EU Issues Shock Christophobia Report

The EU nomenklatura is at it again with a new report that claims a rise in "Islamophobia" in Europe. However the Brussels mob have yet to issue any report on rising "Christophobia" in Europe by Muslim immigrants, evidence for which is more than just a matter of feelings or perceptions.

The very solid grounds for rising Christophobia in Europe includes multiple suicide bombings in London last summer, increasing calls for Sharia law, the small matter of the Danish Mohammed cartoons and wordwide bloody riots that ensued, let alone numerous thwarted plots involving dozens of Islamic terrorists. The latter extended to countries which had become anti-US in their foreign policy, such as Spain, Germany and France. Even Sweden experienced riots.

Fear of Islamic violence caused the cancellation of many arts events in 2006, including a performance of Mozart in his homeland. A French Jew was tortured to death in Paris for no other reason than his religion.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Europe threatened to kill the Pope, behead homosexuals and declare Muslim "no-go" areas in various European cities. Honour killings, often involving cross-religious love relationships, increased.

The same EU politicians that issued the "Islamophobia" report are the ones who in 2004 supressed an EU report of rising anti-Semitic attacks because it named young Muslim Europeans as the chief perpetrators.

Obama and the M Word

Reading the thoughts of Joshua Marshall on Talking Points regarding some Republican bottom-feeders already going on about Barack Obama's middle name being "Hussein" leads to some thoughts on his ability to ever get elected President and what the Muslim world would think of this?

Obama's late Kenyan father was a nominal Muslim, hence his Kenyan name of Mbarak Hussein Obama. His mother is an American Christian. Obama himself is an observant and fervent Christian and brought up that way.

My understanding of sharia is that all children born between a Muslim father and non-Muslim mother are considered Muslims automatically, regardless of whatever religion the actually observe and to deny this makes them potential apostates - which can carry severe sanction, including death, in the eyes of very many traditional Muslims. This does not hold,however, if a Muslim woman marries a Jew or Christian. It only applies to the male sire.

This question is going to come up if Obama ever makes a run for President: what is the Muslim world going to make of his candidacy? Chances are he will be considered a Muslim candidate, which will look fine in say, Saudi Arabia but not look neccesarily the same in the USA. Vocal and radical claims that Obama is either a Muslim or worse, an apostate worthy of death, are bound to issue from the Muslim world.

The impact on Obama as a candidate is likely to be fatal. Not only would various bonehead elements in the GOP and electorate generally try to stir this issue, but so will the Muslim press. Al-Jazeera's take is to be imagined. The potentially bitter cat-calls of racism,Islamophobia , mullahs propounding on Koranic sharia and all the rest are bound to command media attention, and this in a candidate who is meant to bring novel freshness to the political scene.

I don't know if Obama's staff see this one coming, but it's certainly on my radar and will have a fascinating life of it's own sooner rather than later. People may see Obama as the new Kennedy, but JFK's "Catholic" problem was nothing compared to what might be on the horizon.

A Tale of Two Bad Guys

I confess I had not read the Washington Post's excellent editorial on the death of Pinochet when I got to wondering about the following political poser:

Pinochet's 1973 coup against a communist take-over of Chile had 3000 killed (on both sides) and over 10,000 detentions. Yet it turned Chile into South Americas most successful economy to this day. He resigned in 1988 after 15 years in power when he lost a referendum on his rule. Chile is now South America's healthiest democracy. Everywhere he went in later life, he was hounded by human rights activists and judges. Would Chile be in the same place today if the communist coup had succeeded?

Castro's 1959 coup against an odious Cuban right-wing dictator resulted in 17,000 killed and a gulag of over 150,000 prisoners. Cuba developed a complete basket-case economy, which remains to this day. Three million have fled. Everywhere, even internationally, he gets standing ovations and mass adulation from the media. Castro has never had a referendum on his rule and will only resign in his coffin. The country remains a totalitarian state. Would Cuba be in the same place today if Castro had resigned in 1974?

Xmas Shorts

On Barack Obama, "Black" hope: As pointed out in the National Review in April, 2000, "the United States is the only country in the world in which a white woman can give birth to a black baby but a black woman cannot give birth to a white baby."

Those Stupid Republicans: Incoming Democratic chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Silvestre Reyes doesn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites. Or what Hezbollah is.

Those Stupid Republicans, Part II: Trent Lott, the veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, said only last September that “It’s hard for Americans, all of us, including me, to understand what’s wrong with these people.”

“Why do they kill people of other religions because of religion?” wondered Lott, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after a meeting with Bush.

“Why do they hate the Israelis and despise their right to exist? Why do they hate each other? Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference?

“They all look the same to me,” Lott said.

Gay Taliban?

One of the things the MSM never brings to our notice is the well known fact that the Taliban are bi-sexual, if not exactly gay. Bi-sexuality has deep roots in Afghanistan for reasons that may have to do with with it's conquest by Alexander the Great and subsequent long period as a Greek colony. It is widely accepted that the Macedonians and other ancient Greeks, including the Spartans, were bi-sexual. In some cases, bi-sexual lovers fought and lived together and this practise was common, if not the military norm. Even as far back as Homer, we have Achilles and his lover. However all Greek warriors were also expected to maintain a heterosexual family with wife and kids, rather like today's Taliban do.

In the early part of the Afghan campaign, a British daily reported that a Northern Afghan warlord was particularly pleased the British Royal Marines were replacing American troops in his sector as they were, he said, "far more handsome to look at". In case this sounds like a fantasy, a new copy of the Taliban Rules and Code of Conduct has been obtained and translated by a Swiss specialist, exclusively published in the Swiss journal Die Weltwoche. Here is Rule 19,obviously aimed at something more than the US Army's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy:

"Mujahideen are not allowed to take young boys with no facial hair onto the battlefield or into their private quarters."

Somalia Cooks Up Trouble

The reports of 3 suicide car bombs detonated in the Somali town of Baidoa bring a new and ominous escalation in the growing threat of Islamism in Eastern Africa. Though fanatically brave and careless of their lives in battle, Somalis have never been known as methodical suicide jihadis. Newswire suggestions than non-Somalis were captured at the site indicate Al-Qaeda involvement. As is usual with Somalia, the situation is endlessly opaque and confusing, with the ICU going so far as to invite the USA to officially visit Mogadishu for talks!

Kenya is a non-aggressive nation, known for the excellent professionalism of it's armed peacekeepers in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere with a foreign policy that stresses regional dialogue and agreed solutions. Kenya has been instrumental in helping end the genocidal Southern Sudan conflict, among many. For years Kenya coaxed the quarrelsome and boisterous Somalis into forming their Provisional Government. All that work is undone by the advance of the shadowy, sinister Islamic Courts Union forces.

The Guardian and other leftist MSM outlets repeat the clueless canard that somehow, when the US gave cash to non- ICU warlords in a futile attempt to stem the ICU takeover of Mogadisu last summer, this "exacerbated" the Islamist advance. Such thinking blames America-as-usual, forgetting that the groundwork of trained forces, superior weapons, advanced tactics and foreign cadres of the ICU took months, if not years, of careful planning. The blame game also ignores the most likely cause of the Islamist assault: it coincided with and would plainly forestall, the final establishment of the internationally backed, African Union approved Provisional Somali Government.

