Saturday, November 21, 2009

The Future of Western War

Source: Imprimis

The Future of Western War

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, the Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of classics emeritus at California State University, Fresno. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He is a columnist for National Review Online and for Tribune Media Services, and has published in several journals and newspapers, including Commentary, the Claremont Review of Books, The New Criterion, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Hanson has written or edited numerous books, including The Soul of Battle, Carnage and Culture, and A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency.

I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.

Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere.

Just as this system afforded more prosperity in times of peace, it led to a superior fighting and defense capability in times of war. This is what I call the Western way of war, and there are several factors at play.

First, constitutional government was conducive to civilian input when it came to war. We see this in ancient Athens, where civilians oversaw a board of generals, and we see it in civilian control of the military in the United States. And at crucial times in Western history, civilian overseers have enriched military planning.

Second, Western culture gave birth to a new definition of courage. In Hellenic culture, the prowess of a hero was not recognized by the number of heads on his belt. As Aristotle noted in the Politics, Greek warriors didn't wear trophies of individual killings. Likewise, Victoria Crosses and Medals of Honor are awarded today for deeds such as staying in rank, protecting the integrity of the line, advancing and retreating on orders, or rescuing a comrade. This reflects a quite different understanding of heroism.

A third factor underlies our association of Western war with advanced technology. When reason and capitalism are applied to the battlefield, powerful innovations come about. Flints, percussion caps, rifle barrels and mini balls, to cite just a few examples, were all Western inventions. Related to this, Western armies—going back to Alexander the Great's army at the Indus—have a better logistics capability. A recent example is that the Americans invading Iraq were better supplied with water than the native Iraqis. This results from the application of capitalism to military affairs—uniting private self-interest and patriotism to provide armies with food, supplies, and munitions in a way that is much more efficient than the state-run command-and-control alternatives.

Yet another factor is that Western armies are impatient. They tend to want to seek out and destroy the enemy quickly and then go home. Of course, this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, as we see today in Afghanistan, where the enemy is not so eager for decisive battle. And connected to this tradition is dissent. Today the U.S. military is a completely volunteer force, and its members' behavior on the battlefield largely reflects how they conduct themselves in civil society. One can trace this characteristic of Western armies back to Xenophon's ten thousand, who marched from Northern Iraq to the Black Sea and behaved essentially as a traveling city-state, voting and arguing in a constitutional manner. And their ability to do that is what saved them, not just their traditional discipline.

Now, I would not want to suggest that the West has always been victorious in war. It hasn't. But consider the fact that Europe had a very small population and territory, and yet by 1870 the British Empire controlled 75 percent of the world. What the Western way of war achieved, on any given day, was to give its practitioners—whether Cortez in the Americas, the British in Zululand, or the Greeks in Thrace—a greater advantage over their enemies. There are occasional defeats such as the battles of Cannae, Isandlwana, and Little Big Horn. Over a long period of time, however, the Western way of war will lead us to where we are today.

But where exactly are we today? There have been two developments over the last 20 years that have placed the West in a new cycle. They have not marked the end of the Western way of war, but they have brought about a significant change. The first is the rapid electronic dissemination of knowledge—such that someone in the Hindu Kush tonight can download a sophisticated article on how to make an IED. And the second is that non-Western nations now have leverage, given how global economies work today, through large quantities of strategic materials that Western societies need, such as natural gas, oil, uranium, and bauxite. Correspondingly, these materials produce tremendous amounts of unearned capital in non-Western countries—and by "unearned," I mean that the long process of civilization required to create, for example, a petroleum engineer has not occurred in these countries, yet they find themselves in possession of the monetary fruits of this process. So the West's enemies now have instant access to knowledge and tremendous capital.

In addition to these new developments, there are five traditional checks on the Western way of war that are intensified today. One of these checks is the Western tendency to limit the ferocity of war through rules and regulations. The Greeks tried to outlaw arrows and catapults. Romans had restrictions on the export of breast plates. In World War II, we had regulations against poison gas. Continuing this tradition today, we are trying to achieve nuclear non-proliferation. Unfortunately, the idea that Western countries can adjudicate how the rest of the world makes war isn't applicable anymore. As we see clearly in Iran, we are dealing with countries that have the wealth of Western nations (for the reasons just mentioned), but are anything but constitutional democracies. In fact, these nations find the idea of limiting their war-making capabilities laughable. Even more importantly, they know that many in the West sympathize with them—that many Westerners feel guilty about their wealth, prosperity, and leisure, and take psychological comfort in letting tyrants like Ahmadinejad provoke them.

The second check on the Western way of war is the fact that there is no monolithic West. For one thing, Western countries have frequently fought one another. Most people killed in war have been Europeans killing other Europeans, due to religious differences and political rivalries. And consider, in this light, how fractured the West is today. The U.S. and its allies can't even agree on sanctions against Iran. Everyone knows that once Iran obtains nuclear weapons—in addition to its intention to threaten Israel and to support terrorists—it will begin to aim its rockets at Frankfurt, Munich, and Paris, and to ask for further trade concessions and seek regional hegemony. And in this case, unlike when we deterred Soviet leaders during the Cold War, Westerners will be dealing with theocratic zealots who claim that they do not care about living, making them all the more dangerous. Yet despite all this, to repeat, the Western democracies can't agree on sanctions or even on a prohibition against selling technology and arms.

The third check is what I call "parasitism." It is very difficult to invent and fabricate weapons, but it is very easy to use them. Looking back in history, we have examples of Aztecs killing Conquistadors using steel breast plates and crossbows and of Native Americans using rifles against the U.S. Cavalry. Similarly today, nobody in Hezbollah can manufacture an AK-47—which is built by Russians and made possible by Western design principles—but its members can make deadly use of them. Nor is there anything in the tradition of Shiite Islam that would allow a Shiite nation to create centrifuges, which require Western physics. Yet centrifuges are hard at work in Iran. And this parasitism has real consequences. When the Israelis went into Lebanon in 2006, they were surprised that young Hezbollah fighters had laptop computers with sophisticated intelligence programs; that Hezbollah intelligence agents were sending out doctored photos, making it seem as if Israel was targeting civilians, to Reuters and the AP; and that Hezbollah had obtained sophisticated anti-tank weapons on the international market using Iranian funds. At that point it didn't matter that the Israelis had a sophisticated Western culture, and so it could not win the war.

