Homophobic, meet Islamophobic

Mark Steyn-

 

There'll be a lot more of this in the future:

French Gay Soccer Team Snubbed By Muslim Team

The gay team has accused the Muslims of homophobia. But isn't accusing Muslims of homophobia a bit Islamophobic?

 

Protesting statism

It’s a HUGE crowd –wow! Sick and tired of socialism!

 

9/12 Tea party rally in Washington D.C

Image via Instapundit.

Some signs seem to be targeted at Gautam Adhikari and like minded ‘racism’ whiners-

 

Gautam won’t like this one, no way -

Aesop in our time

This is too good to pass up –Aesop’s Ant and the Grasshopper updated for our times:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Acorn stages a demonstration in front of the ant ’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Rev. Jeremiah Wright then has the group curse God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ants food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

Which country is this exactly?

Melanie Phillips is right - the US Consulate in Jerusalem website has no mention of Israel on it's main page!


Here is a screenshot -



It's all Palestine all the time.
Just where the heck do think they are located?

As Melanie says-

As far as the US Consulate is concerned, Israel’s capital city is Arab. It's as if Israel and its Jewish identity have been airbrushed from history altogether.

When animals kill then is it murder? BBC seems to think so- according to it dogs and foxes are "suspects" in the "murder" of penguins.

I say arrest all tigers and lions -they might even survive better in jails than under the protection of government-NGO axis.That is unless they get capital punishment.

"Obama is a symbol of everything wrong in higher education today"

Clarice Feldman-

Obama is a symbol of everything wrong in higher education today:He has graduated Columbia and Harvard Law School with a head full of a fluff, no substance. He throws around words that are in vogue among the academicians, but it is clear that he (and probably they) have no notion of what they mean.

It's hard to disagree.That university faculties have gone ga-ga for Obama is no secret.They love him as much as they hated Reagan.It is like a clear symptom of a deep-rooted disease.

Roger Kimball has a book on it- Tenured Radicals. Highly recommended by the LNC.

(emphasis mine)

Indian students in Australia victims as well as participants in scams.
(via Andrew Bolt)

Do we need to know of Shoaib Akhtar's internal affairs?

From Cricinfo-

The PCB has withdrawn Shoaib Akhtar from the 15-man squad for next month's World Twenty20, saying - in an unusually revealing statement - that he had been diagnosed with genital viral warts. Rao Iftikhar Anjum's name has been sent to the ICC's technical committee by the PCB as a replacement.

---------------------------------

The PCB's unusually graphic press release said that a three-member medical panel appointed by the PCB had found that Shoaib was suffering from "genital viral warts and electrofulgration [a surgical procedure] was done on May 12, 2009."

The panel added that "his wound though healing needs further care and treatment for another minimum ten days for the purpose of healing and to achieve skin cover. The Medical Board further recommended his re-assessment after 10 days.

Do we need to know all this? Whatever happened to discretion and good sense?

(emphasis mine)

(via Andrew Bolt)

The fate of freedom when China and India shall dominate the world- part 2

Note: Part 1- Alternate history-If the Soviet Russia had triumphed of this essay is here.

Part 2-Alternate history vs. Reality

All right, enough said! Trouble with alternate history is that one can get carried away and go on and on. One can also dispute our imagined version of events -this or that might or might not have happened. However what concerns us is the broad trend of history not that any particular event might have occurred in this way or that. The woods and not the trees, as they say.

This alternate version may now seem highly improbable and may appear that it could never have happened. But during the cold war there have been times when the West was demoralized, morally weak and militarily tired and the Soviet power appeared unvanquishable. Such a mood was encapsulated in films like 'Red Dawn'(1984)and in the darkly pessimistic tone of that fine book by the French philosopher Jean François Revel -How Democracies Perish (also 1984).

It is the contention of this essay that had the USSR won the cold war in the manner that the USA did (or in any manner at all), the world would have become much less democratic over time, with various curtailments of freedoms even in the traditionally democratic regimes. There would have come about no worldwide liberalization of the economy, no globalization except the immense strengthening of global communist movements. For the purpose of equivalence with what actually happened we had assumed that the economies of the West had collapsed. However given the record of the command and control system of economics, there would have followed no amelioration in the global economy after the global triumph of communism -on the contrary, as the evidence of almost whole of the 20th century shows, the economic situation would have become dire.

