Some Interesting Links
I probably spend too much time on the computer. I have to visit my favorite websites every day. Sometimes there are links. Sometimes there are interesting links. This leads to more time on the computer. Sometimes people send me things. Most of the time, they're the usual junk. Sometimes they're worth passing on. But all of this takes time. But since I'm sharing today, here are three of the good ones.
The first one is the one I stumbled upon today. (I wish I could remember which site I linked from.) It fits nicely into my "Reasons not to Vote for Obama" series." Not that it matters anymore since 52 percent of the voters did vote for him. It's from The American Spectator and it's called,
Obama's Enemy List.
After the Democratic convention, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer warned TV stations against airing a TV ad that was embarrassing to Barack Obama. The commercial focused on the longtime relationship between Obama and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Bauer sent letters to the Justice Department imploring the agency to pursue criminal action against those behind the ads. It was not lost on anyone at that time that Bauer was considered a candidate to be the next U.S. Attorney-General.
A team of Obama campaign operatives, joined by major news outlets, descended on Wasilla, Alaska immediately after Governor Sarah Palin was introduced as Senator John McCain's running mate. This was immediately followed by patently false reports claiming Palin imposed book bans, joined a fringe political party, charged rape victims for emergency room treatment and cut funding for special needs children.
In late August, the Obama campaign emailed an "Obama Action Wire" to thousands of supporters and liberal activists exhorting them to harass the offices of Chicago's WGN radio by flooding the station with angry phone calls and emails. Activists screamed insults to call-in screeners. The radio station's offense was that a long-time, respected radio host had the temerity to interview Ethics and Public Policy Center watchdog Stanley Kurtz. Kurtz had uncovered university records that documented a much closer relationship between Obama and Ayers than the presidential candidate had previously disclosed.
A few weeks later . . .
This is only the
beginning.
This next link, "
Ending the West's Proxy War Against Israel", from the Wall Street Journal, goes back about a month. Somebody emailed it to me, and I've been saving it. As blogging has to take a back seat to real life, these delays are to be expected.
In such "youth bulge" countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society. In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists' war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born.
In Gaza, however, there has been no demographic disarmament. The average woman still bears six babies. For every 1,000 men aged 40-44, there are 4,300 boys aged 0-4 years. In the U.S. the latter figure is 1,000, and in the U.K. it's only 670.
and
The reason for Gaza's endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world's refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well.
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%) -- only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to the West's largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza's population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period, Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself.
Will The Obama do anything about this? I mean besides trying to revive the insanity known as the Middle East process? And allowing the United States to participate in upcoming anti-Israel hatefest known as
Durban II?
This third one goes back even further, but has stuck with me. It's by the writer for Asia Times Online who calls himself
Spengler, "
Benedict XVI is Magnificently Right".
"President Roosevelt is magnificently right," John Maynard Keynes wrote of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's decision to devalue the American dollar in 1933. If any economic policy stance deserves such praise today, it is that of Pope Benedict XVI, whose views on ethics and economics occasioned a flurry of comment last month. Italy's Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti observed, "The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found" in a 1985 paper (see Market Economy and Ethics, Acton Institute) by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which Tremonti called "prophetic". I don't know whether it was prophetic, but the future pope was right, and magnificently so.
An unethical economy, he argued, will destroy itself, and economics cannot determine whether any activity is ethical or not. Internet stock valuations, the market delusion of a decade ago, presumed that pornography, gaming, music downloads and shopping would be the driving forces of the future economy. It is easy to ridicule this Alice-in-Wonderland accounting after the fact, just as it is easy to laugh at television advertisements that even today urge Americans to buy homes because their prices double every 10 years (for example this commercial by the National Association of Realtors posted on YouTube). But what should we say of an economy based on consuming as much as one can without troubling to bring children into the world?
Here is what then Cardinal Ratzinger said about it more than 20 years ago:
It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be born and sustained only by strong religious convictions. Conversely, it has also become obvious that the decline of such discipline can actually cause the laws of the market to collapse. An economic policy that is ordered not only to the good of the group - indeed, not only to the common good of a determinate state - but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength.
What caused the laws of the market to collapse in 2008? In another location (see The monster and the sausages, Asia Times Online, May 20, 2008), I argued that the bulge of workers in the US and Europe approaching retirement age is the ultimate cause of the financial crisis. Too much capital chased too few investment opportunities, and the financial industry met the demand by selling sow's ears with the credit rating of silk purses.