A fourth check is the ever-present anti-war movement in the West, stemming from the fact that Westerners are free to dissent. And by "ever-present" I mean that long before Michael Moore appeared on the scene, we had Euripides' Trojan Women and Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Of course, today's anti-war movement is much more virulent than in Euripides' and Aristophanes' time. This is in part because people like Michael Moore do not feel they are in any real danger from their countries' enemies. They know that if push comes to shove, the 101st Airborne will ultimately ensure their safety. That is why Moore can say right after 9/11 that Osama Bin Laden should have attacked a red state rather than a blue state. And since Western wars tend to be fought far from home, rather than as a defense against invasions, there is always the possibility that anti-war sentiment will win out and that armies will be called home. Our enemies know this, and often their words and actions are aimed at encouraging and aiding Western anti-war forces.

Finally and most seriously, I think, there is what I call, for want of a better term, "asymmetry." Western culture creates citizens who are affluent, leisured, free, and protected. Human nature being what it is, we citizens of the West often want to enjoy our bounty and retreat into private lives-to go home, eat pizza, and watch television. This is nothing new. I would refer you to Petronius's Satyricon, a banquet scene written around 60 A.D. about affluent Romans who make fun of the soldiers who are up on the Rhine protecting them. This is what Rome had become. And it's not easy to convince someone who has the good life to fight against someone who doesn't.

To put this in contemporary terms, what we are asking today is for a young man with a $250,000 education from West Point to climb into an Apache helicopter—after emailing back and forth with his wife and kids about what went on at a PTA meeting back in Bethesda, Maryland—and fly over Anbar province or up to the Hindu Kush and risk being shot down by a young man from a family of 15, none of whom will ever live nearly as well as the poorest citizens of the United States, using a weapon whose design he doesn't even understand. In a moral sense, the lives of these two young men are of equal value. But in reality, our society values the lives of our young men much more than Afghan societies value the lives of theirs. And it is very difficult to sustain a protracted war with asymmetrical losses under those conditions.

My point here is that all of the usual checks on the tradition of Western warfare are magnified in our time. And I will end with this disturbing thought: We who created the Western way of war are very reluctant to resort to it due to post-modern cynicism, while those who didn't create it are very eager to apply it due to pre-modern zealotry. And that's a very lethal combination.

Thanksgiving An Original American Holiday...not this year! "...our President is willingly allowing our men and women in Afghanistan to die..."

Please note the original publication date.

Thanksgiving at a time of war


Presidents often use this holiday to rally the nation, reflecting the Puritans more than the Pilgrims.


Americans may welcome Thanksgiving as a precious time to be with family and friends – and to reach out to the less-well-off in their community. But they often forget that this tradition of celebrating in gratitude was set with an additional purpose for the whole country by its leaders.

That purpose is often made explicit during wartime, when American presidents have used Thanksgiving to overcome divisions and renew patriotism.

It was President Lincoln who finally created a Thursday in November as a regular national holiday, after years of urgings by Christian reformers who wanted it as a way to spread virtue in home life. But Lincoln did so during the darkest days of the Civil War, taking what was then only a tradition in New England and Texas and saying in his 1863 proclamation that the holiday was for "the whole American people." (The South didn't embrace it until decades later.)

Now in 2007, after the long years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush is asking in his Thanksgiving Proclamation for the nation to stand behind the American soldiers "who defend liberty ... [and] advance the cause of freedom." That he would cite those two lofty causes at a time of divided opinion about the Iraq war fits a pattern of presidents using Thanksgiving to unify Americans.

George Washington set a day for thanksgiving to buck up the Colonies during the Revolutionary War. In 1789, as a new nation tried to rally around a much-debated Constitution, the first president then set aside Nov. 26 of that year as "A Day of Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer."

Lincoln, too, in his proclamation asked for prayers to unite a land "which it has pleased [God] to assign as a dwelling place for ourselves and for our prosperity through all generations."

He had private doubts about the Civil War (as many Americans do today about Iraq) but months earlier in a private note to himself, Lincoln wrote with some wisdom: "In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party...."

While the origins of Thanksgiving lie in the Pilgrims and the Jamestown colony, the use of it by presidents over the years to achieve unity better reflects the New England Puritans. The unique theology of the Puritans at first relied on followers trusting the spiritual superiority of their ministers to lead them, as historian George McKenna points out in a new book, "The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism." When that superiority was challenged (by Puritan Anne Hutchinson, among others), the ministers adjusted the theology to say that the entire community was holy as long as it stayed within God's grace. As one minister wrote in 1651 to his Puritan New England: "The Lord looks for more from thee, than from other people."

From that sprang a nation out to reform itself and sometimes others, creating a sense of exceptionalism. Thanksgiving, then, can be a time to rebuild national self-confidence. But it is also a time for humility to check if America is on the right path in either war or peace.

This just in... [edited for this post]

----- Original Message -----
From: link removed
To: link removed

Dear Editor:

While I'm eating my Thanksgiving dinner with my family this year, I'm going to have a hard time enjoying it knowing that our President is willingly allowing our men and women in Afghanistan to die while waiting for him to make up his mind whether or not to give them the resources they need for survival.

I was heartsick while reading a chat room that is sometimes visited by soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan, ask us to please pray for their safety because each day things get worse, and they don't know when they are going to get the help they need. A Pastor friend in Indiana works with deployed soldiers and veterans through an on-line ministry called Do The Right Thing. He has confirmed the stories and the concerns of those currently serving.

These brave men and women went where they were told to go and are doing their very best, so how deranged is it to send them there as sitting ducks while the elite politicians play golf in between paying off their friends for political favors.

There is something so seriously wrong with our government allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to get away with funnelling obscene amounts of money to his friends in the auto unions, not to mention the developing corruption story coming out of the Goldman Sachs relationship. Simultaneously, this administration is obsessed with taking over 1/6 of our economy through socialized healthcare! All the while, as if they are invisible, the President is completely ignoring our brightest and best who are literally dying in Afghanistan.

These same politicians campaigned on how Afghanistan was the war we "should" be in, and most Americans agreed with them, and yet they have absolutely no conscience at allowing these men to be slaughtered when it is within their power to protect them. It is beyond me how they sleep at night.

So we'll eat our Turkey and be grateful that we live in the greatest country on earth, but first I'll call and write to all of my legislators and plead with them not to sit down to their dinner until they have gotten our military the support they need, and stop sending our children to slaughter like the bird they are about to consume.
--------------------

Only Traitors Drink Coke... When are they going to get it? Climate change is a natural occuring event!

Click on picture to enlarge.




