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Former BUFF driver; self-styled military historian; paid (a lot) to write about beating plowshares into swords; NOT Foamy the Squirrel, contrary to all appearances. Wesleyan Jihadi Name: Sibling Railgun of Reasoned Discourse

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Ports? Dubai?!


What in the most blessedly sacred name of all that is holy and good in this world and the next were they THINKING?!

If this krep keeps up, I'm joining the KosKidz. Okay.....not really....but I sure wouldn't expect anything more stupid and tonedeaf than this.


Lileks has a good summing up:

Do I expect the managers of the ports to start installing Al Qaeda operatives in key positions, so they can wave through all the containers with small nukes for national distribution? No. But such a scenario does not exact tax the imagination, which is why it’s such a stupendously bad idea.


It’s remarkably tone deaf. It’s possible that the Administration did some quiet polling, and asked the question “How much Arab control over American ports are you comfortable with,” and misinterpreted stunned silence as assent. It’s possible the Administration believed that this would be seen as outreach, an act of faith to solidify a Key Ally, and didn’t think there’d be much hubbub – but if that’s the case, it’s the best example of the Bubble Theory I’ve heard, and I’ve not heard much convincing evidence. Until now. The average American’s reaction to handing port control over to the UAE is instinctively negative, and for good reason. There are two basic reactions: We can’t do this ourselves? and We should trust them, why?

Advice to the administration: If you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot, don’t use a bazooka. You may aim for the pinky toe but there’s nothing left below the hip. The recoil should not be your first clue you grabbed the wrong gun.


Monk


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Thursday, February 16, 2006

Dreaded Uffdahadin Spread Cartoon Unrest Across Midwest


Intrepid (and frequently beer-besotted) reporter Iowahawk first broke the story of the sinister Uffdahadin some months ago. At the time, the Lutheran-inspired terror organization sparked riots in Iowa after rumors circulated that law enforcement officials had flushed Lutefisk down toilets in facilities housing Uffda insurgents. The Uffhadin regard Lutefisk as a sacrament of their religion.

The latest unrest was sparked by a Texas artist who displayed the following cartoon (and, yes, this reporter realizes the risk Vita ab Alto is taking in showing the offending item, but we uphold freedom of the press as a near-sacred right):


The cartoon appears to show the legendary footbal coach Vince Lombardi, whom many in the Uffda movement regard as a prophet, glaring gapped-toothed at the viewer, a bomb nestled in top of his cheese hat, which many Uffdahadin also regard as sacred.

David Burge of Iowahawk tells what happened next:

Green Bay, WI - Like a pot of bratwurst left unattended at a Lambeau Field pregame party, simmering tensions in the strife-torn Midwest boiled over once again today as rioting mobs of green-and-gold clad youth and plump farm wives rampaged through Wisconsin Denny’s and IHOPs, burning Texas toast and demanding apologies and extra half-and-half.

Protestors demonstrated against the images throughout the Badger State yesterday, with violent egging and cow-tipping incidents reported in Oconomowac, Pewaukee, Sheboygan, Ozaukee, Antigo, Oshkosh, Waubeno, Wauwautosa, Waunewoc, Wyocena, Waubeka, and Washawonamowackapeepee.

But by far the fiercest demonstration took place in Green Bay's Lambeau Shrine parking lot where throngs of Packer faithful burned Texas flags and effigies of Roger Staubach as Lutheran pastors led them in chants of "Those who defame the Vince suck" and "Favre is Great." Many of the frenzied demonstrators were seen ritualistically beating themselves with mozzarella sticks.

The Texas artist, whose identity Burge reveals, but this reporter refuses to due to threats to drown him in the the gelled lye solution used to cure Lutefisk, has said, "I uphold my absolute right to make fun of any public or historical figure, no matter how sacred he or she is regarded by some groups." He is purportedly working on a new work he calls the "Piss Hummel," in which a delicate hummel skater figurine is immersed in a vat of human urine. The artist, who hails from College Station TX, claims he does not care what the results may be, but he has been changing addresses on a nearly weekly basis, according to Iowahawk reports.