Compare this to the actual events that followed the triumph of America in the cold war- for the first time in a long, long time (and for the first time ever in many cases) the peoples and nations of Eastern Europe gained true freedom from Russian dominance. Most of them quickly turned to democracy, capitalism and a general atmosphere of freedom. Many central Asian nations also broke away from the bear's stifling grip but with less success in turning to democracy. But even these in general were better off than under the Soviet yoke- there now existed the possibility that they might reform some day under pressure from the West, a chance that was non-existent under the Soviet rule. Nations world over in scores turned to more liberal economies and opened up in various degrees. Globalization and planet wide swing towards free markets led to lifting up the standard of living on a vast scale. In India and China this led to the phenomenal lifting out of poverty of hundreds of millions. And despite its unchallenged and extremely vast military power, and despite what we had heard for forever from the media-intellectual-academic axis, the allegedly 'hegemonic' America refused to take over the world. In fact it began to dismantle a large part of its conventional and nuclear forces. Free markets and democracy now seemed to be so obviously the best and the only benevolent system of governance that Francis Fukuyama declared, well, the end of history.

Coming up- Part 3: The fundamental struggle is between freedom and slavery

The fate of freedom when China and India shall dominate the world- part 1

It is believed that India and China will bestraddle the world in the 21st century. That may or may not be true. Here in this long post(that of necessity must be divided in parts) I hold out my views on the issue most fundamental to human well being and civilization -freedom.Or more specifically, what shall happen to human freedom when India and China are the two super-dominating hyperpowers. I believe we need to examine this closely as China has been and is a totalitarian power and India has never shown much enthusiasm for promoting freedom in the world (quite the contrary, in fact, post-independence India has aligned with most despicable regimes and ideologies)

(Note- this was written as an article for Pragati. However it seems it wasn't much to their liking.)

(Note 2 -by "Freedom" I mean the traditional and classical meaning of the word -freedom of an individual from coercion exercised by the state, the collective,the society, from neighbours; freedom to pursue one's interests and happiness without interference)

So here goes-

What will happen to freedom when China and India dominate the world?

Part 1-Alternate history-If the Soviet Russia had triumphed

Let us conduct a thought experiment (a favorite device of Einstein) –
let us imagine that the cold war had been won by the Soviet Union under the formidable command of an ideologically passionate leader (a Soviet Reagan).After long years of recession, depression and busts the economies of the Western bloc collapsed utterly -and once and for all the capitalistic and democratic system of government was thoroughly discredited. The triumph of communism was complete. To the fragile democracies of Western Europe, now hurling out of Washington's orbit pushed along by strong internal leftist parties and a strong anti-American sentiment, the inevitability of the Soviet system became obvious. This was the end of history, announced Francis Fukuyama. The history had made its decision- the future for all times now belonged to the totalitarian system of government with the state being the arbiter of almost all in a person's life. The individual belonged to the collective, to the state that embodied the common good. On his own a person was but a speck of dust- his only worth consisted of what he could do for the collective i.e. what the state commanded.

Of course there were reactionaries who refused to see reason, who still clung to the disgraced notions of individual freedom and liberty. In Western Europe the Soviet tanks had to roll into some capitals, strictly on the 'invitation' and 'call for help' from the concerned governments, now mostly made up of left-communist coalitions, to put down revolts by these modern day 'kulaks'. There were, of course, the usual massacres, deportations and large scale imprisonments that follow wherever the communists take over. The existing gulags filled up quickly and new ones had to be constructed post-haste. Needless to say -like the old ones, the new prisons were built by slave labor.

World wide the collapse of capitalism had profound consequences. There were countries who after decades of socialism and communism were beginning to flirt with free markets-India and China, for example. That now stopped forthwith. The semi-capitalistic economies of East Asia were quickly demoralized and their markets sank, just like everywhere else. The Latin America crumbled completely and threatened to revert either to the Peronist style of strongman lead nationalism or to the more totalitarian Allende/Sandinista variety.

The severe economic situation in Japan lead to a strong rise in the forces of ancient militarism. Its American drafted constitution was abrogated.

China wasted no time in occupying Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

As for Africa, its civil wars now raged even more violently with Soviet and Cuban supported and funded forces now fighting with a new vigor. The Dark Continent became darker. The billions it had received for decades in food, medicine and aid from the West disappeared with no hope of similarly vast humanitarian help from the Soviets.