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HEAT OF THE MOMENT
Coca-Cola leads cheering section for 1-world climate change taxes

100 companies push '16 days left to seal deal' on $10 trillion treaty

By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


Hopenhagen "passport"

Coca-Cola is spearheading a coalition of more than 100 companies pushing a United Nations climate treaty to bind the U.S. to cap-and-trade emissions regulation, commit the world's wealthiest nations to a potential $10 trillion in foreign aid and, possibly, form a proposed international "super-grid" for regulating and distributing electric power worldwide.

Together with the SAP and Siemens corporations, Coca-Cola launched a website called Hopenhagen, leading up to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, which opens on Dec. 7. The website invites the citizens of the world to sign a petition demanding world leaders draft binding agreements on climate change and advertises, as of today, "16 days left to seal the deal."

Other "friends" of Hopenhagen include media outlets Newsweek, Discovery Channel, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, The Wall Street Journal and Clear Channel, among others, Internet giants Yahoo, Google and AOL and dozens of other companies and organizations.

As WND reported, however, Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, asserts the real purpose of the U.N.'s meeting in Copenhagen is to use concern over "global warming" as a pretext to lay the foundation for a one-world government.

He has warned the proposed Copenhagen agreement would cede U.S. sovereignty, mandate a massive wealth transfer from the United States to pay reparations for "climate debt" to Third World countries and create a new "world government" to enforce the treaty's provisions.

And even if Monckton is merely fanning the flames of fear in those suspicious of the U.N., Coca-Cola's "Hopenhagen" project isn't doing anything to put out the fire:

"We're all citizens of Hopenhagen," boasts the website, adding, "Hopenhagen: Population 6.8 billion."

"Sign the Climate Petition and become a citizen of Hopenhagen," the website encourages.

Specifically, the petition states:

"We the peoples of the world urge political leaders to:

  • "Seal the Deal at COP 15 on a climate agreement that is definitive, equitable and effective
  • "Set binding targets to cut greenhouse gases by 2020
  • "Establish a framework that will bolster the climate resilience of vulnerable countries and protect lives and livelihoods
  • "Support developing countries' adaptation efforts and secure climate justice for all."

"We also believe that anything is possible if we work together," states Coca-Cola on the Hopenhagen site. "That's why we're collaborating with governments, NGOs, other businesses and our consumers, to help tackle global challenges like climate change."

A closer look at the "deal" Hopenhagen is hoping to "seal," however, reveals a call to unprecedented levels of international regulation and wealth redistribution and includes many of the measures Monckton decries as an effort to "impose a communist world government on the world."

Seal the deal

"The world needs a Green New Deal," declares a pocket guide to Hopenhagen's "new climate deal."

The guide is produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF. It argues that the current economic crisis pales in comparison to our "climate debt" crisis and that the consequences are dire:

"The world is on course to see entire island nations disappear as sea levels rise," it warns. "Unchecked climate change will cut global food production by up to 40 percent by 2100."

Indeed, unless something is done soon, the guide predicts, we could all be facing "the collapse of planetary life support systems."

Get "The Sky's Not Falling! Why it's OK to chill on global warming"

The guide praises the last major international attempt at combating climate change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, touting the "legal force" behind requiring industrialized countries to reduce emissions and the establishment of a cap-and-trade system of selling "carbon credits."

At the same time, the WWF laments, "The protocol's sanctions against backsliders have had little effect."

The guide warns that Kyoto expires at the end of 2012 and that we must now create "something more ambitious and broader in scope" for the future.

That broader scope of the Green New Deal includes not only additional and more stringent emissions reduction standards, agreed upon and binding on member nations, but also a host of new cap-and-trade measures.

"We create a system in which you need a permit to emit [carbon dioxide] or other greenhouse gases," the guide explains.

Governments could then grant permits to various industries or sell them at auction, either to raise funds or to punish polluters within their borders.

The Green New Deal also includes a similar, international system that issues "emissions rights to nations according to their population." Poor nations would have spare permits, so they could profit by selling to "rich industrialized nations that needed more."

The WWF further suggests creation of an international "super-grid" connecting the nations of the world to one, common electricity supply. It argues the super-grid would enable nations with unique abilities to produce power – such as France's prolific nuclear program or Saudi Arabia's potential for solar energy – to ship and trade electricity abroad.

The WWF does warn, however, "Such a grid requires strong and harmonized cross-border management to tap and deliver the right amount of renewable power at the right time to those who need it."

Finally, the Green New Deal includes a new, global climate change fund that manages monies paid by wealthy nations for "green" improvements in poorer nations. The WWF proposes a couple of possible plans for exacting payment, either an international tax on all carbon emissions or "a simple charge on rich countries," estimated at up to 1 percent of gross domestic product.

"The problem lies with rich countries such as the United States of America and Germany," the guide explains, "who stick with coal-power projects when they have many other options."

Of the poorer nations, the guide states, "They will simply – and not unreasonably – say to the rich world, 'You created this problem; YOU solve it.'"

Who pays to make the world "green"

One of the most contentious points in U.N. climate change negotiations has been the question of who will pay to switch the world's energy use from fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive power sources to means deemed more environmentally friendly.

To that end, the guide to the Green New Deal argues the "polluter-pays principle" should decide.

"The planetary imperative can be reconciled with basic fairness if rich nations pay for the extra costs," it states. "It is, after all, only necessary because developed countries have warmed the planet and taken up most of the atmospheric 'space' for greenhouse gases."

The guide continues, "Developed countries have an obligation to fund adaptation among poor nations that are victims of climate change. International law, based on the well-established 'polluter-pays' principle, suggests there is a legal duty on major carbon dioxide emitters to protect such countries."

But how much will the rich nations pay?

"Notwithstanding the cost of necessary lifestyle changes and some more expensive technologies," the guide estimates, "the total worldwide cost for most of the technologies and actions investigated would be in the region of 200-350 billion Euros annually for the next two decades."

At today's exchange rate, that amounts to a total bill over the next 20 years of between $6 trillion and roughly $10.5 trillion.

Additionally, the WWF insists industrialized countries should quickly – this year – release $2 billion into a fund to help developing nations as a good-faith gesture to the international community meeting in Copenhagen.

However, it was reported earlier this week that a treaty may not be ready by December's U.N. meeting in Copenhagen, as some leaders – including President Obama – are favoring political agreements only, delaying a legally binding treaty.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, is still pushing for agreements on emissions cuts by each developed country and has said he favors at most a six-month delay before making a new climate deal binding, until a meeting in Bonn in mid-2010. That would give time for the U.S. Senate to pass carbon-capping laws, he said.

"It's like metal, you've got to beat it when it's hot," he told Reuters. "If we get clarity on (emission) targets, developing country engagement and finance in Copenhagen, which I'm confident we will, then you can nail that down in a treaty form six months later."