Iowahawk has also reports on efforts to quell the violence and restore reasonable discourse with the Uffda community:

As the world awaits the next move in this complicated polka of realpolitik, tensions throught the Midwest remain as high as the cholesterol. However, yesterday saw one hopeful sign of a thaw: a consortium of civic, religious and Packer club leaders announced an emergency summit at the Fudgienuckles bar in Glenbuelah next week to start a dialogue with their non-Midwestern counterparts. At the top of the agenda: working with non-Midwestern leaders to create regional peace and security by passing international anti-Packer blasphemy laws.


Small steps to be sure, but observers say these safety measures will help quell the roiling unrest before it spreads to the dimwitted ultra-militant Yoopers of Michigan's notorious Ishpeming Triangle.


In related news, Cartoons themselves are becoming incensed that their reputations have been besmirched across the globe because of a handful of extremists. Looney Toons Local 69, prepresenting such eminent figures as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and international superstar Pepe le Pew (who was involved in his own complicated international fracas recently), have issued a press release condemning the riots, extolling freedom of the press, and reminding people that cartoons have rights, just as others do, including the right fall from 10,000 ft cliffs while riding 500lb bombs, and emerge relatvely unscathed (if dishevelled) at the bottom. Islamic burning of cartoon figures, LTL 69 feels, leaves the impression that toon characters actually can suffer fatal injuries, a conclusion that many in the union think will undermine their propects for future employment, especially considering the advanced age of some of its members.

Monk


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Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Small Bites


I'm back.

Much has happened in the world since I began my blogging hiatus. I herein proffer a few of my sarcastic, cynical, and utterly worthless opinions about recent events -- and in other ways generally prove my failure to live the Christianity I profess -- but hey, cynicism, sarcasm, and ridicule are more fun to read than preaching any day, right?

So here we go....

Judge Samuel "Dred" Alito was voted onto the Supreme Star Chamber, 58-42, creating the first prospect in 20 years for changing that institution from a rubber stamp for every leftist social engineering scheme to come down the pike into something more closely resembling the constitutional court our (mysogynistic, imperialist, slave-owning dead white male) founders intended. This leftist blogger, deploying the left's word of choice, has it right:


Yes, you are. Fair and squarely. And if you don't like it, just lie back, think of George Galloway, and pretend you're somewhere else. Like France.

I'm real sorry for this next one, Lord (and please be with them pygmies down in Borneo), but you did inspire Joshua Chapter Ten as well as the beatitudes. It seems that some obscure Dutch alt-rag published some cartoons that a) depicted the Prophet Mohammed (shiite be upon him) and b) were not especially complementary in doing so. Here is my favorite:


The whole collection can be found here.

Not content that the published cartoons would stir up enough trouble, several Danish imams embellished the offense with a few cartoons of their own:


They're a bit hard to see, I grant. The right-most depicts a dog doing the leftist word to a muslim bent over in prayer.

The cockroachistani reaction was predictable:





They are, quite simply, proving that everything I have thought and said about them over the years, in conversation, email postings, and in this blog is true: muslims, especially of the Salafi variety*, are an implacably and irrationally hostile enemy who can never be appeased by soft words or conciliatory gestures. I think liberal commentator Juan Williams had it right on Fox the other night: any religion that would react this way to a bunch of cartoons is showing itself to be pretty weak, morally and intellectually. In my book, however, islam jumped the shark morally when ol' MoHo (vomit fill his shoes) consummated his "marriage" to six-year-old Aisha. His religion's moral bankruptcy didn't stop the conquest of the Hijaz, Palestine, or Syria however. It didn't stop the sacking of Alexandria and the destruction of Greek Egyptian civilization; it didn't stop the conquest of Berber Africa and al Andalus; it didn't stop the conquest of France -- Charles Martel did that with cold steel and little mercy. It didn't stop the rape of Constantinople when that city fell and it didn't stop the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans after Kosovo. It didn't stop the muslim march up the Don -- the Cossaks did that with frightening viciousness and admirable efficiency. It didn't stop the muslim march up the Adriatic -- cannon and battering rams did that at Lepanto. It didn't stop the muslim hordes outside the walls of Vienna -- Austrian artillery and Croat light troops made that happen. While we're on the subject, why not ask some Croatians what they think of their muslim brethren in Bosnia. They've fought them for centuries. Their country is crescent shaped to conform to the "Voiena Krajina," the "Military Border" that their Austrian masters forced them to live in because they formed an effective barrier between the advancing Turks and the Austro-Hungarian interior. Their centuries of "low intensity conflict" with the islamic menace made them the best light troops in Europe, adept at jobs we'd give special forces today. I don't know what Serbo-Croatian for "kill them all, let God sort them out" is, but I suspect you'd hear it often over there, even today.


