and experience more than warrant it. We advise, in particular, our American cousins to consider this essay’s observations carefully, as you are less than a year away from deciding whether to follow Britain further down the path of surrender under President Obama/Clinton, or continuing the fight under President McCain.
“Security is the primary function of the state,” declares the RUSI essay Risk, Threat, and Security: The Case of the United Kingdom, “for without it, there can be no state, and no rule of law.”

Sixty years ago, such plain logic was so engrained in the minds of Western man that it scarcely required penning. Today, in the era of post-Leftist-enlightenment, it is “controversial” as the state no longer sees its rightful role as security guard, but as doting nanny charged with tending the every whim and desire of spoiled and feckless children. This dereliction of duty has not only rendered Britain disarmed militarily, but has inspired the contempt of the British people and drastically eroded their faith in their system of government. Thus the sad case of the United Kingdom. She is a soldier, thrust onto the battlefield, with neither the weaponry nor the will to fight. And, in Western democracies, while security is indeed the primary function of the state, keeping faith that theirs is a state worth securing is the primary function of the people. Neither function is being duly tended. And this, the RUSI report warns, is potentially lethal.
“The United Kingdom presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and in its political identity.”
This statement encapsulates what makes this RUSI report so remarkable to us. British defense officials have made plain their objection to governmental mismanagement and under-funding of the military before. But never can we recall this level of officialdom publicly decrying the erosion of the national character and the perils inherent therein. We and others throughout the blogosphere have been screaming this point for years. Now that it is echoed by Privy Councilors, Vice Admirals, Generals, and Field Marshals will any one listen?
“The confidence and loyalty of the people are the wellspring from which flows the power with which all threats to defense and security are ultimately met,” they rightly remind us.
And diminishment of that flow is inversely proportional to increase in vulnerability. “Our loss of cultural self-confidence weakens our ability to develop new means to provide for our security in the face of new risks. Our uncertainty incubates the embryonic threats these risks represent. We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without.”

This is a crisis we can scarcely afford, particularly in our present circumstances.
“The country’s lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its islamist terrorist enemy, within and without. … The jihadists deploy the power of conviction that comes from a sectarian understanding of religion. They also surf the Internet and use it to their advantage and our peril. They are not state-bound, but can take over part or all of a state, as has happened in Afghanistan and Somalia, and as could happen in Pakistan.”

The report lists other risks as well, none of which the authors feel, Britain is particularly well suited to address at present. These include the vanishing Royal Navy, the emerging superpowers of China and India, the politics of climate, the re-emergence or Russia, and Britain’s messy love triangle with Washington and Brussels.
A bleak assessment to be sure. But equally certain is that there is hope. We need look no further than our own history.
“History and experience have been neglected in favor of ‘group think’ and enthusiasm for ideological projects. Public expenditure has been directed in correspondingly perverse ways with clear consequences for our defense and security. All this has contributed to a more severe erosion of the links between the British people, their government, and Britain’s security and defense forces, than for many years.
What is needed is to reverse the vicious circle and turn it into a virtuous one. Fortunately, our history and experience suggest tried and reliable tools for doing this.
We need to remind ourselves of the first principles which govern priorities in liberal democracies. Defense and security must be restored as the first duty of government.”

Various strategies are proposed for accomplishing this. One of particular interest is the formation of a Cabinet Committee not dissimilar to The United States’ Department of Homeland Security. This committee would “draw together all the threads of government relating to defense and security whether at home or abroad. It would be ‘somewhere for anyone to go’ in raising concerns.”

This would come as welcome news to those left to fight Britain’s Street Jihad on their own, with no government assistance, only harassment.
Lastly the authors advocate that Britain reclaim her sovereignty from failing multilateral institutions (if you’re thinking the United Nations, The European Union , and NATO you’re tracking nicely) and place her trust in more proven alliances.
“What are the essential features of alliances worthy of that name? Shared essential values; shared culture, and especially military culture; shared interests; and, most basic of all, trust – trust enough to permit the special intelligence relationships enjoyed by the UK for the last sixty years with Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand.”

Ladies and gentlemen – the Anglosphere.

“Foul weather friends are to be preferred to fair weather friends; and the British people know precisely which are which. The English-speaking world – manifestly close friends – and, less openly, those with interests common to ours, emerge as our main diplomatic resource.”
The echoes of Sir Winston are unmistakable. However, the Britain of his day differs from that of today in that his contemporaries – with a bit of prodding - knew who they were and from whence they came. Such self-knowledge is essential, the report points out, if alliances are to be of any real consequence.
“In making our choices, however, we need to know who we are ourselves and what we stand for. How else should we ourselves be reliable allies to others? Once we know these things and admit them, we can restore our divided house to harmony and thence to security.”

As dismal a portrait this report paints of Britain in her current state, it brings great joy to our heart that such has been compiled and put forth by those who have done it. The nexus of the Queen’s Privy Councillor and Lionheart, of the people and their proud history, of Britain and her true allies is the point at which our “supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor,” begins, that we might, “arise again and take our stand for freedom as in olden time.”

The power is ours to use if we choose. For as the contributors to this essay declare “The deep guarantee of real strength is our knowledge of who we are.” The question for Britain and all free nations is - after nearly forty-five years of demonizing our histories, mocking our principles, and transferring our responsibilities onto government - do we care?

Cheers,
Charlie

Wordpress Tags: national security, defense, campaign 2008, mccain, churchill’s parrot, churchill, anglosphere, Britain