Have you received one of those letters in the mail—asking you to send money to help wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan?
If so, I hope you ignored it—not because I do not care about our troops, but because I do. It turns out that at least two of these charities are run by people who would rather line their own pockets than help veterans.
One charity is called Help Hospitalized Veterans. The Washington Post reports that this outfit spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal expenses for Roger Chapin, who manages the charity. Richard Viguerie, “to whom the charity has awarded millions in fundraising-consulting contracts,” also reportedly used contributions to pay for personal expenses.
What kind of expenses? At least $340,000 in meals, hotels, and entertainment. And Mike Lynch, the executive director, received a loan of $135,000 for a divorce settlement for his ex-wife. Donations also paid for trips to Hawaii, country club memberships, and a million-dollar loan to Viguerie for a start-up initiative at his company. That does not even count the half-a-million-dollar yearly salary Chapin paid himself and his wife!
The second charity, the Coalition to Support AmericaÂ’s Heroes, raised in excess of $168 million from 2004 to 2006. How much did AmericaÂ’s heroes actually get? One-quarter. The rest went to direct-mail fundraising, salaries, and other expenses.
These abuses—both of the people who donated the money and the veterans the funds were supposed to benefit—were so serious that Congress decided to investigate. Retired Army General Tommy Franks, who had lent his name to Coalition to Support America’s Heroes, stopped doing so when he found out how little money was actually helping the veterans.
Last week Congress condemned Chapin for what they called “an intolerable fraud”—squandering money intended for wounded warriors. When asked what would happen if the public found out, Chapin answered, “We’d be out of business.” Let’s hope so!
The military charity scandals illustrate why good character is so important when we are choosing leaders—whether they are leaders of charities or leaders of government. The Old Testament reminds us that leaders are not to pervert justice or take bribes. They should fear God and hate dishonest gain.
All waste and fraud are wrong, but the squandering of money intended for our veterans truly makes me ill. These are the men and women who risked their lives to protect America. To exploit our veterans to enrich oneself is contemptible.
Shockingly, there are not any laws that require charities to tell donors how their contributions are used. This means that when appeals arrive in your mailbox, like those letters with the coin in the window or the dollar bill, watch out. I would take the money, give it to a deserving charity, and throw the letter away.
You can check on charities’ records with a watchdog group—like the American Institute of Philanthropy. Or go to Wallwatchers.org for information on Christian charities. And I urge you to visit the BreakPoint website for a list of fiscally responsible charities that help our men and women in uniform—charities that offer our wounded veterans the help they richly deserve.
#1
Liberals learned this a long time ago with non-profits. You can make a lot of money, if you control it and pay yourself salary. It's even better if your cronies in the government require your non-profit to be used for environmental permits and such.
#2
Butbutbut, g(r)om, here, all the rightwinger whiners are complaining about Sarko the atlanto-zionist, his joooooo-ishness, his joooooo-ish limousine-liberal-jetset-slut girlfriend who finds french "pitiful/despisable", about how he will jump on iran along with the imperialitical USa to protect the interests of Israel,...
This is so very confusing, I think I'll go lay down a moment.
#3
Hey anonymous5089, there's a story my father told me that I'm going to tell to my son as soon as he's old enough.
Long time ago and far far away, there was this country which did significantly better than its neighbors, because the king had a jewish advisor. The advisor---working behind the scenes---reformed the country's tax codes & trade laws, was the motivating force behind the formation of national army in heretofore feudal country etc.... He even, working behind the scenes of course, generaled all of the country's victories in wars with its neighboors. One day the King and this advisor were riding and came upon a drunk peasant beating his wife & children by the side of the road. The advisor said "A sad sight. People like this bring disgrace to our country." The King---who would be long dead if it wasn't for the advisor---looked at him for a long moment, then said "Our country, Jew?".
#4
G(r)omgoru, since mitterand, who really was the guy who opened the pandora box about that, and who ironically was a despisable ex-Vichyste turned socialist but who retained his rightwing ideological fundation, for bad or good (like his stance regarding the commie nukes)... there's been a race to the Victimization awards in France, something that fits neatly into the tranzi societies.
And french jews' "representatives" (that is, the leftist, ostentatious jews approved by the System) have been the initiator of that.
And now, that victimization card has played back against the whole jewish community, as other communities (I hate that word) have immersed themselves into that "We're Victims!" ideology - the more you are supposedly victimized by whitey, the more you should receive from society, without nothing to provide in return -, first the wimmen and the "gays", but now overhelmingly the (muslim) arabs & blacks.
That's true at least of the french Enlightened Elites, who are antisemite/judeophobic when it comes to actual, living jews (the "bad jooooooos"), but are obsessed, and forcefeed down the throat of french at large, by dead WWII jews, the "good joooooooos".
As for your story, it's that victim ideology again, sorry, this leaves me cold, but I'm not jewish, though parts of my family direct or extended are (but they're the RICH part :-), we're the deadbeat losers).
#6
I don't get offended, I get bored, you play the victim card. Btw, check the books if you can, if only the Taguieff one, I found them interesting (but I'm not very clever).
#10
Don't forget France's new military deals wid INDIA, ala TOPIX + WAFF.com.
Also from WAFF.com > Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting [IRBN] . DAVID BARSAMIAN [Alternative Radio founder] - US EYEING KASHMIR [Others?] AS A FUTURE BASE AGZ CHINA. Despite rhetoric to contrary, Barsamian claims China tacitly suppors the US war in Iraq albeit for Chinese purposes.