I should warn you that Spengler talks about things like morals and ethic, you know, subjects that undoubtedly keep him from being the life of the party, but this is something worth discussing. Has Western civilization become so wrapped up in self-actualization, that we've forgotten to create the next generation? When advertisers insist that we can have it all, does that include a family? Or do children require too much attention that could better be spent following that dream?
Read on!
Labels: Obama, Palestinians, Pope Benedict XIV, Spengler
Silence of the Sheep
Brigitte Gabriel at
American Congress for Truth presents a great piece by
Yashiko Sagamori, a writer whom I hadn't heard of previously.
Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.
Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425),
the Byzantine emperor
What should have been the appropriate response to Pope Benedict XIV after he recklessly quoted a dead Byzantine emperor?
[ . . . ]
The appropriate response should have been very simple. It should have listed all those things that are unique to Islam; things that set it apart from Judaism and Christianity, but are neither evil, nor inhumane. And if Islam really is just another religion, then the list of those things, accumulated since the inception of that Abrahamic faith 14 centuries ago, must be long and widely known to both Muslims and us, the infidels.
We would all look through the list of all good things that only Islam could have brought into the world, and rejoice at the marvelous achievements of our turbaned brothers and hermetically veiled sisters. Catholics all over the world would cry in shame for their pontiff and begin mass conversions to Islam. Benedict XVI would, for the last time in the history of the Vatican, appear on his balcony in order to tearfully, a la Jimmy Swaggart, admit urbi et orbi the ridiculous errors of his ways, abdicate St. Peter's throne and live the rest of his life as a humble dervish somewhere in Turkey, formerly known as Byzantium.
That's what should've had happened had Manuel II been wrong in his assessment of Islam. Technically speaking, it would be sufficient to cite just a single example of what Mohammad brought that was new and, at the same time, good and humane. No such example has been brought up.
[ . . . ]
The burning question must be answered: Why hasn't anyone — I mean literally any one — come up with a list of at least some good things Islamic? Why has none of the 1.4 billion Muslims and none of the uncounted millions of their learned appeasers in the West offered us at least a tiny sample of something good and humane brought into the world by Mohammad and his followers in the course of the 14 centuries of incessant genocide that have elapsed since the inception of Islam?
There can be only one answer: Because no such thing exists. During all the centuries of its existence, Islam has miserably failed to produce anything of value to humanity.
[ . . . ]
Will we see a political leader of Einstein's proportions who will emerge in time to remind us that there would have been no victory over Nazism if we had classified the Nazis into a minority of bad, extremist Nazis who had hijacked the perfectly benign political philosophy from the benevolent, but totally undetectable majority of real, moderate Nazis? Why do we need a genius to explain to us that there would have been no victory over Nazism had we allowed Nazis to come to our shores by the millions, settle in our cities, and change the way our children learn history of the world?
These are the highlights. Now go and read the
whole thing. It's important.
Labels: Brigitte Gabriel, islam, Pope Benedict XIV, Yashiko Sagamori
The Spoiled Child of Religions?
There seems to be no pleasing Islam. The more we give, the more Islam wants. If we dare say the wrong thing, Islam flies immediately into a vicious temper tantrum. You can claim "the Religion of Peace" all you want, but like the saying goes: People may doubt what you say, but they will always believe what you do.
Last year it was madness of the
Mohammed cartoons that had Islam in an uproar. The folks that should have disciplined the out-of-control Islam, the MSM and western "leaders" immediately went into full pander mode and condemned free speech while giving a pass to murderous Islamic riots. People have been
harrassed and have lost their jobs for pointing out that Islam is violent. The MSM doesn't care. We are supposed to engage in dialogue. We are supposed to reach out with our hand while being answered with bullets and bombs.
Now Islam is upset over a speech by the Pope. And what's the first thing Islam does? Threatens, murders a nun, burns churches, because they contend that the Pope called Islam violent. And again, the MSM and Western leaders, with the notable exception of
Australia's John Howard blame the Pope for inflaming Islam. There is mild reference to murder and mayhem by Islam, but the dhimmi-like bowing and scraping by the MSM continues. As this report in the
Detroit Free Press shows, Islamic violence is never the fault of Islam.