Emboldened by the United States now not being able to help Israel in any way, a large collective Arab force attacked Israel from three sides.The Israelis were unable to use or credibly threaten the use of their nuclear weapons, backed as the Arabs were by the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal. After a few weeks of extremely brutal fighting, the Jews were butchered in droves and the survivors were driven, literally, into the sea- fulfilling a long held Arab dream.

The withdrawal of US navy, after the collapse of it's armed forces, from all over the world lead to regional struggles for supremacy and a huge rise in piracy. The Soviet navy had no interest, unlike the American one, in keeping shipping lanes open for the benefit of everyone. Now in full or near-full control of waters in most parts worldwide, it controlled the flow of oil and vital goods to its friends and enemies alike. With such power of life and death, the Soviet friendship became a bear hug nobody could get out of. As for the old enemies of the 'people’, the United States being the greatest, they were under extreme stress with Soviets embargoing their shores, the Arabs refusing to supply oil and most of the rest of the world now even more viciously anti-American. Surely, the great Satan would come in line soon enough and adopt a radical program of reforms -that program, of course, consisting of dismantling completely it's old structure of private enterprise and freedom of speech.

Coming soon -Part 2: Alternate history vs. Reality

Update- Part 2 is here.

"Nonsense is passed off as wisdom"

"We are in a weird age.", writes Victor Davis Hanson.

We sure do-

Nonsense is passed off as wisdom. Those who caused the financial meltdown walked away with millions in bonuses while taxpayers covered the debts they ran up. The big-spending government claims it may cut our annual $1.7 trillion deficit in half by 2012 - but only after piling up trillions more in national debt.

In our Orwellian world, borrowing to spend what we don't have has been renamed "stimulus." Those who pay no federal income taxes - almost half of Americans - can somehow be promised an income tax "cut." In the new borrowing of trillions of dollars here and trillions there, billions of dollars now sounds like pocket change.

When Americans turn to their political parties for answers, they are even more confused. Populist Democrats such as Sen. Chris Dodd and President Barack Obama took more AIG campaign cash than did pro-business Republicans.

------------------------------------

Abroad, we thought piracy ended with the age of sail - only to learn that the world's 21st century navies either will not or cannot sink a few brigands in speedboats. Meanwhile, a U.N. conference against racism showcased Iranian president -- and Holocaust-denier -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spouting anti-Semitic hatred.

--------------------------------------

When our president references the 19th and 20th centuries, he apologizes for American sins but stays silent about the United States defeating Nazis, fascists, Japanese militarists and Soviet communists. The world hears contrition about Americans dropping the bomb to end World War II but never remorse from those responsible for Darfur, Grozny or Tibet.

There have been a few crazy years like 2009 in American history - 1860, 1929, 1941 and 1968. And given what followed all of them, it might be wise to prepare for even crazier times for us ahead.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Why isn't Obama a racist?

Apropos that 'racist' cartoon faux-controversy, there are deep issues of character involved that have been completely swept under the carpet by our hyper-partisan media.
Imagine a white politician who belonged to an organisation with the following tenets-

1. Commitment to the White Community
2. Commitment to the White Family
3. Adherence to the White Work Ethic
4. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the White Community.
5. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting White Institutions
6. Pledge allegiance to all White leadership who espouse and embrace the White Value System
7. Personal commitment to embracement of the White Value System.

That white man would be branded a racist and hounded out of political life.

Would you support a President who went to a church like that? Just change the word from white to black and you have the tenets of Obama's former church. If President Bush was a member of a church like this, he would be called a racist. Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would have been marching outside. This kind of church is a racist church... A church can't have a value system based on race. The churches value system has to be based on biblical mandate. It does not matter if itʼs a white church or a black church it's still wrong. Anyone from either race that attends a church like this would never get my vote.

Ask yourself honestly -would you consider that hypothetical white person a racist?
If so then why isn't Obama a racist?
Or, in the age of O, is that an illegitimate question?
No dissent allowed?

Back to that cartoon - The New York Post has issued a sort of apology.While it is sad to see that the newspaper did not show more resolution in face of this racist onslaught(different treatment of white and black presidents), this part stands out-

However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

To them, no apology is due.

Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.