While ideologues look to their bogeyman in the USA, others note that Islamism in Somalia could revive the murderous regional violence of the 1960's and 70's when Somali nationalists tried to take over territory in Kenya and Ethiopia. These have large ethnic Somali minorities. There are uncomfortable signs that "Greater Somalia" is longed for by some of the ICU top leadership. It's hard to see how the ICU will not eventually go for the racial expansion of Somalia, which would have disastrous repercussions in Kenya's north east, heavily populated by native and refugee Somalis. Throw in the ICU acting as proxies for Eritrea, Ethiopia's belligerent refusal, backed by a huge army, to countenance Islamist takeover, Iranian mischief, Al-Qaeda elements, mystery arms flights into Mogadishu, new suicide bombers and one has a cauldron of bitter ingredients that could scald an entire region.

Kenya meanwhile tries to play the peaceful middleman, desperate to avoid being caught in any situation that would demand it abandon perceived neutrality in face of a need to balance acute national interests. It's something Kenya diplomats are very skilled at, but for how much longer before somthing lights the fire and the Somali pot finally boils into open regional conflict?

Koffi's Klimate Kalamity

One of my biggest problems with the climate change doomsayers is that they try and couch global warming in terms of morality, when actually it's all about money. Environmentalism is becoming the new moral touchstone. Anyone who questions that the developing world is being made to suffer disproportionate devastation by greedy rich nations spewing carbon into the atmosphere is looked upon about as badly as someone who grabs a megaphone and starts hollering the "n" word in public.

Yet green is the new colour prejudice, whereby everyone who is not a shade of Ireland is an ignorant,selfish,dangerous and wicked person.

Morality is a subject that is endlessly relative: one man's probity is another's perversion. However money is something that, at least since the collapse of Marxism, we can all more or less agree upon. It's hard to argue that more government equals less economic growth, that free markets trump closed ones, that wealth must be generated before it can be shared and so on. Except when it comes to global climate change and environmentalism.

Ron Bailey asks the excellent question: Is global warming worse than what governments might try to do about it? If the UN joins in, as with the recently concluded Nairobi UN Conference on climate change, we should pause. When Kofi Annan delivers yet another one of his passive aggressive lectures along the lines of "the debate is over, we are all going to die and rich people are the cause of that", then global warming should give over to global worrying.

He has the UK government's Stern Review to back him, showing how little,supposedly, it will take of world GDP to stabilize greenhouse emissions over the next 100 years. Only 1% per annum to avoid the ecological apocalypse that awaits us all! It all sounds so reasonable. However most developing countries cannot gain GDP increase over their population growth.

Kenya has hardly managed more than 1.5% annual growth in GDP vs +3.5% population increase for two decades. Imagine Kenya sustains 4% GDP growth over the next 20 years. Adding 1% cost of "environmental management" actually will mean that Kenya will remain considerably poorer two decades hence than it is now, on paper at least.

Yet poor countries maintain, not unreasonably, than they cannot affcord any cut in their already precarious GDP growth, so the green management costs would have to be borne by the developed world. This will put the actual cost to developed countries at something more like 2-3% of their annual GDP. However, various developed countries like many in Europe and Japan for years, have managed less that 2% GDP increase per annum. What sounds reasonable suddenly becomes politically impossible.

These are the sort of sobering facts that should enlighten the climate change debate, not as at present a cross between a scientific Inquisition and a morality play.

The realm of climate change and the infamous Kyoto Protocol abound in similar perversities. For example, Kyoto gives rich countries carbon credits for preserving forests which soak up carbon dioxide, but no incentive whatsoever for developing countries to do the same. That helps account for the incineration of the tropical forests in Indonesia,Malasia and Borneo which are, you guessed it, adding to global warming.

Ron Bailey asks if the hundreds of trillions of dollars that the Stern Report "modest proposal" actually means in GDP terms was put to use on building wealth and technology, what would be the result? Arguably that poor countries could grow richer and therefore afford to handle the results of global warming (the way Holland manages rising sea levels with an economy worth only $500 billion a year).

Unlike what Kofi Annan says when using the UN Climate Change Conference as a moral wedge for more power us by the United Nations, the debate is far from over. It is in fact just beginning.

IFAW's Eurocentric Conservation

I welcome "Lynn" who comments on my "Wildlife Woes" blog:

'I was surprised to read your misrepresentation of IFAW as an organization of "extremist weirdness." You clearly are unaware of IFAW's unusually moderate approach to issues of wildlife and habitat protection. The truth is that IFAW is NOT against all consumptive use of animals, nor opposed to scientific research. It is IFAW's position on a number of highly complex issues, however, that consumption and science must be sustainable.'

The trouble is, for IFAW consumptive use is always "unsustainable", at least in Africa. For a useful overview of these issues, other scientists have opposing and valid points.

However, "Lynn" has not answered why IFAW continues to block, by any means fair or foul, all attempts to re-introduce limited sports hunting into Kenya? This would benefit marginal wildlife areas that cannot compete for tourist dollars, yet have, as local people see it, a problem with "useless" wild animals that the Kenya government protects by law, but does nothing to protect them from.

It is obscene for foreign conservationists to insist on hugely expensive, Eurocentric conservation programmes like "elephant contraception" and "helicopter herding" of animals, whose budgets run into millions of Kenya shillings, when peasants could build entire primary schools and clinics from the licensed proceeds of a few hundred animals shot on a "Campfires"

IFAW does promote many interesting conservation programmes world-wide,but it's insistance on non-consumption (perhaps not yet of chickens and beef), it's absolute stand against controlled sport-hunting (itself recognised by the WWF and IUCN/WCU as a conservation tool if properly used) certainly qualify it for "weirdness".

As a 3rd generation tourist professional who lives in Africa, I see the dwindling wildlife numbers outside and inside National Parks. I know the attitudes of local tribes to the wildlife they do not own, but the government and conservationists mysteriously do. And I also know that it is common knowledge in Kenya conservation and tourism circles that IFAW spends immense efforts and cash in ensuring any attempts to introduce even the most modest type community sports hunting programme. This would as effectively control animal numbers and profit local people.pilot scheme of sustainable sports hunting are blocked time and again. This is patronizing, racist and arrogant.

For just one example of a World Wildlife Fund successful community hunting programme of immense benefit to local people, "Lynn" should go here.

IFAW opposes sports-hunting and even government culling in Africa. The results are devastating in some areas, for example Kruger National Park in South Africa which has a superbly monitored culling programme = now elephant overpopulation is wrecking Kruger. Contraception for elephants, at perhaps $5000 cost per animal, while next door to the park Africans die of AIDS and poverty, is something IFAW would no doubt support. A humane bullet costs about $1 and better yet, sports-hunting would actually pay African villagers about $5000 per elephant.

Why does one of the largest and most respected conservation bodies , the World Conservation Union (formerly IUCN), deny IFAW membership? I think we know.

More Climate Emissions

Nairobi is hosting the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is meant to be looking into about a post-Kyoto Protocol world and what is to be done about it. Already the meeting has been an enormous success on two fronts. Foreign activists managed to rent members of Kenya's colourful tribes, in some cases probable pre-literate ones and parade them around with "Wanted, George Bush The Toxic Texan" placards. This will guarantee more fauxphoto opportunities for the MSM. Next, every news media in Kenya and internationally has been able to spin stories about Bush "renouncing Kyoto" to stoke anti-Americanism.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who shelved the Kyoto Protocol in 1999, before Bush was even elected, after the US senate voted 95-0 that they would never ratify it. True, Clinton, in a typically showbiz gesture, signed an intent of the Kyoto Protocol in Rio in 1998. Democratic senator Byrd, from Clinton's own party, co-sponsored the motion in the senate.

The good news is that China will surpass the USA as the world's largest emitter of CO2 sometime in 2009. Will anyone in the world media notice?