Then, too, came revelations that some e-mails from a prominent climate change research center indicate that the global warming campaign may even be largely a fraud.

According to the Australian Investigate magazine, a file of documents from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit was hacked into, and revealed that scientists discussed a "trick" that would "hide the decline" of global temperatures.

Author James Delingpole wrote in a London Telegraph column the most damaging revelations indicate climate-change scientists may have "manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause."

"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate," said one e-mail.

Further, an e-mail exchange suggested the suppression of information: "Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment – minor family crisis."

Friday, November 20, 2009

Obama Care Roll Out

Click on picture to enlarge.

In Pictures: Size and Weight of Reid Health Bill Breaks All Records

Posted By Kathryn Nix On November 20, 2009
House and Senate Democratic leaders are breaking records left, right and center with every new version of Obamacare they roll out. But if you thought they’d be competing to provide better methods for reforming the health care system, you were wrong. Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are duking it out for who can write the biggest and bloated bill that will actually bend the cost curve up. Senator Reid holds the record at a whopping 2,074 pages.

reidsizesmall [1]

Unless you were planning on replacing your barbells with the Reid health care bill or using H.R.3962 to cure insomnia, these proposals will do little for your health. Experts have agreed [2] that neither plan would do a thing to lower the rising costs of health care, one of the main forces behind the inaccessibility of the health care system as a whole. Instead, every page penned by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid will create more federal regulations [3] American families must comply with before they can obtain health coverage.

It’s time lawmakers realized that health care is too complex to micromanage from Washington. Instead, Congress should seek to increase the number of insured and lower costs through state-based, free-market reforms that won’t require massive new taxes, increasing federal power, government program expansion, or thousands of pages of legislation.

We are certain that by Saturday night, when the first big vote is taken, every one of those 100 Senators will have read, digested, and pondered every single word. Right?

Kathryn Nix currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm [4]

"It is sad that these same countries... do not have the courage to ban Islam for being a violent political cult."

Source: Planks Constant

Scientology is an abusive violent and criminal organization
By Bernie on 18 Nov 2009

scientology montage

In a speech to the Australian Senate on 17 Nov 2009, Nicholas Xenophon labeled the Church of Scientology as a criminal organization, making allegations of members experiencing blackmail, torture and violence, forced imprisonment, and coerced abortions [Wiki].

The Belgian government denied Scientology the status of religion in 1997, and after a ten-year investigation, on 4 Sep 2007, a Belgian prosecutor recommended that the Belgian Church of Scientology and Scientology's Office of Human Rights be prosecuted on counts of extortion, fraud, organized crime, obstruction of medical practice, illegal medical practice, invasion of privacy, conspiracy and commercial infractions like abusive contractual clauses [Wiki].

In 1988 the government of Spain arrested Scientology president Heber Jentzsch and ten other members of the organization on various charges, including "illicit association," coercion, fraud, and labor law violations.

This year in France two branches of Scientology and several of its leaders have been found guilty of fraud and fined. Scientology is considered a cult in France [The Guardian].

Germany views Scientology as a totalitarian organization. And if Germany says it's a totalitarian organization, they know what they're talking about.

While any intelligent person can easily see that Scientology is indeed a criminal cult, it is sad that these same countries that recognize it to be a criminal cult do not have the courage to also ban Islam for being a violent political cult. [Emphasis mine. Norm]

If the Church of Scientology truly wants to prevent criticism of their cult or avoid investigation of their practices, they should start encouraging their followers to blow up buses and kill innocent civilians. It works for Islam.


Related Articles:


Time Magazine, Scientology : The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power

By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa., had been a normal, happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On the day last June when his parents drove to New York City to claim his body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limousine. When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in cash, virtually the only money he hadn't yet turned over to the Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had discovered just seven months earlier.

His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own investigation of the church. "We thought Scientology was something like Dale Carnegie," Lottick says. "I now believe it's a school for psychopaths. Their so-called therapies are manipulations. They take the best and brightest people and destroy them." The Lotticks want to sue the church for contributing to their son's death, but the prospect has them frightened. For nearly 40 years, the big business of Scientology has shielded itself exquisitely behind the First Amendment as well as a battery of high-priced criminal lawyers and shady private detectives.


Scientology leader David Miscavige is the focus of the following special report from the St. Petersburg Times. Former executives of the Church of Scientology, including two of the former top lieutenants to Miscavige, have come forward to describe a culture of intimidation and violence under David Miscavige.


St. Petersburg Times, 2 Nov 2009, High-ranking defectors provide an unprecedented inside look at the Church of Scientology and its leader, David Miscavige.


New details about the case of Lisa McPherson, who died in the care of Scientologists, from the executive who directed the Church of Scientology's handling of the case. He admits he ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence. (June 22, 2009)

...

Four high-ranking defectors describe bizarre behavior and physical beatings inflicted by Scientology leader David Miscavige.

Eeeeks! Yikes! Cripes! She should have been arrested for indecent exposure!

Source: The Snooper Report

Kerry’s Daughter Arrested For Drunk Driving In Hollywood

WOW! OOPS!

Pat Dollard: Kerry’s Daughter Arrested For Drunk Driving In Hollywood

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The daughter of Sen. John Kerry has been arrested in Hollywood for allegedly driving drunk.

Los Angeles police say 36-year-old Alexandra Kerry was stopped by officers on a Hollywood street after midnight Thursday and failed a sobriety test.

Officer Bruce Borihanh said she was booked at the Hollywood police station and was held for about five hours. She was released at about 5:30 a.m. after posting $5,000 bail.

Borihanh didn’t immediately have other details.

Alexandra Kerry is the eldest daughter of the Massachusetts senator, the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee.

She has produced documentaries and has had several small acting roles.

Requests for comment from Alexandra Kerry’s agent and John Kerry’s office were not immediately returned. [END]

WAY TO BE JOHN E-FING KERRY! She looks a little wop-sided there. Must be the booze? I don't know. She sure has the Kerry schnozzer there. Oh. Wait. I wasn't supposed to be looking there, right?

The Snooper Report. Join us as we Take Our Country Back.
Sic vis pacem para bellum
Fight Accordingly

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Forget HR 45... Obama and Hillary will take your guns away by International Treaties! This is neither a joke nor a false warning!

Obama Takes First Step in Banning All Firearms

On Wednesday the Obama administration took its first major step in a plan to ban all firearms in the United States. The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for US citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties on gun control, the Obama administration can use the US State Department to bypass the normal legislative process in Congress. Once the US Government signs these international treaties, all US citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. The laws are designed and intended to lead to the complete ban and confiscation of all firearms.