Reese said the incident makes clear "the Vatican now lacks some of the smart political instincts that John Paul II always had. Last week, there wasn't anybody going over the pope's talk -- before he gave it -- who could go running into his office and say, 'Your Holiness, you just can't say these words!' "
Excuse me, Mr. Reese, but shouldn't someone speak out against the violence rather than the words? Does Islam never have to take responsibility for its actions? Jews do. Christians do. Jews didn't riot over
Mel Gibson's recent infamous remarks. There were some mighty strong op-eds and letters, but security did not have to be increased anywhere in Hollywood in expectation of violence.
Does the rest of the world have to watch its language, tip toe around those delicate Islamic sensibilities, never point out the truth that Islam is and has been intolerant and violent toward non-Muslims, that it thinks itself superior even though if not for the fact that it sits squarely upon much of the world's oil supply, we would gladly squash it like a bug for all of the pain it's unleashed on the world over the past 1300 years?
If you believe the MSM and spineless Western leaders, yes we do. It's a good thing many of us reject them.
Labels: islam, Pope Benedict XIV
It's a Crazy World We Live In
Read this
post by
Tammy Bruce on Europe's reaction to Israel defending itself against the latest unprovoked acts of war from Hamas and Hezbollah. And yes, you should read the whole thing.
French President Jacques Chirac questioned whether Israel was seeking Lebanon's destruction. "One may well ask if there isn't today a kind of wish to destroy Lebanon -- its infrastructure, its roads, its communications, its energy, its airport. And for what?
"I find honestly -- as all Europeans do -- that the current reactions are totally disproportionate," he said in a live television interview on France's national Bastille Day.
Being French, you kind of expect that. But-
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said Pope Benedict and his aides were very worried that the developments in the Middle East risked degenerating into "a conflict with international repercussions."
"In particular, the Holy See deplores right now the attack on Lebanon, a free and sovereign nation, and assures its closeness to these people who already have suffered so much to defend their independence," he told Vatican Radio.
I thought Pope Benedict had taken a strong stand against Islamic imperialism. He's made friendly overtures to the Jewish community. Apparently that friendliness only lasted until Israel showed strength in the face of adversity and the fact that Jews do not need the permission of the Vatican anymore to thrive. Are we now back to our regularly scheduled Vatican-inspired anti-semitism? I hope not.
On the other side we have some Muslim countries who are properly
criticizing the terrorists of H & H.
Meanwhile, Lebanon sought support from fellow Arabs at an emergency session of foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday. But sharp rifts erupted over as moderate Arab states denounced Hezbollah for starting the conflict.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal called the group's actions "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible," telling his counterparts: "These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago, and we cannot simply accept them."
Supporting his stance were representatives of Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, delegates said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Even Russia's Putin, while offering weasel words, was less weaselly than the Europeans:
Putin said it was unacceptable to try to reach political goals through abductions and strikes against an independent state. "In this context we consider Israel's concerns to be justified," he said. At the same time, he said, "the use of force should be balanced."
What to make of this? I'm not sure, except that Europe is still in advanced appeasement mode, on their way to dhimmitude. The Muslim world, while still advancing the twisted cause of jihad, is as leery of the psychotic Iranian mullahs as the rest of us.
Labels: Europe, Israel, Pope Benedict XIV, Putin, Tammy Bruce, the French
Pope Benedict XVI - Say It Ain't So
In the
beginning I really thought Pope Benedict XVI had a grasp of the current Islamic-inspired insanity. I thought he was on the side of civilization against Muslim terrorists. I thought he supported Israel, as Israel's fight is our fight and Europe's fight, even though many Europeans seem to have resigned themselves to becoming dhimmi. I was wrong. As
this news report demonstrates the Pope is willing to sacrifice the Jews (again) to appease the monster.
The Vatican on Thursday denounced some Israeli retaliations against past terrorism as a violation of international law in an ongoing spat over Pope Benedict XVI's failure to specifically condemn terror against
Israel in recent remarks.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned the Vatican envoy to Israel on Monday and complained that Benedict "deliberately" didn't mention a July 12 suicide bombing in Netanya while referring to recent terror strikes in Egypt, Britain, Turkey and
Iraq.
"It's not always possible to immediately follow every attack against Israel with a public statement of condemnation," a statement from the Vatican press office said Thursday night, "and (that is) for various reasons, among them the fact that the attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law."
"It would thus be impossible to condemn the first (the terror strikes) and let the second (Israeli retaliation) pass in silence," said the statement, which had an unusually blistering tone for the Holy See.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the Vatican statement.