There is no doubt that climate change has been damaging Africa's human viability for the past 14,000 years of inter-glacial warming, and also no contention that such warming has quickened and will have a devastating effect on marginal Africa. The grand irony is that African countries are queuing up to sell all the CO2 laden oil and mineral products they can to China, who will soon be polluting them out of existence.

African environmentalists might be doing wise things like insisting that any energy and minerals sold to China as raw materials be subject to verifiable lower CO2 emissions. Instead most of them are too busy blaming America.

No wonder the US senate resolution that passed so resoundingly in 1999 repudiating the Kyoto Protocol said it:

"would not ratify the Protocol unless rapidly developing countries such as China were included in its requirements to reduce greenhouse gases. The Clinton Administration announced it would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification."

Meanwhile The Guardian, haven of America-bashing, announces that the oh-so-Green Europeans have totally failed to meet their Kyoto obligations. We can say one thing for George Bush, he sure gets around.

Wildlife Woes

More evidence that foreign wildlife extremists completely control Kenya's policies came today as Vice President Moody Awori sang loudly from the International Fund for Animal Welfare song-book. He was inaugurating a wildlife fence partly funded by IFAW in north Kenya.

IFAW, who have not been allowed to join major bodies like the IUCN/World Conservation Union due to their extremist weirdness, are completely against any consumptive use of animals, including scientific culling. The "F" in IFAW stands for "fund", and the huge financial clout of these urban eco-huggers means they can buy their way to influence in many countries. Kenya is the foremost of those and IFAW pays journalists and politicians to support it's ideology,some say.

Thanks to IFAW, elephants are now devastating South Africa's Kruger National Park again. IFAW forced a ban on the successful Kruger culling programme. Bowing to IFAW, Awori announced Kenya will not re-introduce sport hunting. Thus we remain the sole major wildlife destination in Africa without a regulated sport hunting industry.

The reasons Awori gave are pure IFAW-speak. Sport hunting is "elitist" ( yet exclusive luxury tourism in Kenya is not) he said. It cannot "benefit the local community" (dozens of studies in Africa say exactly the opposite). Sport hunting will make controlling "bushmeat trades" more difficult (those wealthy hunters come here to eat mouldy old bull buffalo meat). It would be "difficult to control" (investors earning a good return from sports hunting just can't wait to exterminate all their animal capital). And more.

The oddest idea expressed was when Awori said allowing animals to "regulate themselves" as in former times was the best way and would help the environment in a time of climate change.

Kenya's animals are being "regulated" to alarmingly low levels by unremitting poaching and bushmeat trade , undertaken by those who have zero personal or community incentive to preserve animals on private or communal land. A regulated hunting industry is one of the ways of combating such wildlife attrition. Though IFAW does some useful projects in conservation, their hidden agenda is to stop all consumptive use of animals, regardless of consequences to local people.

Respectable conservationsists know this, but IFAW is more renowned, some say, for buying their way to the top of the policy ladder in traditional African fashion.

Gibberish Generator

Ever tried to figure out what modern "scholars" actually mean in their post-modern, deconstructed theses and studies? Are you going for an senior NGO job or looking forward to possible employment in the social services? Perhaps you have a Modern Literature exam looming and are short of the correct trendy ideas?

A superb Postmodern Generator is available, free and just a mouse click away. Now you will be able to construct essay after essay of meaningless post-modern jargon based on the warped ideas of whacko French mental masturbators like Jaques Derrida and the immortal Foucalt, heirs to the great intellectual tradition that includes the Marquis de Sade and Rousseau.

Just visit the Postmodern Generator and every time you refresh the screen, a new and densly brilliant essay, featuring the most up-to-date leftist thinking, is prepared; original, pioneering and exceptionally penetrative.

Unnatural Adoptions (Part 2)

Typical of comments which do not support my post on the Maddona adoption is an anonymous one:

It is shameful that so many people (i.e Rightspeak) are condeming celebrities who find the kindness in their heart to save a child from a life a hell!!! It would be far worse for these celebrities to travel to the war and aids striken countries and not leave with a child."

This adoption bypassed Malawi laws, as the link in my post highlights, and brought much protest from Malawi adoption agencies and authorities. The father felt "powerless" to stop the adoption by someone so "rich and famous".

Here is my point - that celebrities spending great sums of money to arrange these adoptions (which also bring huge publicity to themselves) could as easily helped many hundreds of similar children by donating money to institutions and charities in Africa, rather than "power-adopting" a single child.

It seems many are ignorant of the fact that that most celebrities do nearly everything for publicity and career boosts. It's all part of a carefully choreographed "media process".

There are celebs and rich people who adopt children, or who even better donate to help Africans, like this boy`s father, take care of their own children and orphans. Some of them never seek any publicity for it and go through the normal channels of adoption. Madonna is not in that category, and which African would like a child to be brought up by someone who is, in African cultural terms, blasphemous and sexually weird? African children are not commodities to be bought for PR reasons.

A Different Guide

This is a dose of welcome humour in the developmenet debate, thanks to African Christian blog Two & Two Makes 5.

Unnatural Adoptions

Although there are thousands of genuine families who adopt and raise African children in the West, the sad story of Madonna's disgusting power-adoption of a young Malawian boy is about as stomach-churning a story as one can get.

Madonna could have spent equivalent money on funding thousands of AIDS orphans through infancy and primary school for the same cost as her celebrity adoption. However, that would not have brought her headlines and publicity. The poor Malawian boy will also be exposed to the weird lifestyles of Hollywood and pop stars. Surely life in Malawi is far less cruel ? No wonder his father looks so glum.

Sometimes the leftist "entertainagensia's" actions towards Africa are shameful. Malawaians and Africans generally should stop this child-theft by weirdo showbiz types and insist instead Madonna and her ilk spend money on NGO child projects.

Compulsive Conversion

Members of the Religion of Peace are fond of quoting to us Mohammed’s Koranic statement ( actually only part of a heavily qualified sentence), "There is no compulsion in religion".

Quite how this squares with the forced conversion to Islam, under pain of death, of Fox newsmen Steve Sentani and Olaf Wiig, would be an interesting debate with your local mullah. However, not a single Muslim religious figure worldwide has so far condemned the "conversion." Debate on this subject down at the mosque is, it seems, out.

According to the New York Times, the men were "unharmed" by their ordeal. However, in the West if a junior school teacher shouts at a pupil for spitballing little Miss Goody Twoshoes at the next desk, said teacher will probably be forced to undergo "counselling" for "harming" little Dennis the Menace with "verbal violence". If the same teacher held a knife at Dennis' throat and made him do pee-pee on an image of the Virgin Mary while reciting, "I renounce Jesus and all his works", that presumably would be, in NYT-speak, "unharmful".

Here’s another hot news story you maybe missed last week: " Two Muslim detainees released from Guantanamo Bay detention, Ali Shabazzi and Mohammed Yusuf, related how their US military captors forced them to convert to Christianity at gunpoint. Said Yusuf, "They would have killed us if we did not convert." How far would the MSM and the mullahs run with that particular football?

The great Mark Steyn perhaps has the last word on this subject:

"Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism."

Proportional Nonsense

Few calls by UN officials, European appeasers and various anti-Israeli elements are as empty of substance as the repeated carping for the IDF to show a "proportional reponse" in Lebanese hostilities towards the terrorist organization Hizbollah. We will not go into the fact that Hizbollah violates the Geneva Conventions in it's very structure, designed as it is to attack from and hide amongst civilians.