In short, We can sneer at the "primitives" all we want, and make invidious comparisons to "fundamentalists" or the "Christian Right." Moral superiority is cheap and carries little weight in the affairs of men and of nations. We can dismiss this latest violence as just some amusing Third World phenomenon. We can show patronizing tolerance for islamic monstrousness of the sort we saw in France last December and are seeing on the "muslim street" this week, but this superciliousness will not stop one suicide bomber, one IED, one beheading of a female aid worker, one 757 flown into a skyscraper, much less anything worse. One thousand five hundred years ago, when islam was triumphant everywhere and truly did represent the advance of civilization (however unenlightened that civilization would appear to our delicate sensibilities today), ancestors of today's EUniki were huddling inside their thatched hovels and painting themselves blue. The cultural distance between then and now is not as great as it seems (and is not far at all within Salafi islam). It might take only the actions of a few determined enemies to take our decadent, overweight, morally unconcerned culture back to where it was then. What, after all, do muslims they care about the world economy? It certainly hasn't benefited them. The world's muslim population has doubled since 1980, but its share of world trade (even counting oil) has dropped by two-thirds. Destruction of the world's economic edifice could only benefit Salafi islam and makes its promises relatively more appealing to the disenfranchised. We are facing an ideological movement that regards a new Dark Age as a feature, not a bug. If only a few states can be started down the road to collapse, then other weak ones will follow and, before we know it, an entire population of the EU can be sent back to the caves to dye themselves with woad and pay their muslim overlords an appropriate head tax. And there are those within the West who would gladly help bring this about. We see many in our streets protesting the war. We see others who would unwittingly aid the process, like the editorial boards of CNN and the NYT, who deplored dislay of the cartoons out of "repsect for islam (no: out of cringing fear) and the pinstripers in the State Dept. who called for "tolerance and respect" (read: surrender).

That is why the kinds of programs we are trying to institute in Afghanistan and Iraq are the only really moral, yes--Christian, solutions. We have a moral obligation to show that relative prosperity and self-sufficiency are preferable options to tyranny and terror. Do I think it will work in the long run? I'm pretty cynical, but I believe we must try. I fear partial success will lead to retreat and complacency at home, followed by some thing or things much worse than 9/11, after which the US will go Joshua Chapter Ten** on islam's arse and slaughter millions who should die in their beds after fulfilling lives, not as a result of violence, however righteous and necessary it may be. The alternative to this would be retreat followed by surrender followed by Burkhas on beachgoers at Lake Martin (renamed Lake Muhammar) and millions of woad-dyed Eurodhimmis.


Salafi Beachwear


The Joint Chiefs of Staff offered a better lesson in how to handle offensive cartoons after Tom Toles of the WaPo published this execrable exploitation of soldiers' suffering:


The joint chiefs responded:

We were extremely disappointed to see the Jan. 29 editorial cartoon by Tom Toles.

Using the likeness of a service member who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon was beyond tasteless. Editorial cartoons are often designed to exaggerate issues, and The Post is obviously free to address any topic, including the state of readiness of the armed forces. However, The Post and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to readers and to The Post's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who volunteered to defend this nation and, as a result, suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds.

Those who visit wounded veterans in hospitals have found lives profoundly changed by pain and loss. They also have found brave men and women with a sense of purpose and selfless commitment that causes battle-hardened warriors to pause.

While The Post and some of its readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, these men and women and their families are owed the decency of not having a cartoon make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.

As the joint chiefs, we rarely put our hand to one letter, but we cannot let this reprehensible cartoon go unanswered.