On Sunday, as Benedict addressed pilgrims while on vacation at his Alpine retreat, he prayed for God to stop the "murderous hand" of terrorists. He denounced as "abhorrent" the terror strikes at a Red Sea resort in Egypt, the mass transit attacks in Britain and other terrorism in Iraq and Turkey.
On Monday, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Benedict had been referring to the attacks of the last few days. He called it "surprising that one would have wanted to take the opportunity to distort the intentions of the Holy Father."
Navarro-Valls said then that the Netanya attack "falls under the general and unreserved condemnation of terrorism" by the pontiff.
Weasel words are offered after the usual condemnation of Israel for defending itelf. The Vatican has joined those who see the existence of Israel as a violation of internatioal law. The terrorists now know Israel still stands virtually alone in the world and will continue in their attempts to destroy it. The Pope, and all of the other terror-enablers needs to remember, if Isreal is destroyed, it will free up a whole mess of terrorists to attack Europe.
Labels: Israel, Pope Benedict XIV
Terrorist Bombs in London
Following the links trying to get more information on the London terrorist bombings, (notice, the British press is no longer afraid of the word "terrorist") I found
this article written by the former Joseph Ratzinger, now known as Pope Benedict XVI.
Europe, precisely in this its hour of maximum success, seems to have become empty inside, paralyzed in a certain sense by a crisis in its circulatory system, a crisis that puts its life at risk, resorting, as it were, to transplants that cannot but eliminate its identity. To this interior failure of its fundamental spiritual powers corresponds the fact that, even ethnically, Europe appears to be on the way out.
There is a strange lack of desire for a future. Children, who are the future, are seen as a threat for the present; the idea is that they take something away from our life. They are not felt as a hope, but rather as a limitation of the present. We are forced to make comparisons with the Roman Empire at the time of its decline: it still worked as a great historical framework, but in practice it was already living off those who would dissolve it, since it had no more vital energy.
It's a very thoughtful article, and I think it also applies to the United States.
I present this article because after the murderous attack in London, I'm left cynical, and I wonder, will this open anyone's eyes? Or will the European villification of Israel and Jews continue? Will Muslims continue to be defended against a feared "backlash"? (Does anyone remember a 9/11 backlash, or were we too mollified with the mantra, "they're not all terrorists"?) Will the press continue to take an alleged Koran desecration more seriously than the murder of innocents by Muslim terrorists? Will self-loathing idiots on the left explain how the west is to blame for these attacks based on all of the absurd reasons we've already heard?
What will it take before the MSM and our leaders in the West admit that there is a problem with Islam, that even if all Muslims aren't terrorists, a lot of them support terror, and the ones who don't will be murdered with us infidels?
Labels: London, MSM, Muslims, Pope Benedict XIV, terrorism
The New Pope
As a dedicated follower of the herd, I too, must weigh in on the new pope; Pope Benedict, the XVI. (I like using Roman numerals. There, my dirty little secret is out). At first, like everyone else, I wondered, a German pope? 78 years old? How old would he have been when . . . you know? And would he have been a member of . . . you know? He was, but he was young at the time. With so many adults willingly becoming Nazis, how could a youngster escape it? As I read more about this time in his life, it seems he wasn't as dedicated to the cause as some of the other young future sociopaths. I do have to give him the benefit of the doubt as he did drop out to become a priest.
Some doubters, Catholic and non-Catholics want him to follow their agenda and loosen things up a bit (or a lot), and will be satisfied with nothing less. I'm not Catholic so I have no say in the matter. If you're Catholic and not happy with the Pope, join another church. If you're not Catholic, shut up and deal with it.
I read that he's going to continue Pope John Paul's policy of reaching out to the Jews. I think that's a great idea. I also read that he's aware of the current Islamic threat to Europe and the world. I'm on his side there too. I'm not European, but it scares me that too many Europeans are willing to give up their Christian heritage in return for - for - for what? They damn the Jews who have contributed to the creation of their civilization, and kiss the feet of Muslims who want to establish an Islamic theocracy where Christians and Jews would be forced to accept second class status. I'm hoping Pope Benedict can help the Europeans get their heads out of their rear ends and begin to reclaim what their ancestors built and fought for over the last two thousand years. It isn't perfect, but it's better than being under the heel of an Islamo-fascist dictatorship.
Go Benedict!
Labels: Pope Benedict XIV
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