Hizbollah's main backer's, Syria and Iran have between them a population of 82 million. There are only some 5.25 million Jews in Israel liable for military service. As of today the casualty figures in the Southern Lebabnon war are 51 Israelis and some 450 Lebanese. This includes civilians on both sides. The ratio of Israelis killed is thus about 1:9 vs Lebanese, wheras the population ratio of the two countries that created and support Hizbollah, Iran and Syria, and who both wish Israel to be "wiped off the map", is some 15.75 to one Israeli.

Working on polls the MSM always tell us are "reliable", we also know that some 80% of the over 150 million Arabs in the Middle East do not accept the existance of Israel and wish to see it eliminated. Presumably these also back Hizbollah. In this case the ratio of populations soars, by simple math, to almost 30:1. If the casualty figures were 1530 Lebanese to 51 Israelis, then we would be approaching a truer proportional response by Israel to it's enemies. Rather, the figures to date show the amazing restraint and skill of the IDF ,with far more casualties "proportionally".

Looking at the number of sworn ememies of Israel that surround it in Arab countries and Iran we get some 230 million people who wish to eliminate 5.25 million Jews. If the IDF was inflicting "proportional casualties" based on this ratio, today's dead and wounded would have to reach 2117 dead Lebanese/Hizbollah to every 51 Israelis killed.

The dim and biased mainstream media have never recognised the call for "proportional response" for what it is, an idea that would suit Israel's enemies very well. A strictly "proportional response" in this case would rapidly see Israel depopulated and overrun in any conflict with Arab states.

Som(me)bre

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. The British Army lost 60,000 casualties in the first 12 hours of fighting. 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded, the greatest loss in their history. More poignantly, many of the volonteer army had joined in 'buddy' outfits, according to their trades. You had regiments of bakers, companies of miners and so on, often all from the same close knit towns and villages. They were mown down by the Germans, like grass before a scythe.

When deaths in Iraq of coalition troops do not equal the amount of accidental deaths in the US armed forces in a year, we have to remind ourselves of what our grandfathers and great grandfathers went through in a few hours.

The Best Policy Is No Policy

This bleak assessement on Somalia by J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University and an academic fellow of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

After they make short shift of Somalia’s shambolic government—notwithstanding the last ditch attempt at the U.N. this week to shore it up with the appointment of a new International Contact Group—the (Islamic Courts) Union will turn its attention to destabilizing (neighbouring) Somaliland, whose democratically elected, secular government has already been declared anathema by the Union’s chief ideologist, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the al Qaeda-linked head of al-Ittihad. (This month alone, the Somaliland government has intercepted two major arms shipments destined for Union-aligned jihadis from well-wishers in Arabia.) Then the Union will turn on Ethiopia and Kenya, both countries with large ethnic Somali populations with significant pockets of jihadi infiltration.

Can the US do much about this potential situation? Nearly anything the US does in Somalia, covert or overt, will be used to blame and discredit it regionally with moderate, important countries like Kenya. Already this is the media reaction locally. It is basically misplaced criticism, but it sells in the global anti-American market.

The US should rather rely on the natural ability of Somalis to implode and their penchant for pissing off everyone who happens to be their neighbour. This the Islamic Courts militia will surely do, sooner or later.

Meanwhile it should support openly the efforts of the regional AU group (IGAD) and the UN/European contact groups that are trying to build ( how I hate the word!) an "inclusive" solution.

I doubt they will succeed, but if then the Jihadis anger enough neighbours and clans, the US can use covert means, with proxy allies, to keep Somalia tied up in endless clan warfare, which traditionally renders them strategically harmless.

If an agressive, expansionist Jihadi state did emerge via the Islamic Courts, you would be surprised how quickly the US would be asked for help by various currently lukewarm "allies" like Kenya and Ethiopia.

I dont think Somalia seriously threatens any shipping lanes and is a poor choice for terrorist hideouts. The region is not vital to world energy or security, but due to large minorities of Somalis in Kenya and Ethiopia, plus Islamic ambitions to destabilize the Horn of Africa, the last thing the US should have is a searchlights-and-trumpets prescence, which will then be used by Islamists to rally a regional cause.

Tread softly, carry a big stick, shut up and keep one's eyes open. That's about it for US policy now.

UN: Some Kenyans Are More Kenyan

Despite being the oldest group of humans yet researched by New Zealand's Massey University DNA project Kenya's Turkana people are not, according to the United Nations, 'indigenous'. Having some 35,000 years of history won't quite qualify one for favoured treatment by the UN's new Human Rights Council. Yet if you arrived in Kenya 500 years ago, you will get General Assembly recognition and special 'rights'.

This is the useful conclusion of the UN's newest body. Gone from the disbanded old Human Rights Commission are champions of humanity like Saddam's Iraq ( which once chaired it),Syria and Zimbabwe. In are new champions of humanity like Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia.

Saudi Arabia is busy modernizing it's image and industry with oil-boom cash. The kingdom just exported a batch of Hand Amputation Machines to Nigeria's sharia Kano State.

Meanhile the new UN Rights Council has the urgent task of sending to the General Assembly a 'vital' bill guaranteeing the rights of 'indigenous peoples'.

To most people, 'indigenous' has the simple meaning of people who were the original inhabitants of a land. Thus in Africa the Bushmen, Pygmies, Baka, Berbers and other groups are rightly nominated in the UN list of indigenes. However it also pays to be colourful, exotic and live next to the world's greatest wildlife parks, even if you are Tribesman-Come-Lately.

Thus Mjikenda and related Swahili Kenyans, who have lived around Mombasa for at least a millenium, are not indigenous enough. They don't wear lion's manes, red-ochre and wave long spears, but rather shapeless, white cotton tunics called kanzu.

Maybe Kenya's Agikuyu who arrived there around 1100 AD are indigenous? If you've been checking out the fate of the 35,000 year old Turkana, you will know this answer. The fact that we have have 1 million year old ancestor hominid sites at Lake Turkana, where live the You-know-who tribe , still won't swing it for those "non-natives".

They drink an awful lot of coffee in the corridors of the UN - what else is there to do in Diploland? Like Legoland it's a place where only fantasies take shape. This leads to reading lots of coffee-table books. There have been more big glossy books written about Kenya's Maasai people (arrived in Kenya around 1450 AD via Chad and Sudan)than any other East African tribe. No surprise then that the only people in Kenya who qualify for 'indigenous', in the UN's report, are the Maasai. There is talking turkey. Then there is talking Turkana, and the Unocrats have the balance right.

How the Kenya Government will vote when the Human Rights Council bill reaches the General Assembly, nobody knows. Hopefully it will be in favour of a bill which declares 90% of their own Kenyans 'foreigners'. Kenyans of Maasai origin are good, normal citizens and frankly need no special affirmation compared to any other inhabitants.

Stand by for waves of professional Masaai activists clad in beads and shukas claiming back the whole country they once ruthlessly conquered from the 'pre-indigenous' people who were inconveniently in Kenya before them. One of the special UN rights for the 'indigenous' is naturally land. That's material enough for 56 more books, 3 mini-series and "Maasai, The Movie!".

Somalia's Endless Sorrows

The recent victories by the Somali Islamic Courts militia over various "Anti-Terrorist Alliance" warlords, supposedly funded by the USA, may seem a small story in these days of Iran, Al-Zarquawi and such. However, it has the potential to become a very large issue in the global war on terror, for Kenya regionally and for Al-Qaeda. The BBC has an excellent primer on the situation here.