The Obama administration is attempting to use tactics and methods of gun control that will inflict major damage to our 2nd Amendment before US citizens even understand what has happened. Obama can appear before the public and tell them that he does not intend to pursue any legislation (in the United States) that will lead to new gun control laws, while cloaked in secrecy, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is committing the US to international treaties and foreign gun control laws. Does that mean Obama is telling the truth? What it means is that there will be no publicized gun control debates in the media or votes in Congress. We will wake up one morning and find that the United States has signed a treaty that prohibits firearm and ammunition manufacturers from selling to the public. We will wake up another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that prohibits any transfer of firearm ownership. And then, we will wake up yet another morning and find that the US has signed a treaty that requires US citizens to deliver any firearm they own to the local government collection and destruction center or face imprisonment.

This is neither a joke nor a false warning. As sure as government health care will be forced on us by the Obama administration through whatever means necessary, so will gun control.

Further reading...

U.S. reverses stance on treaty to regulate arms trade

Obama Takes First Step in Banning All Firearms

What were they thinking? ...not my kids! no way!

Source: OC Register

Alligator rides for the kids!

by Tom Berg, Staff Writer

Honey, what should we do with the kids today?

I don’t know, how about letting them ride LIVE ALLIGATORS?

Ok, but make sure they dress appropriately.

Next time you think skateboarding is dangerous, check out these pictures of the Good Old Days.

Alligator riding gained popularity in these parts in 1907 when ”Alligator Joe” Campbell packed his reptilian belongings in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and headed West.

Twenty-five cents bought you admission to the Los Angeles Alligator Farm’s 20 ponds featuring gators from a few inches to 13 feet long. It eventually moved to Buena Park and featured more than 1,000 alligators, crocodiles, gharials and caimans.

The park’s reigning celebrity, however was Billy – possibly the most popular alligator of all time. He starred in the movies ”Trader Horn” (1931); “You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,” (1939); “Dr. Cyclops” (1940); ”Land of the Pharaohs” (1955); and several Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller

“Johnny Weissmuller personally wrestled him rather than a double,” says former farm owner Ken Earnest, 70, of Rapid Ctiy, South Dakota. “Billy was a very tame animal.” (That’s Ken riding on Billy in the picture below.)

Billy died in 1975 and the Alligator Farm closed a few years later. But Earnest, a third-generation alligator man whose father and grandfather both ran the farm before him, still works with gators at Black Hills Reptile Gardens in South Dakota.

Want to know the worst bite he ever had? The one that almost killed him? The answer, and more photos, are here.

And if you want to see small children petting a live alligator in 1941, check out this old home movie:

Obama's Home Teleprompter Breaks Down

Source: Politics Alabama

Obama's Home Teleprompter Breaks Down

Here's a video news report from the Onion News Network, describing a malfunction with Obama's home teleprompter. If you want a chuckle this morning, watch this video.


Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner
UPDATE: For those of you who didn't know, and apparently some of you didn't, the Onion is a news PARODY site that relies heavily on satire and humor.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Islamist Terrorism - An Act By Nidal Hassan - Produced And Directed By Nidal Hassan - Influenced By Islam - Denied By Obama

Source: The Rubin Report

Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers at Fort Hood:

Nidal Hassan Explains It All to You

"He then quotes the Koran extensively to prove the point."

By Barry Rubin


How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You’ve seen reports of a long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what’s most amazing of all is this:

Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an
academic lecture explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn’t enough for too many people—including the president of the United States--to understand that the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack.

It was reported that the audience at his talk in Walter Reed Hospital was shocked and frightened by the tone of his lecture. He was supposed to speak on some medical topic yet instead talked on the topic: “The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.” All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they tell you everything you need to know.

It is quite a good talk. He’s logical and presents his evidence. This is clearly not the work of a mad man or a fool, though there’s still a note of ambiguity in it. He's still working out what to do in his own mind and is trying to figure out if he has a way out other than in effect deserting the U.S. army and becoming a Jihad warrior. Ultimately, he concluded that he could not be a proper Muslim without killing American soldiers. Obviously, other Muslims could reach different conclusions but Hassan strongly grounds himself in Islamic texts.

In a sense, Hassan's lecture was a cry for help: Can anyone show me another way out? Can anyone refute my interpretation of Islam? One Muslim in the audience reportedly tried to do so. But unless these issues are openly discussed and debated--rather than swept under the rug--more people will die.

In fact, I’d recommend that teachers use this lecture in teaching classes on both Islam and Islamist politics.

Follow along with me and you’ll understand everything.

Hassan deals with three topics: What Islam teaches Muslims, how Muslims view the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, how this might affect Muslims in the U.S. military. [Slide 2] Hassan defines Jihad, showing how silly are the claims that it only means a personal struggle to behave better. It also signifies holy war, of course. [Slide 5].

Now here’s Hassan’s central theme. Muslims cannot fight in an infidel army against other Muslims. And Hassan himself says that it’s getting hard for Muslims in the U.S. military to justify doing so. [Slide 11] Obviously, Hassan was deciding that he couldn’t do so.

He then quotes the Koran extensively to prove the point. Allah will punish anyone who kills a Muslim [Slide 12]. Hassan then gives four examples of Muslim soldiers who broke under the strain. One who killed fellow American soldiers (which Hassan would himself do), one accused of espionage (but was acquitted), one who deserted, and one who refused deployment to Iraq. [Slide 13]

Quoting the Koran, Hassan next provides a number of quotations to show that the believer must obey Allah. If they do, they will enjoy great delights (though he left out the 72 virgins, there’s one quote hinting at pederasty), and if they don’t they will suffer torments of Hell.

Finally, he gets into the heavy stuff. Hassan introduces the concept of “defensive Jihad” which is a core element in radical Islamist thinking and has especially been promoted by Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida. [Slides 37-39]. If others attack and oppress Muslims, then it is the duty of all Muslims to fight them. September 11 was justified by its perpetrators by saying that the United States had attacked Muslims and therefore it was mandatory to kill Americans in return.

And here is the crux of the matter: Verse 60:08, “Allah forbids you…from dealing kindly and justly” with those who fight Muslims.” [Slide 40]

If Nidal Hassan believed this and would follow it, he must—to be a proper Muslim in his eyes—pick up a gun and join the Jihad, Muslim side. He was not shooting Americans because he caught battle fatigue from American soldiers he treated. Think about it. To have done so, Hassan would have had to sympathize with them, thinking about what it would be like for him if he’d been fighting…Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that was precisely his problem. He sympathized with the other side.