Now awaiting an apology and an explanation from Obama for being part of a racist church for 20 years.Waiting for that outrage from media poodles.Waiting....

The world changed while I was away

I apologize for a much longer than expected break.The real world intrudes on the virtual and overwhelms it.I hate you reality!

And my, how the world changed while I was not minding this blog:

A decent man leaves-


and a scoundrel takes over-

Secrets in the Obama bush

It is amazing all what the press of the free world will avoid to report to protect and to help elect it's beloved candidate.

Is Obama calling Sarah Palin a pig?

Is Obama calling Sarah Palin a pig? Many people think so, including those at the Obama speech. Some don't. And some think that it is McCain who is being insulted as a pig!

McCain campaign protests.

Here is Dick Cheney with the same quote-

My manhood is bigger than yours.

What has Putin been running on -high octane testosterone?

No sooner is Putin back in the Kremlin than he sends Russian bombers over European air space, and British pilots scramble to see them off. Better that, I suppose, than murdering exiles like Alexander Litvinenko in London, and then covering up for the suspect wanted by Scotland Yard – that whole case has gone into abeyance. And the next step was to test out the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever manufactured, one that wipes out all life in an area of several square miles. That should impress the unfortunate Chechens, Georgians, Moldavians, Estonians, Ukrainians, and others for whom Putin is duly flexing those biceps and pectorals. At the same time, they have just launched a super-submarine, nuclear-powered and capable of staying submerged for twenty days. More impressive still, he’s just sold the latest anti-aircraft defence system to Iran.

About that Russian bomb-

RUSSIA has tested the world's most powerful "vacuum bomb", which unleashes a destructive shockwave with the power of a nuclear blast, the military said, dubbing it the "father of all bombs".

The bomb is the latest in a series of new Russian weapons as president Vladimir Putin tries to reassert Moscow's role on the international stage.

"Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, Russia's deputy armed forces chief of staff, told Russia's state ORT First Channel television.

--------------------------------------

The report said the new bomb was much stronger than the US-built Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb - MOAB, also known as "mother of all bombs". "So, Russian designers called the new weapon 'father of all bombs'."

But there is a bigger d*** in town-

The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

(via Ed Morissey. See below)


Ed Morissey points out-

I think this is a slap at Russian manhood, actually. It's the military equivalent of accusing someone of premature ejaculation. You explode on the surface, Ivan? Real superpowers go deep before explosion. Georgia laughs at you, comrade. Maybe Vladimir Putin should pay more attention to e-mail spam.

But then again, the Russian excitement over developing a fuel-air bomb seemed a little overblown, anyway. They only have one bomber that could actually deploy it, and unless one wants to flatten entire villages, it has few real applications. That kind of strategy ended in Vietnam, and even the Soviets didn't use those kinds of tactics in Afghanistan. The "daisy cutter" that the US uses has more flexibility and better tactical application. Unless the point is to penetrate into bunkers below the surface or to do some instant ethnic cleansing, it's literally overkill.

The Russians have relearned a lesson they forgot since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its better to wait on bragging until one is sure that the opponent has not already beaten one to the finish line. It saves on humiliation later.

(emphasis mine)

Khatami touches women, sky falls down upon him.

Is this a fake?



or is he?


Is it possible, just possible that Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami might have touched -what horror!- a woman?!!!! And that too more than one! And that too one after the another -a serial woman-toucher!


From the Iran Press Service-
A Handshake that Might Become A Religious Revolution Or A Political Suicide

A videotape, taken with a digital camera by Mr. Marco Orioles, a university sociology lecturer, shows the former Iranian president exchanging handshakes with Gianola and Cristina Nonnino, well-known producers of grappa, the famous Italian brandy, in the region around Udine.

from the Guardian-

Iran's reformist former president, Mohammad Khatami, has suffered a blow to his political standing by being pictured apparently shaking hands with women in breach of Islamic convention.

Mr Khatami, a mid-ranking cleric, dismissed the photo as a fake and insisted he had not shaken hands with any of the women who had approached him after he made a speech.
--------------------------

Flyers condemning Mr Khatami have been circulated in the shrine city of Mashhad, while posters of him were defaced in Kashan before he spoke there.

Although Islam generally forbids handshakes between men and women who are not close family relatives, some Shia clerics say it is permitted in certain cases to avoid embarrassment. In Iran, handshakes between men and women have become more common in recent years despite the country's Islamic laws.