East African countries have reacted by making the losing warlords persona non grata, calling for their trial at the ICC, freezing assets and other measures, led by Kenya. This they may later come to regret, if the Islamic Courts militia harden their stance to implementing a Sharia style "Taliban" state on Kenya's borders - a move that could have devastating consequences. It could easily extend to Kenya's north eastern tribes demanding a similar Sharia sytem in Kenya itself. However, in face of the Islamic Courts winning hand, there seems little to do for Kenya but offer them a cautious welcome and see what's next.

There is no doubt the Islamic Courts militia are sheltering a Al-Qaeda members, including one involved in the vicious East African embassy bombings of 1998. The Islamic Courts militia have certainly received training from outside Somalia. The defeated warlords might have remained a card in the deck to temper the courts and could re-emerge in Somalia's chaotic snakepit of clan politics.

On the other hand Kenya via the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development has employed immense time and effort to get the provisional Somali government off the ground, and the fractured,fractious body actually has set up in the town of Baidoa - but the capital Mogadishu is held by the Islamic Courts and the Somali government has no armed forces at all. If anything the warlords alliance was their "armed force". The Islamic Courts militia could crush the provisional government in a day. Ominously, the Islamic Courts have rejected a Somali government idea for African peacekeepers.

All the more reason to heed the 1858 "Compedium of African Geography", when that vintage book said that the inhabitants of the Somali coast are "violent, boisterous and turblulent" and "best left well alone".

Beeb Boob

It's nice that even the BBC corrects it's bias now and then. Regarding the open distortion of the "Hadji Girl" U.S. Marine song I said to BBC Newsonline:

"Kill Iraqis Marine Song" by Adam Brookes Updated 21:53 GMT 13/06/06 contains a crucial omission. Nowhere does it state the Marines song is about insurgents killing children (not Marines) and Marines trying to save the children and kill the insurgents.

In fact it gives the complete opposite "hint" that it is the Marines who are killing children and enjoying it. Seeing the song ( as I have) shows very clearly the Marines are singing about killing hostage taking/human shield type of insurgents.

Is this not a totally crucial piece of information? Why the omission that makes the story seem biased?"

Rightspeak was surprised and delighted to receive the following reply from the BBC:

"Thank you for your comments. We accept that our initial story was deficient and should have made it much clearer what the killing in the song lyrics referred to. We revised the story in the light of this. We subsequently did an updated story to include the marine's apology, which spelt out much more clearly the thrust of the song.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5081930.stm

But you made a fair criticism about our first story. We do aim to cover stories as objectively and accurately as possible."

Kind regards
BBC News website

Red-Faced Ken

Elsewhere in the blog is noted the low-life Mayor of London, "Red" Ken Livingstone, and his lavish welcome of anti-semitic, suicide-bomber blessing "moderate" sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi in 2005. Such is the quality of public life in UK that creatures like Livingstone and George Galloway thrive in politics. The left apparently sees no disconnect between the anti-feminism,anti-sexuality,anti-democracy and anti-free speech of radical Islam and itself.

However, the left is not about "equality", "human rights" and "inclusion" but about a ruthless, self-righteous elite who hope to seize power and hold it through social coercion, in the name of a mythical and abstract "collective good". Therefore anything anti-American or anti-Western, however disgusting, is preferred in all circumstances. This is the real reason for the love affair between the radical left and radical Islam, which operates exactly the same way.

Even Red Ken might be taken aback by Qaradhawi's latest remarks, courtesy of the wonderful MEMRI service:

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: Kerry who ran against Bush, was supported by homosexuals and nudists. But it was Bush who won [the elections], because he is Christian, right-wing, tenacious, and unyielding. In other words, the religious overcame the perverted. So we cannot blame all Americans and Westerners.

Interviewer: How should a homosexual or a lesbian be punished? We mentioned the story of the people of Sodom and how Allah punished them, but how should someone who commits this abomination be punished today?

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The schools of thought disagree about the punishment..... Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement. The important thing is to treat this act as a crime."

This is the sheik who Livingstone said was "just like" Pope John Paul II.

Crazed White Christians

Imagine a pair of Christian fundamentalists went around the East Coast of the USA, sniping and shooting dead ten non-white American Muslims. At their trial,notebooks and texts show where they had written how Jesus Christ inspired them to kill "black devils" and how other figures like Hitler were drawn in portrait, labelled "A Good Leader". Would you be hearing about this from the MSM and the left from now until.....hell froze over?

There is such a sensational case, but you will hardly hear details about it because it involves a pair of Muslim influenced killersshooting what they called "white devils" on behalf of one "Allah". These are the Beltway Killers who terrorized the Eastern USA a while back. The leader was John Muhammed and his acolyte Lee Malvo. Ample evidence was produced at the trial of the religious nature of the serial killings, including notebooks and other writings. Bin Laden was featured heavility in Malvo's notebooks as a "Good Muslim". Malvo confessed to Islamic indoctrination from Muhammed who repeatedly talked of "shooting white devils" at a level of six victims a day, if possible.

Going by stories on the BBC, AP and other agencies there is no mention whatsoever of any link with Islam in the John Muhammed case. Even minor media like the Richmond Times Dispatch of Virginia where the shooting occurred merely mention "indoctrination", without using any further description of what kind. The 'Religion of Peace' is unmentioned.

One victim of the shootings who survived still does not understand. He tells the Richmond newspaper,

"I never expected to understand 'why' they were doing what they did -- it's not socially rational behavior -- but I did find a sense of closure in hearing 'what' they were doing."

Even by Koranic standards, it was not religiously rational, but that religious impulse was the fire that stoked the killings.

Visiting Another World

Just returned from another of my pleasurable visits to Madagascar, a country that ranks much further down the poverty list to Kenya. It's a strange and beguiling place; Africa is so close, so many people seem African in looks (then again, many seem Polynesian) but it is not like Africa, or anywhere else. Some interesting contrasts to mainland Africa were:

* There appear to be no slums and the average Malagasy owns a house,most of them sturdy if traditional.

* Despite the obvious poverty, crime and especially violent crime, is a paltry fraction of Kenya's level.

* Many people openly state they wish they had been colonized by the British, not the French, when you say you are from Nairobi.

* The matatus are amazingly organized, with pre-booked seats for up-country travel(!), little offices for each company and no touts whatsoever.

* The women are beautiful and polyglot in novel ways, not that Kenyans lack beauty. The Malagasy generally are discreet and quiet - but not in the South.

* The dead are venerated, and regularly dug up and re-buried after a prolonged party. In Madagascar, the dead are more important than the living!

* There are almost no sects and tent churches, everyone attends a mainstream church.

The Last Word

From an interview today broadcast on UKs' Channel 4, Ms. Ayaan Ali Hirsi hits the nail and the truth squarely on the head:

Interviewer: "Some say that you have gained notoriety because you say what Westerners want you to say about Islam."

Ms. Ali: "On the contrary, I say what the Westerners do not want to hear about Islam. They do not want to confront (the reality of) what I say."

Perfect!

Dutch Courage

It seems Dutch MP Ayaan Ali Hirsi may not be moving to the USA any time soon, after witch-hunting Dutch immigration Minister Rita Verdonk was ordered by Parliament to hold back on cancelling Hirsi's Dutch citizenship.

The tale is more revealing of the culture wars in America than anything else. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think thank, welcomed Hirsi should she move countries. That is, American conservatives were willing to embrace a Third World black female who stands for religious tolerance and for women's rights, especially within Islam.

Contrast this to the leftist administrators of the USA's famed Yale University. Despite voiciferous objection, they granted a university place to high-school educated Ramtullah Hashemi. He is the former unrepentant official spokesman for the fanatical, misogynist Taliban 'government' of Afghanistan. Hashemi routinely defended stoning women to death for adultery and banning them from going to school or even from selling bread.