PETER PACE
General, U.S. Marine Corps
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

EDMUND P. GIAMBASTIANI JR.
Admiral, U.S. Navy
Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

MICHAEL W. HAGEE
General, U.S. Marine Corps
Commandant of the Marine Corps

PETER J. SCHOOMAKER
General, U.S. Army
Chief of Staff

MICHAEL G. MULLEN
Admiral, U.S. Navy
Chief of Naval Operations

T. MICHAEL MOSELEY
General, U.S. Air Force
Chief of Staff

If the chiefs had chosen an islamic-type response, the result would have been a small diameter bomb through Tom Toles' office window. They could thus have done civilization a favor, but they chose the high road instead. Note to Abdullah, Muhammar, Akhmed, et al: this is how such protests should be conducted.

Meanwhile, the left and the Democrats have been screaming for weeks now that the Bushitler Administration's "illegal" wiretapping of this nation's enemies represented the greatest threat to human liberty since Shrub had Paul Wellstone assassinated. This story is just too stupid to be worthy of comment, except to again point out that there are those within the West who would gladly hasten its demise.


One of the last heroines of a great age passed this week. She still stood for civil rights even after it devolved into today's universal scramble for handouts and "entitlements." A noble lady, above the fray. She will be missed.


Of course, our friends the Democrats couldn't resist the temptation to turn her funeral into a political circus. America's Worst President, Jimmuh Cawtuh, said New Orleans levy breaks and Gulf tidal surge proved that the Kings' quest for racial justice hadn't ended. Yep: Bush conjured up the storm with secret military technology and then dynamited the levies just to pick on black folks. Oh, and J Edgar Hoover (in Jack Kennedy's Administration) wiretapped the Kings, just like Bushitler wiretaps every African-American in the country today. Then Rev Joseph Lowery stood up and proclaimed that World War IV was a conspriracy to kill dark-skinned people overseas while stealing medical insurance money from dark-skinned people over here. (To their credit, Dr. IzIz and his wife, Madame Robespierre, behaved themselves.) Like their muslim brethren, the Democrats and SCUMists in general jumped the moral shark long ago. That doesn't mean they won't obtain power again, however. In fact, it somewhat improves their chances of doing so.

In local news, five rural churches were set on fire last week and four more were burned this week here in Alabama. The MSM, of course, is not touching the thought of "hate crime" with a ten foot pole. It can't be a hate crime because the churches torched claimed mostly white congregations. One must be on the short list of Officially Approved Oppressed Minorities to be the victim of a hate crime. Persecuting Christians is okay, apparently.

Update: Several of the congregations were predominantly black, several white, so race was not a motive one way or the other, it seems.

Yes, folks: Rape, death, riots, arson, pillage, perfidy, murder, and bad cartoons. Ahhhh, it's good to be back!

Monk


* Salafi = Whahhabi; the term that adherents to Wahhab's brand of islam use to refer to themselves. It means, roughly, "followers of the forefathers of islam." See this for a good explanation.

** Joshua 10:1 - 11:10

The Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid...I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.
...
That day, Joshua took Makkedah. He put the city and its king to the sword and totally destroyed everyone in it. He left no survivors...
Then Joshua and all Israel with him moved from Makkedah to Libnah and attacked it. The Lord also gave that city and its king to into Israel's hand. The city and everyone in it Joshua put to the sword. He left no survivors there...
Then Joshua and all Israel with him moved on from Libnah to Lachish; he took up positions against it and attacked it. The Lord handed Lachish over to Joshua and he took it on the second day' The city and everyone in it he put to the sword...until no survivors were left.
...
Joshua turned back and captured Hazor and put its king to the sword. (Hazor had been the head of all these kingdoms.) Everyone in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anything that breathed, and he burned up Hazor itself.
Joshua 10:1-11:10

We should recall, though, that God gave the kings and peoples of Hazor, et al, a choice -- let the Israelites pass through peaceably and pay for anything they took or face the sword and be rendered until "not one stone shall stand upon another." It seems to me God is giving islam a similar choice today: learn to live peaceably or face extermination. This is a hard teaching, but I am cynical enough to realize that it will probably come to this, if for no other reason than our Salafi adversaries want it to: they believe they can win and can be the exterminators. Their smoking thug corpses will litter the world's battlespaces, torn apart by wild animals; food for dogs and birds.


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