Being ordered to ship out to one of these countries, Hassan now had to decide: which side are you on? Would he choose the side of Allah and the Muslims, to be rewarded in Heaven? Or would he join with the infidels, to be punished with Hell and to betray his religion? He made his decision.

It is interesting that no Muslim debate has developed over a very simple issue: What if two groups of Muslims are fighting, cannot one side with one group, even if it has non-Muslim allies? After all, Americans are not going to Iraq or Afghanistan simply to “kill Muslims” but to defend Muslims from being killed. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians had no problem with using Western troops to save them from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991, for example. The Iraqi and Afghan governments, made up of pious Muslims, do the same thing.

Arab nationalists who are Muslims can take this position more easily. But for Islamists the problem is not some abstraction but knowledge that they are fighting a battle to seize control of all Muslim-majority states and indeed perhaps of the entire world.

The true problem, then, is not that some Muslims help infidels kill Muslims, but that some Muslims help infidels kill Islamists. But Hassan never considered this point, which could be quite persuasive to other Muslims in Western militaries.

So, in his thinking, how might Hassan have escaped from that stark choice? Hassan answers that question. Quoting the Koran, he indicated that if the Americans ended the wars, then that would be okay and no killing would be necessary. [Slide 42]

Another alternative is if the Americans accepted Islam or agreed to become subservient to Muslim rulers (dhimmis) and paid a special tax [Slide 43-44].

The third alternative would be if the Muslim Messiah came, destroyed Christianity as a false religion and set off the post-history utopia. [Slide 45]. He didn’t mention another part of this description, which was the murder of all Jews.

A digression is appropriate here. Hassan, although a Palestinian, has never been quoted as attacking Israel or the Jews. This is one more reminder that this struggle isn’t all just about Israel. But it also tells something important about Hassan which also applies to many Muslim radicals in Europe. Hassan is an American. As such he has no other nationality, neither Palestinian nor Arab. He doesn’t support Hamas or Fatah. But he has a religion that directs his thinking. That’s why he is an Islamist and why he supports a generalized Islamist revolutionary movement, al-Qaida.

As one moderate Muslim from Canada pointed out, the clothes he wore the day before committing his Jihad attack was not (as some sources put it in a silly manner) some martyr or even Arab garb but the clothing of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is an al-Qaida Jihadi, having changed sides in the War on Terror.

Hassan was no fool or blind fanatic. Indeed, he presents a sophisticated view. For example, he quotes contradictory Quranic verses, one suggesting that all religions can enter Heaven; another that all non-Muslims will go to Hell [Slide 47].

His conclusion takes on tremendous significance in light of what would happen at Fort Hood. He writes:

“If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the `infidels’; i.e., the enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc.”

And of course, these groups did so convince Hassan. [Slide 48]

Why? Hassan tells us:

“God expects full loyalty. Promises heaven and threatens with Hell. Muslims may seem moderate (compromising) but God is not.” [Slide 49]

And at the very end, he proposes what might have been his own escape route:

"Recommendation: Department of Defense should allow Muslim soldiers the option of being released as `Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” [Slide 50]

If that had existed for Hassan, I think, he would not have killed people. This proposal is worth debating, though it has negative implications too, of course. But then he had other options. He could have resigned his commission, deserted, or refused deployment as a conscientious objector and gone to prison. In fact, Hassan himself cited individuals who had done the last two.

Consequently, Hassan's lecture also tells us why Muslims can choose not to be Jihadists, though this requires ignoring or rationalizing clear, religiously binding commandments in their religion or by being basically secular people of Muslim background. This is the kind of solution found in Christianity and Judaism, of course.

Hassan was too pious and consistent to take this way out. The answer to his personal behavior must be found in a mix of psychological factors and political-religious beliefs. The fact is, however, that he clearly did see himself as a Jihad warrior in the end. The existence of psycological factors in no way negates the importance of religious considerations.

All terrorists have some psychological forces working to make them follow such a path. Yet if not for ideological--and in the case of Islamists, religious--beliefs they never would have become terrorists. In contrast, criminals have psychological factors plus material goals, while mentally ill people who commit crimes are compelled by purely psychogical factors. Hassan does not fit either of those two categories.
Equally, his action cannot be attributed to a "misreading" or "heretical" interpretation of Islam. To read this lecture is to understand how carefully and self-critically he approached the issues. Anything so obviously false or deviant from mainstream Islam would simply not appeal to so many Muslims. Hassan was looking for a way out in the texts and listed the "loopholes" he did find: either the United States must not fight anyone who was a Muslim or it must let him out of the military.

What Hassan neglected was an explanation that lay outside what his strict reading of the Muslim texts would allow him to say: the United States must fight, in general, because the Islamists have been the aggressors. And the United States is actually fighting as allies with one group of (more moderate) Muslims against another (of radical Islamists). Yet the sacred texts of Islam always deal with the Muslim community as a united whole (the umma) without violent internal conflicts, an interpretation that just doesn't correspond with reality, nor hasn't for many centuries.

Indeed and ironically, this view enables Islamists to themselves kill thousands of Muslims all over the world while protesting that everyone who doesn't support them is a heretic who is breaking this mythical unity. And one of the main ways they allegedly betray the umma is to side with the infidels, precisely the personal problem that Hassan was facing!

The fact that Hassan’s lecture has not been the centerpiece of the whole post-massacre debate is a true example of how impoverished are the “experts,” journalists, and politicians at dealing with these issues. Of course, without exploring the Islamic factor, they're wasting everyone's time. They're also going to be wasting quite a few lives.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

We knew Obama was a fraud...so why not the stimulus?





Stimulus Fraud


The Economy: We knew something was funny when the White House claimed that 640,000 to 1 million jobs had been created from this year's stimulus. What we didn't know was that it would turn into a massive fraud.

Not only have 640,000 new jobs not been created from the stimulus — an absurd claim, given the economy's loss of nearly 4 million payroll positions this year — but it now seems that even the jobs themselves are fictional.

Thanks to the digging of a number of data sleuths, it turns out that many of the jobs reported by states come from made-up congressional districts.

This would be funny if it weren't a criminal waste of public funds. And yet, G. Edward DeSeve, who runs the government's economic recovery program, says the errors are "relatively few" and "don't change the fundamental conclusions one can draw from the data."

Excuse us? The "relatively few" errors are in fact thousands in number. But that's the pernicious place we find ourselves today — a public official defending shoddy accounting that looks an awful lot like fraud to the tune of billions of dollars.