Thinkers say that the left long ago lost the battle of the mind in the West. Some even say the Western left is willing to appease the forces of intolerance, the way the intellectual classes of Europe fawned before fascism and Stalinism in the 1930's. Go figure.

Warmonger Fascist Bush Is.....Vindicated?

The gravest charge against George W. Bush is that he took the Coalition into war with Iraq in 2003, fully knowing Iraq had disposed of all it's WMD. However, now that volumes of captured documents from Iraq are becoming translated, it's clear that Saddam wanted to maintain to his own military, neighbouring countries, Iraq itself and the USA the belief that he had WMD until as late as December 2002.

An excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor reveals Saddam thought that the WMD he did possess in the 1991 Gulf War were the only things that kept the Coalition from toppling him then - and these would do so again in Gulf War II. He also needed to instill fear into the rebellious Shiites and Kurds he had previously gassed and terrorized, keep Iran guessing and maintain morale amongst his generals.

Saddam sent allies such as the Yemenis in 2002 to inform Dick Cheney that Iraq would retaliate with WMD if attacked, reinforcing belief that he possessed them. Vice President Tariq Aziz stated his generals were "stunned" and lost morale when he informed them in December 2002 that he actually had none and was bluffing. George Bush was not.

These documents of the innermost workings of Saddam's regime show that Bush made an error, but that he was right in saying every major intelligence agency in the world thought Saddam still had WMD and there was no reason to believe otherwise. Saddam wanted it that way.

Hold Her Down, You Zulu Warrior!

What is it about South African politicos that makes them turn into moonbats when it comes to HIV/AIDS? First we had the bizarro President, Thabo Mbeki, inviting all the AIDS cranks and wingding thinkers to conferences. There they doubted the existance of any virus. Mbeki thus enraged Nelson Mandela and became a laughing stock amongst African scientists.

Now disgraced ex-VP Jacob Zuma, on trial for rape, not only admits he had sex with an HIV positive woman whose status he knew of, but that he afterwards "took a shower" because that way the risk of AIDS was "very low".

The fact is that Zuma, a Zulu from a non-circumcising tribe, has a 6 to 8 fold higher chance of catching AIDS in any case. That the Vice President of a quasi-modern nation can propagate "unsafe sex followed by a shower" almost defies belief. This statement has undone years of work by safe-sex campaigners all over Southern Africa.

How should Zuma know his exceptional risk staus. Well, from a French medical study that confirmed beyond doubt that non-circumcised African males like Zuma are at extreme HIV risk. Where was this landmark study done? South Africa.

Geeks, The New Cultural Icons

Interesting to see a typical European approach to American electronic innovation. Having failed to come up with products that anyone would want to buy, let alone decent music, (French pop is ear-destroying rubbish), the French have decided to punish the world’s coolest company, Apple. So a digital format for encoding songs is “online culture”? I wonder what the geeks in Silicone Valley who thought up the iPod think of that?

France's Lower House of Parliament passed a law on Tuesday that could challenge Apple Computer's dominance of the online digital music market by making it open its iTunes store to portable music players other than its iPods.

"These clauses, which we hope will be taken up by other countries, notably at the European level, should prevent the emergence of a monopoly in the supply of online culture," Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon, National Assembly deputies from the ruling UMP party, said in a statement on Tuesday.

The US take on this?

"The vote today by French lawmakers is a direct attack on Apple's ability to design its own products and on the company's intellectual property rights, which will have a chilling effect on future innovation," said Jim Prendergast, the executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership.

"Apple could immediately pull its iTunes product from France, giving consumers less choice when it comes to popular digital music," he added.

If only they would. Then the French could listen eternally to Edith Piaf on bulky CD players.

Peace Activist = War Dupe?

After months of captivity, American Christian Peace Team “peace activist” Tom Fox, to use the MSM’s curious wording, has been found tortured and shot in Iraq. Fox was a man of firm convictions, knowing full well the likely dangers he and his fellow team members faced when they entered Iraq:

“If Jesus and Gandhi are right, then I am asked to risk my life, and if I lose it to be as forgiving as they were when murdered by the forces of Satan.”

Of course, Mohammed was neither Jesus nor Ghandi, but a man who led dozens of raids, sieges and attacks on other Arabs and Jews, and countenanced execution and assassination, even of surrendered prisoners, as a matter of course. Occasionally he and fellow Muslims took the wives of men killed captives as their own.

Who says so? Islamophobes? Christian right –wingers? Well, no. All this is taken from the most sacred Islamic Hadiths and the Koran itself. Any resemblance between Ghandi, Jesus and Mohammed is purely co-incidental.

Not wishing to disparage the memory of Tom Fox, are his ilk “peace activists” at all? Or could they more likely be called “war dupes”? Fox’s CPT group is exceptionally anti-American, anti-Israeli and pro-Muslim. They denounced the Coalition in Iraq, blamed all the violence on Bush and Blair and previously joined Palestinians in other anti-Israeli “peace activist” tours of the Middle East.

When newspapers published the Mohammed cartoons, even in captivity Fox and his fellow CPT members issued statements denouncing the abuse of their “gracious Muslim brothers”, as they stood over him with AK-47’s and throat-knives. The "apologies" were not, in this case, coerced but rather volontary.

Fox reminds one of fellow U.S. “peace activist” Rachel Corrie, crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer. Rachel’s “peace” was relentless verbal, intellectual and propaganda assault by her group on one sides only – the Jews. After her death, radical Palestinian elements readily admitted they used people like Corrie as part of their “war activism”. So much for Ms. Corrie’s deluded pacifism.

From his quote about Jesus and Ghandi, Fox obviously had something of the traditional Christian martyr about him. Sadly, the Swords of Righteousness group who took him captive had the Islamic “shahid” concept of martyrdom, which is not the same. Christian martyrs have always been non-violent, as was Christ himself. Their suffering was persuasive in shaming the Romans and other persecutors into conversion. The Islamic “shahid” is just as likely to be violent, as was Muhammad. He can, after recent fatwa, even be a suicide bomber or homicide pilot. His violence is likely to be persuasive in intimidating others to convert to Islam.

The murder of Fox by Islamists was no doubt proceeded by all the “letter of the law” Koranic injunctions. As Fox was a person of the “kitab” ( Bible) they were not allowed to kill him right away. They had to offer him a chance to pay “jizya” (a tax on Christians and Jews) and “feel himself subdued” (Koran). If that failed, they had to offer him the chance of conversion to Islam,or death (Koran,Hadiths). Maybe Fox chose death – the actions of a brave, principled and sadly misguided man.

Martyrdom is meant to move us morally, as a spectacle, a narrative and a religious act. As Martin Roth points out, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, prayed for those who killed him, as Christ did for his killers when he was on the cross. Anyone who can't tell the difference between these theologies and those of jihad shahids is a theological imbecile....or a secularist. If it comes to choosing between Tom Fox and a shahid, I think we know which way most of the world wishes to go.

Burnout

Kenya is in the world media for all the wrong reasons, following the government's astounding raid on the Standard newspaper and KTN television. Masked policemen, rumours of "Russian" or "Bosnian" mercenaries, wholesale confiscation of computers, sabotaging equipment, burning piles of newspapers and an amazing admission by Kenya's hitherto respected police chief Hussein Ali that he neither knew about nor sanctioned the operation have left Kenyans and foreigners deeply disturbed. Citing "state security", the raids were sparked by reports that leading oppositionist Kalonzo Musyoka had secretly met President Mwai Kibaki. Such secret meetings in Kenya are so well-established that citizens are never surprised about them. The idea that schmoozing in State House between supposed "rivals" is a matter of "state security" has convinced nobody.