Faked? Judge for yourself-


(video of the controversial handshakes)

If it is not a fake then it must be a CIA operation. The imperialist Americans must have sent those devilish male-eating female agents to....to.. shake hands!

From the same Iran Press Service article-

The Iranian hardline daily “Kayhan”, run by Mr. Hoseyn Shari’atmadari, a high-ranking intelligence officer specializing in the interrogation of political and intellectual dissidents who is a senior advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, suggested Khatami had allowed himself to fall prey of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trap.

The article continues-

“If Mr. Khatami is assured that the video had been manipulated, he must with no hesitation take the case to the courts. This would be a good occasion case for him to make known those who are plotting to tarnish the good name and image of the former president and aims at stopping the reform process in Iran and put an end to the plot. If not, he must present his apology to all those who accuses him of having trespassed a well-known rule of Islam”, Ahmad Ra’fat, an Iranian journalist based in Rome, told Iran Press Service.

“Many of those who had voted for Mr. Khatami and supported the reforms never could imagine that simple and ordinary acts like shaking some hands in the streets of a town like Udine would undermine the future of reforms in Iran. Worse, this writer and many others could never imagine that a president who talks about the rule of law, civil society and dialogue among civilizations would fall so down to the point of not having the courage of accepting responsibility of his own acts and deeds and unashamedly revert to lying”, Mr. Ra’fat, who also covers for AKI, wrote in the Persian internet magazine “Rahbord”

Andy McCarthy sums it up-

It's the small things that tell us the most.

Iran's great "moderate" "reformer," Mohammed Khatami, shook hands with a woman in Italy while chatting genially with a group of women who were not covered from head to toe, or even wearing head-scarves.

This is a scandal in Iran.

So what is the Moderate Reformer's reaction? Did he tell his critics to stop being ridiculous?

Nope. He claims, preposterously, that the pictures and film footage of the incident are fakes ... while concurrently announcing he is withdrawing his from a 2009 presidential bid.

I'd like to be encouraged that there is a swelling democracy movement in Iran ready to revolt against the regime any time now. But what does it say about the state of things in mullah-land that the hero of what passes for liberal reform there feels he has to deny shaking hands with a woman?

And our comrades have no problem if these people get nuclear weapons.

(emphasis mine)

'May you live in interesting times' -We do!

'May you live in interesting times' is said to be a Chinese curse.
We do, in fact, live in interesting times. Consider the crazy things going all around-

Ivy League professor, Scott Armstrong, challenges Al Gore to a 10,000$ bet that he(Al Gore) is wrong about global warming-

Armstrong has challenged the former vice president to a 10-year bet, in which $10,000 from the two would be set aside in escrow as Gore pits his forecast of how much global temperature will increase during that time against a so-called "naive model," in which temperature would be expected to stay the same.
(via-Newsbusters)

Al Gore had earlier failed pick up a TV debate challenge gauntlet thrown by Lord Monckton.


U.N. Secretary General blames Darfur killings on climate change-

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that the slaughter in Darfur was triggered by global climate change and that more such conflicts may be on the horizon.

(via-Newsbusters)

update- Ed Driscoll points out U.N.'s fleet of gas guzzlers even as Ban Ki Moon is concerned about climate change. Is the UN Secretary General going to fight global warming by the Amitabh Bachchan method? It sure seems so.


Pakistani politicians want to knight Osama Bin Laden-

"Muslims should confer the ‘sir’ title and all other awards on bin Laden and Mullah Omar in reply to Britain’s shameful decision to knight Rushdie,” Sami ul Haq, leader of the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, said in a statement.

(via-Tim Blair)


China becomes world's larger emitter of CO2 and media blames Bush-

........not one of the television news outlets bothered reporting the Chinese CO2 data at all. It appears that television news divisions only feel CO2 is a problem if it’s emitted by American corporations or citizens.

(via-Newsbusters)


BBC is not sure who carried out the 9/11 attacks or why-

No-one can say exactly why the attacks were carried out.
.................................
The US thinks a group called al-Qaeda is behind the attacks. Al-Qaeda leaders have in the past declared a holy war - called a Jihad - against the US.

(via- Biased BBC)


update- Even more lunacy-

Now Global Cooling could be on it's way!