One example: the 15th Congressional District of Arizona, where 30 jobs were salvaged with $761,420 in spending, according to Recovery.gov, the official government Web site. As ABC News reports: "There is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona; the state has only eight districts."

States as diverse as Kansas, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio, Minnesota and West Virginia also reported phony jobs.

Stimulus jobs were also reported in 35 congressional districts in Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories. The problem: None of those jurisdictions even has congressional districts.

All told, according to the useful Web site Watchdog.org, some $6.4 billion was spent to "create or save" 30,000 jobs in phantom districts. That comes out to about $225,000 per nonexistent job. And that's only what's been found so far.

The Washington Examiner's bogus-job count is even higher — at 75,343, a figure likely to climb as more are discovered.

Some cases were egregious. California's state university system took in $268.5 million in stimulus funds, claiming it "saved" 26,000 jobs. It has since admitted that few, if any, jobs were really at risk.

The government's response to all this? "Human beings make mistakes," shrugged Recovery Board spokesman Ed Pound on Monday. But by Tuesday, as the furor grew, the board's DeSeve was vowing to go through reports with a "fine-tooth comb."

But this should have been done all along. The official Web site vows that stimulus spending will "be subject to unprecedented transparency and accountability," and that inspectors general of 28 federal agencies will "continually review" their spending.

To our knowledge, however, none of the errors was found by an inspector general. All were discovered by private individuals curious about what their tax dollars were being spent on.

Imagine for a moment a CEO standing before the public and claiming similar bookkeeping errors. He'd be arrested for fraud, frog-marched from his office, tried, convicted and left to rot in jail.

We said from the start that the stimulus and TARP programs would be an invitation to fraud, waste and abuse. Sadly, this has proved true. Yet no one is likely to suffer so much as a reprimand.

As the White House talks about another stimulus, Americans need to know that the promises of transparency and openness in the first program haven't been kept. And that billions of their tax dollars are being wasted.


In Case You Haven't Noticed... Don't ya think we had enough of this 'PC' crap?

Are you ready to tell it like it is? Many of us have to be so careful now-a-days such that every word may be scrutinized...and for what! Well maybe you should read the article below before I get off on an unintended faux pas that may irritate the already irritated. This Careful Generation was written about two years ago; a good read then and a great read now. ~ Norman E. Hooben
____________________________
Source: Roger Gardner's Radarsite

This Careful Generation

A note from Radarsite. Considering the fact that our new President has just ordered that all information regarding the Fort Hood jihadist massacre must now be filtered through his own National Security Council (not to be confused with the professional National Security Agency), and considering the fact that our new President does not believe that we are in a War on Terror, and that we should not mention the word "jihadis" or "terrorists" together with the word Muslim, it seemed to me that resurrecting this 2-year old Radarsite article might just be appropriate. rg
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This, my friends, in case you haven’t noticed, is a very careful generation. In fact, I've lived in this wonderful country of ours for a little over seven decades now, and this is without a doubt the most “careful” generation that I have ever had the misfortune to live amongst. Somehow we have managed to become the most careful people in the world, maybe the most careful people in history. We live in constant fear that we might inadvertently say something truthful that might offend someone, somewhere. We’ve learned to call this pervasive state of denial Political Correctness. But is it really Political Correctness, or is it something else?

I ask myself, is this present pacifistic crop of Chamberlainesque appeasers really being “careful” of other people‘s feelings, or merely being cowardly? Are all of our so-called PCisms truly demonstrations of our consideration for others, or are they rather an expression of our fear of others? Are we avoiding confrontation with those who threaten our lives and our culture out of kindness and tolerance, or are we just desperately trying to avoid that confrontation? Are we perhaps concerned that we might just antagonize our antagonists even more by naming them? Are we hoping to avoid the inevitable nastiness of these confrontations by hiding behind this intricately-wrought screen of euphemisms called Political Correctness?

When you think about it, isn’t this really just a better organized and more widely accepted form of that same old weasely logic that in the 1950s induced us to call a Jew “someone of the Jewish persuasion”? As though they had somehow been persuaded to become a Jew. Isn’t this just the latest manifestation of that same old hypocritical crap? Did we also talk about “someone of the Christian persuasion” in the 1950s? I don’t think so.

In short, this is nothing all that new, it’s that old familiar circuitous obfuscation that wouldn’t allow us to call a Jew a Jew. Why? Would a Jew be offended to be called a Jew? Hardly. Every Jew I’ve ever known was proud to be a Jew. Could it be perhaps that we found that word so offensive that we could hardly bring ourselves to say it? Were these semantic acrobatics really evidence of our consideration for others or evidence of that intransigent American brand of anti-Semitism? Was this an example of some early form of Political Correctness in action? Or are we really talking about something else here. Something a little bit easier to understand, but something too awful to actually put it into words. Something called the truth.

Well, I’m going to get a lot of people pissed off right now -- or at least I‘m going to give it a good try. You see, I’m getting sick and tired of being careful. I don’t know how the hell I ever let them talk me into all this bullsh*t in the first place.

This all started this past Christmas when I read an incredible little article about that Santa school Down Under that instructed their student Santas to no longer say “ho-ho-ho”, because it had a double meaning in the American Black Community, and that some people might find it offensive.

What???

My God, what have we become? We stand by meekly and watch as our rich English language becomes increasingly denigrated and devalued, we allow the primitive animalistic gruntings of our Black Inner City Gangsta Rap, pants-falling-off-the-butt “culture” to infiltrate and diminish almost every aspect of our lives: our music, our movies, our television, our sports, the way our kids act and dress -- and now we’re telling our Santa Clauses not to say “ho-ho-ho” because it too closely resembles that Gangsta Rap word for “whore”?

Wait a minute. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Who are the folks here who should be offended?

After that, I read another article that purported to be an investigation into the causes of the enormous increase in the murder rate in one of our largest East Coast cities -- actually, two articles written explicitly to address this single major problem. However, throughout the entire two articles, not one mention was made of what had actually happened to this city. Not one single reference to the fact that this wildly escalating crime rate just happened to correspond to the most catastrophic societal upheaval in that city’s four-hundred year history. Not only did the articles not even mention these irrefutable truths, but somehow the author ingeniously avoided mentioning that any racial changes had taken place there at all. If someone didn’t know the actual facts of the city in question they would be left to surmise that the city had just suddenly started becoming more criminal for no apparent reason. This, my friends, is what currently passes for Political Correctness. But is it?

Here’s what happened: the Inner City turned Black and the crime rate soared.