What is new is that in the relatively liberal state of media in Kenya, the internet was able to disseminate CCTV pictures of the mysterious raiders at work - something unthinkable a decade ago. Kenya is soon to pass the kind of puerile "freedom of the press" that used to give rise to media copy like this:

' Sources state that the perpetrator of the deed is a well known local tycoon from the area. However some say he could have been acting on orders from a higher authority.'

The burned out veteran generation of Kenya politicians are more and more like failing men, grasping feebly at a power which is passing to a younger generation, one that simply will not put up with "Big Man" politics any longer. The current government is like a rotting ship, the crew of which keep kicking new holes in the hull, as they sink. Few expect it to pass more months without a vote of no confidence - despite our bloated, hyena-like Members of Parliament, who have no wish to give up their enormous salaries and privileges for the hustle of a campaign.

Tutu Frootie

Having a sane voice in the old anti-apartheid struggle does not make you qualified to comment on other matters, except sometimes as an ass. Enter, braying, one Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The prattling prelate attended a UN conference on Danish cartoons in Qatar and said the following:

He lamented the negative stereotyping of Muslims and wondered why North Ireland's Protestants and Catholics, the Oklahoma City bombers or even the Nazis had never been labeled ''Christian terrorists.''

The IRA in Ireland are Marxists using religion as a Leninist 'front'. They have never been a Catholic religious movement. Secondly no Christian priest or minister encourages, blesses and sanctions bombings in Ireland - unlike the thousands of Muslim clerics who support such (and worse) worldwide. The Oklahoma bombers were agnostics bombing in the name of a non-religious ideology and the Nazis were materialists who openly despised religion.

Torquemada In A Turban

Post war children grew up listening to the stories of the appeasement of Europe towards fascism in the 1930's. Never could we experience how free thinking people then really felt, as they saw the dark clouds gathering. Now we can, thanks to religious fanatics who use Islam's name.

We also never really appreciated the vile pandering to fascism, in between bouts of dubious indignation, that many the Western left indulged in then, ending infamously in the 1939 The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. But now we can, seeing the contemporary left dance their grotesque piroutte with forces utterly destructive to everything we hold progressive. Do these useful idiots not know that radical Islam detests them the most? That they will be the first to feel the reality of creeping sharia?

"God Bless America" is a phrase they readily sneer at. "God Bless Hitler", carried by a Muslim, they cannot comment on. As a German newspaper wrote, "We can't really know what this sign is means". Indeed, Homo Occidentalis seems to have lost all ability to think when confronted with Torquemada in a turban.

Let us for a minute imagine a meeting of minds with the Mullahs. Let us, together with our witless MSM media, push with them the point that what has really offended Muslims is "images" of Mohammed, which are supposedly "forbidden" and especially derogatory ones. Let us propose a truce. The West will no longer publish any images of Mohammed - even flattering ones as Shias often do. Instead, we will vigorously, in every media, attack, criticise, evaluate, question and deny (if we wish to) his role as a prophet, a passage to God or even as a holy man, in the spirit of open religious discourse. Now ask yoursef, what will be the reaction of the Mullahs? We all know this answer.

After hundreds of years of enlightenment,science and liberalism, the West now stands apparently on the brink of negating the very fibre of it's free civilization, to return us to a dark age when bad religion, the more intolerant and ignorant the more effective, will rule our lives again, like an Islamic Inquisition. We sleep-walk to our doom,led by our Chamberlainesque elites. For "Peace In Our Time", think "Religious Peace In Our Time"...... and keep on walking.

Cartoonmania

Muslims all over the world are protesting, smashing, shooting, cursing, attacking and threatening everyone from Danes to kaffirs (unbelievers)  generally  regarding  mild cartoons, by Western satirical standards, of Mohammed published in an obscure Danish newspaper.  

Muslims would never  print cartoons of Jews or Christians in any way derogatory whatsoever. Which is why the renowned Arab newspaper Al-Quds published this, just one example of Muslim newspapers showing what not to publish and whom not to insult.

As we know, Islam is the religion of peace, tolerance and brotherhood. Anyone who does know know this is subject to prosecution under Section 121.(2) of the new British ‘Racial and Religious Hatred Act,  2006'.

Having read the Gospels and Epistles and then the Koran, I have to say that ‘Christianity’ and ‘ Muhometanism’ ( to use the quaint expression of former times) are, as CNN or any other liberal newsorg will tell you, really just one and the same. For example, we all remember in the Gospels the many lines that resemble these  from the Koran, with the chapter and verse in brackets:

Non-believers are: the “worst of created beings” (98:6), are “miscreants” (2:99, 24:55), are the worst beasts in Allah’s sight (8:22, 8:55); (Christians and/or Jews are) turned into “apes and/or pigs” (2:65-66, 5:58-60, 7:166); (idolaters are) unclean (9:28); “evil” is upon them (16:27), evil (2:91, 2:99); “wicked” (80:42, 9:125); the “wrong-doers” (42:45, 2:254, 5:45); evil-doers (42:44); they have no good in them (8:23); are “guilty” for disbelieving (45:31, 83:29); on the side of Satan and are fighting for him (4:76-77); of the party of Satan (58:19); Allah assigns them devils for protecting friends (7:27); they choose devils for protecting friends (7:30); are partisan against Allah (25:55); “enemy” and “perverted” (63:4); disgraced lives (22:9); hypocrites (4:61); have a “diseased heart” (2:10, 9:125); are ill (84:20); deaf, dumb, and blind, and have no sense (2:171); deaf and dumb and in darkness, Allah sends them astray (6:39); have no sense (5:103); a folk who do not understand (9:127); their fathers were unintelligent and had no knowledge or guidance (2:170, 5:104); are “a folk without intelligence”/ “most ignorant” (8:65, 6:111); losers who are deceived by Allah (2:6), and deceived by Satan (4:60); liars/they lie (2:10, 9:42, 16:39, 16:105, 59:11) “losers” (7:179); foolish and liars (7:66), liars and losers (58:18-19), in false pride and schism (38:2), the lowest of the low (95:4-6).

What to do about such people? The Koran and Hadith (epistles), like the Gospels, tells us repeatedly to kill, behead, crush, burn, fight, treat harshly, rape, tax, place in ghettos and so on all the above categories of wicked persons.  The Sermon on the Mount and the preaching from Mecca are really identical. Jesus Christ, as did Mohammed, led numerous wars, fought 36 offensive battles, supervised a number of massacres including that of beheading 800 Jews, married the women of those he had executed and had a 9 year old wife. All religions are equally the same and cannot be criticised. So saith the Book of Multiculturalism 2:36

George W. Chirac,Warmonger

They say that Europe eventually follows everything America does, but only  later. Who ever thought we would hear this? (Hat tip: the excellent Eurosoc).

In his speech, Mr. Chirac bluntly declared, "In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilizations."  As a French official put it,  "This is more than a clash of civilizations. It is a cancer within our country that if unchecked will destroy all of France."

Chirac continued,

"The leaders of states who use terrorist methods against us, as well as those who consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and appropriate response on our part,"  referring to France’s nuclear capability.

No Free Speech Please, We’re British

The gravest threat to free speech is contained in the republished Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. The Blair government is ignoring the wisdom of the House of Lords, who insisted that only speech containing threats of violence ( in effect, verbal assault) should be so covered. The British government have re-introduced the previous broad clauses with different language.