Sorry, but that’s what happened.
And I really am sorry; because it was my city of origin that was the subject of these counterfeit articles. I was born and brought up there. And this Black murder rate in this Black Inner City is a Black problem, not a White problem. These Inner City Black Gangstas are not selling crack because their great-great-grandmothers were slaves. And that disingenuous author who so adroitly skirted the most obvious by never once mentioning race, by referring to “these people and their drug problems” would have had that same delicate problem back in the 1950s calling a Jew a Jew. The murder of young Black males by other young Black males in the Black Inner Cities is a Black problem and can only be solved by Blacks. Blacks who are willing to be honest with themselves. Blacks who are getting sick and tired of that criminal-worshipping, female-degrading, drive-by shooting, Gangsta Rap drug world of self-destruction. Blacks who are willing to listen to those honest and tough love messages of respected Black celebrities like Bill Cosby, and even from those unapologetic liberals, like Juan Williams. Blacks who are willing to accept responsibility for their own lives and want to quit blaming everything on the Whites, who finally have the courage to disassociate themselves from those so-called Black Leaders, like Al Sharpie Sharpton and that extortionist Jesse Jackson, who are nothing more than enablers, living off the suffering of others. Offering their followers that same old false comfort of self-pity and victimization by perpetuating the myth of White subjugation.

By pretending that this is still a White problem, that only White people are smart enough to fix it, those delusional liberals are only making matters worse. It’s trying to cure the alcoholic’s problem by telling him he has good reason to drink. And it just ain’t gonna work.

So, what are we really talking about here? Blacks? Jews? Racism? Anti-Semitism? No, we’re still talking about Political Correctness -- or perhaps, more precisely, that same old cowardly dis ingenuousness in it’s latest disguise? A problem we’ve been wrestling with throughout that whole tumultuous course of human history. It’s called moral integrity. Some people simply call it honesty.

Now, before all you liberals out there rush to get your ammunition and start bombarding me with those familiar epithets of Racist and Bigot, just answer this one simple question. If we are afraid to even identify a problem, how the hell can we expect to fix it? If no one can even address these issues for fear of being labeled a racist or bigot, then tell me how we are going to discuss the issues? With obsequious code words like “these people and their drug problems“? For God’s sake, what people are we talking about? The Swedes? The Chinese?

If the Chinese people were the major contributing factor to the rise of the crime rates in most of our major cities, then we should most certainly be able to acknowledge this fact and try to do something about it. But it isn’t the Chinese people who are causing these terrible Inner City problems, is it? And it isn’t always the Blacks. Sometimes it’s the Mexicans, and sometimes it’s somebody else. But if we ever hope to do anything about these enormous and growing problems, we had better learn how to talk about them honestly. And have the courage to say who it is we are really talking about.

We have, it seems, traded our language of truth for some weak-kneed second-rate vocabulary of denial; and, most unfortunate of all, some of us are actually pleased with this ignoble transaction. They call it progressive; I call it regressive. They call it Political Correctness; I call it cowardice.
During this past Christmas season [2007], when television commercials were enticing us into thinking about buying a brand new Lincoln for our lover, while adroitly managing to circumvent that contentious word “Christmas”, substituting it with that inept and meaningless word “holiday”, were these car manufacturers sincerely interested in promoting cultural inclusiveness, or just afraid of the ACLU? Was this just one more example of this new-fangled ideology called Political Correctness? Or is it just that same old-fashioned moral cowardice hiding its ugly head?

We are losing our national nerve. We live in constant fear. We are afraid of being sued, afraid of being attacked, afraid of being disliked, and we are afraid of being called names. Fear has infiltrated every area of our lives and corrupted our ability to be effective as a people, as a nation. We are even afraid to admit that we are afraid. We are even becoming afraid to be seen as patriotic Americans.

The school board who lifts the Lord’s Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance from that unfortunate school’s curriculum isn’t doing this out of some high-minded noble concept of inclusiveness -- they’re afraid of being sued by some loathsome Dr. Newdow (described by one enthusiastic atheist as “…one of the greatest heroes in the war against religious demagogues”).

To attempt to hide this blatant cowardice behind some shining shield of Political Correctness is a lie which we can no longer ignore, and which we can no longer afford to tolerate.

When we choose to refer to our brave Israeli ally’s ongoing attempts to protect their tiny nation from that continuous generational onslaught from their vicious and hate-filled neighbors and their brutal suicide-bombers as an “Arab/Israeli conflict”, rather than calling it what it is -- "The Arab War Against Israel” -- are we not demonstrating to the world our unconscionable lack of moral fiber? Did we refer to that WWII horror show in the Pacific as some morally-neuter “Japanese/American Conflict”? Hell no.

If I get stopped by a cop for driving without a license, will he let me go if I explain that what I’m doing isn’t really illegal, that I’m really just an undocumented driver? We have become so accustomed to navigating through the perils of this world using these subtle subterfuges and lies we no longer even notice them.

On September 11, 2001 we were attacked by nineteen Muslim terrorists. They left final testaments clearly explaining their motivations for committing this horrendous crime against humanity. They wanted to kill the Infidels. And they killed 2,987 innocent people that day -- and we have still not managed to conjure up the political will to profile Muslim men at our airports.
Does anyone still believe that this is truly an expression of Political Correctness, our good-hearted and sincere efforts to avoid offending anyone of a different faith or race? Or is this just one more instance of a government and an industry caving in to fear. The fear of being sued by CAIR or their faithful ally, the ACLU.

While Islamic leaders worldwide exhort their eager followers to kill the Infidel, and describe this monumental struggle with unabashed clarity as a War of Islam against the West, of Muslims against Infidels, our own president [GWB] very carefully describes this same militant religion as a "religion of Peace". We console ourselves with the comforting illusion that what we are really up against in this so-called War on Terror is just a small fanatical minority who have hijacked a "peaceful religion". We ignore all information to the contrary, no matter what its source, no matter how valid. Islam has declared War on the West but, none the less, we must be very careful not to offend any Muslims. They might think we're racists. CAIR might sue us. Jimmy Carter might get upset.

Somehow, my friends, before it really is too late, we have to come out from behind our warm and fuzzy euphemisms and have the courage to confront this world that‘s really there, not the one we wished was there. We can no longer blame our dishonorable inaction on Political Correctness. For, when all is said and done, our so-called PC culture is nothing but another form of cowardice. And this cowardice is not only never going to allow us to solve any of our problems, it’s going to get us killed.

Originally published by Wake Up America - December 15, 2007
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2007/12/this-careful-generation.html