If Parliament passes this bill in the forthcoming vote, one hopes British people will engage in massive civil disobedience and that the Lords will once again rescue the populace from this corrupt legislation.  Excellent rebuttals of this legislation are all over the Internet, for example  Ecclesia’s site here. As usual, Blair won’t listen.

Indeed the only group openly campaigning for this bill are  some fundamentalist  Muslims, especially ones who wish to  use future litigation against other communities to silence  the ancient British rights to praise, ridicule, attack, support or take the absolute micky out of anyone, as they see fit. Indeed cynics are right that it is simply pandering to extreme Muslims to offset Labour’s woes over Iraq involvement.

The right to offend by free speech is also the right to confront power, to ridicule it and mock it. Why should religious power be exempted from this?

In seeking to sanitize all possibility of offense from religious commentary, the Government is abusing human rights in Britain, and will cause enmity between communities, rather than foster tolerance. British Christians, the secular and particularly writers and artists in Britain are  against this bill.

Why indeed should we stop with religious or racial hatred acts? Why not make all forms of offense "hate crimes", including against  the obese, the thin, people from Essex, French farmers, the rural or for that matter, politicians, who seem intent to undo the fundamental right of everyone in Britain to take the piss out of anyone they choose?

The spectre of British police being used a ideological or theological thought-crime investigators is so repellant and orwellian what we must seriously wonder if a free society is possible when the right to offend
the powerful or the established is taken away from the people. And this by those elected to guard our very freedoms.

UPDATE: Due to intense pressure, the worst parts of this  bill were happily defeated on 1st February, only the second defeat in the House of Commons in the Blair government reign.  Regrettably the ‘thoughtcrime’ of ‘hatred’ in various other forms was still included.  

Skinny Dipping

Wonderful news for Kenya’s tourist industry – the US navy has intercepted a Somali pirate ship, fired across it’s bows  and detained 10 ‘skinnies’, the US forces nickname for Somali gunmen. They also freed 16 Indian crewmen the pirates had captured. Sailors aboard the dhow told the US  Navy that pirates hijacked the vessel six days ago near Mogadishu and  then used it to stage  attacks on merchant ships.

It was not long ago that our tours industry suffered a major blow when these same Somali  pirates attacked an American cruise ship on it’s way to  Mombasa.  Naturally everyone in Kenya is relieved and I doubt we will be hearing the usual  anti-American chatter from our  biased news media.

My Compedium of African Geography (1858) describes the inhabitants of the Somali coast as “treacherous ,boisterous and turbulent” and warns the coast is to be avoided and the people “ best left well alone.” Nothing much has changed.  Most Kenyans will be hoping the US Navy keeps up it’s attacks and patrols on these sea-vermin.

In an excellent irony, the pirates were captured by the USS Winston S. Churchill, named after a renowed someone who knew a thing or two about chasing fanatical Muslim tribesmen around , see for example “The River War”.

What of the punishments for piracy these days?  "The disposition of people and vessels involved in acts of piracy on the high seas are based on a variety of factors, including the offense, the flags of the vessels, the nationalities of the crew, and others,"  said a very PC-sounding Lt. Leslie Hull-Ryde of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain. Whatever happened to  that old favorite, walking-the-plank?

A Lost Struggle

“An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve the public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. . . .” Joseph Pulitzer, 1912

The famous words of Pulitzer, he of the  renowned  ‘Nobel equivalent’ prize in journalism, have an ironic meaning today as the  old fashioned media struggles to maintain itself as a force in  the USA.  Hugh Hewitt has a brilliant, even elegiac piece, on a brave attempt by Colombia School of Journalism to  produce new and competitive journalists with specialist  skills.

Hewitt finds all the old problems in just analyzing the 16 students of one intake group. No matter that anywhere in the Western world (even Germany), a solid third of the population is centre right and that  in the US this proportion is a majority. Of the 16 young journos, 11 voted for John Kerry and just one for George Bush.  All 16 thought it obvious that Bush is something of a “dolt”, despite he has a Yale degree, a Harvard MBA and  defeated four consecutive Democratic candidates the entire international media judged to be a lot “smarter” than himself.  All were for homosexual marriage. None own a gun. Very few attend religious services.  

So there is no more hope of intellectual or ideological diversity coming out of this group of supposedly “new” journalists than the present MSM: a conformist echo-chamber, where a single left-centre “progressive” viewpoint dominates all reportage.

The fact the profession is rapidly becoming “feminized” ( over 70% of new journalistic candidates are women)  will produce a gender distortion in future reporting as well. If you accept the left’s view that we  can only first speak from our racio-gender perspective, wait for more reportage as “feelings”. Recent brain studies show women empathize with those in pain, regardless of if those people have done them wrong or not.  This will in future need balancing with a male perspective of ‘earned’ retribution.  Stand by for more incidents such as the BBC reporter who found herself “weeping” as  poor, dear  old terrorist Arafat was flown out of Ramallah. She was reprimanded by the BBC.  A decade from now she will probably be in line for the Pulitzer.

Hewitt’s wanderings through the famed halls of Colombia has uncovered nothing new. Casual research has long shown the mis-reflection  of the  people’s mainstream thoughts by the  left-centre  MSM mirror. Tellingly, a  recent UCLA study  has finally shown this scientifically. The good professors were amazed to discover almost no a major media  player in the USA was other than left-centre.  One of the few exceptions was Fox News. The message is clear. ‘Diversity’ is a great virtue according to the traditional media, as long as that diversity does not include the ideological  variety.

So how will the Colombia programme combat the inexorable decline  in the image of the MSM in the USA as ‘Bias Central’?  The idea is to increase the level of training of the journalists so that they become capable of even finer analysis, research and deep study of whatever it is they are writing about. These “skills” will  place journalists in the MSM back on a pedestal of  ‘truth’ from the mire of biased “news-views” they are now perceived to be in. Hewitt thinks the effort is doomed, and I agree. The very concept of  objective ‘truth’ has been undermined by the relentlessly amoral post-modernism purveyed and pushed by the very same Mainstream Media.

The great aspect of the internet is that it allows enormous numbers of true experts to  publish their own commentary and reportage on news events instantly to a worldwide audience, let alone a local one. No journalist, even if as brilliant as Einstein, can expect to be able to  absorb all the skills that non-media experts possess. Before, it was an extreme struggle to get your views heard. A newspaper could write a thousand wrongs, and one could struggle for an equal number of nights firing off indignant letters to the editor, to be received in total silence. To have, effectively, ones right of reply denied. Journalists could say things were ‘facts’ and then spin those facts. The average person had no way of either checking the ‘fact’ or replying.

Blogging and the internet have provided  a greater democratization of opinion and comment in news than any other invention since perhaps the newswire teletape of over 100 years ago. They truly open the door for “people’s journalism” for the significant proportion of  people, worldwide, who have centre-right social or economic opinions.  There has always been something inherently undemocratic about  the media’s self-appointed, self-anointed ‘expertise’. If you can amass enough capital to own a printing press or run a radio station, you can mobilize, influence and shape  people or even events.  This was the only way to become heard until the revolution of the internet and blogging. Now all you need is a $800 computer – or sometimes, like the pro-democracy bloggers in Iraq, just a cybercafe account. One can only hope that centre-right media in the new internet forms will never assume the monopoly of the old MSM.

The nature of the internet medium will probably prevent that. There will remain a (lesser) place for the  “legacy media” , the great newspapers, the famous news hours, the entertaining news-spinners and the like. Yet those media will never dominate opinion and shape it towards left-centre views again, or be able to exhibit such shameless partisanship without worry of correction.