CHINESE MIL FORUM > ASIA TIMES > A CHINESE BASE IN IRAN. IRAN is unsettled/nervous about France's new pro-US stance under Sarkozy - tehran in response is incraesing copper wid China. ALso from ASIA TIMES > CHINA MOVES TO EXPANDS ITS REACH. TOPIX > IRAN, CHINA SEEK RAPPORT WITH PAKISTAN. Aqz US + Brits + NATO.
The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program,
That's working well...
and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.
You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day. I tried to find a statistic for how much flour the U.S. consumes in a year, or how much Pillsbury grinds, or some such, for the sale of comparison. By any measure, half a ton per person per day is a helluva lot of filafel.
(On the other hand, maybe that explains Sufa Arafat's ample charms.)
A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."
Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain.
Shooed along by people who aren't real good at arithmetic...
It begins in an Egyptian newspaper,
If you can't trust an Egyptian newspaper, who can you trust?
is cycled through a Palestinian activist,
... almost as trustworthy as an Egyptian newspaper...
is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar,"
... but not, we might add, a math major. Not even a business major...
and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math.
Well, I have it on good authority that the math requirement for journalism majors has been cut, so they don't hafta know how to add and subtract!
Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.
What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
01/28/2008 10:37 ||
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#1
Even 90 tons per day works out to 8 1/3 lbs per person per day.
#3
90 tons is about 2 ounces per person or 200 calories for bleached wheat flour.
Posted by: ed ||
01/28/2008 12:20 Comments ||
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#4
Well, they might want to eat something besides flour.
Do Gazans pay for or produce ANYTHING?
Is this the biggest welfare state on earth?
Is this moving them any closer to statehood?
Shouldn't people who get paid to worry about Gaza be asking questions like this?
#5
1. Do Gazans produce ANYTHING? $600 per capita (2003 est.) vs. $46,000 for the USA (2007 est.).
2. Is this the biggest welfare state on earth? Maybe, but Saudi Arabia would probably hold the title if you took away their oil.
3. Is this moving them any closer to statehood? No, but they can never be a stable state with their current values anyway.
4. Shouldn't people who get paid to worry about Gaza be asking questions like this? What type of intelligent person would want to be paid to worry about the likes of Gaza?
When hyperliberal Sen. Pat Leahy criticizes Bill Clinton for “glib, cheap shots” at Barack Obama, Hillary is in real trouble. Clinton’s Troubles aren’t caused only by backfire at Bill’s blunt use of racial prejudice against Obama in South Carolina. The Troubles are much more basic. Bill’s charm isn’t transferable to the lady who is known to some as Bill’s lovely wife, Bruno.
HillaryÂ’s poll numbers may be a bit above ObamaÂ’s nationally -- yesterday, RealClearPolitics had her ahead by about 8 points -- but those polls are not yet indicative of nation-wide strength. And thereÂ’s one factor the polls donÂ’t measure.
Last October, gushy Katty Kay of BBC and Chris Matthews had this exchange about Obama:
Matthews: “This guy can stand before a crowd and make them feel magic.”
Kay: "And along comes somebody like Obama, who has all sorts of charisma, he is ridiculously good looking!"
No one ever said that about Hillary. Add to that what Caroline Kennedy twittered about Obama in yesterdayÂ’s New York Times:
I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parentsÂ’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibilityÂ…I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president -- not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
No one will again confuse Katty or Caroline for serious people. But why are so many Democrats of both genders going goo-goo eyed for Barack? Easy: Bruno doesnÂ’t run well against Barack.
SaturdayÂ’s blowout win by Obama in the DemocratsÂ’ South Carolina primary (55%-27%) cannot be disregarded by the Clintons, because itÂ’s the first time this year that any candidate got more than 50% of the vote. According to Fox News exit polls Obama beat Clinton among women voters (53%-30%) and especially among black women (79%-19%) though she won among white women (44%-34%). It was as if Obama swooped down up at the right moment to rescue the voters, scooping up South Carolina in his arms, firing his webbing at a nearby wall and swinging out of range while the octopus-like villain was clicking its claws futilely in the air.
The Democratic primary race is Spiderman versus Roseanne. A lot of galsÂ’ (and some wimpy guysÂ’) favorite self-doubting superhero against the pain-in-the-butt wife that is every manÂ’s nightmare. Call it what it is: a stylish rookie against the most charisma-free presidential candidate America has seen since Bob Dole.
My advice to O'Bama: Keep her laughing and you'll win in a landslide.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/28/2008 12:27 ||
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The way I see it Obama is the perfect candidate to beat the Clinton Machine. He's a protected class and keeps his cool. Her attacks make her look bad and without the attacks she has nothing because really she has no more experience than he does.
Obama fills people with hope because he's young, well spoken, and doesn't have a record to be held against him. If he loses the madness will increase.
I don't think he'll lose unless there is a terrorist attack, in that case he doesn't have a prayer. The Bush haters don't even realize it but the Administration did such a good job of fighting back and defending themselves it's easy for many people to forget we are at war. It is easy for the Dems to put up a bunch of candidates wtih no experience to hold against them. People that would be laughed off the stage in previous decades.
Puts me in a weird position because I certainly don't want another terrorist attack but that's how I read it.
#2
Rooting for a terrorist attack for political purposes is just as horrible as liberals who root for soldiers to be killed so they can use them for political purposes.
About Bill Clinton, what can you say? Even before the polls closed in South Carolina on Saturday, the former President was diminishing Barack Obama's victory and trying to boost his wife in the next primaries by playing the race card.
Asked by a reporter why it took "two" Clintons to beat Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton replied that "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina" in 1984 and 1988. And he added that both Rev. Jackson and Mr. Obama had run "a good campaign here." Hmmm. The reporter hadn't mentioned Jesse Jackson, but Mr. Clinton somehow felt it apposite to refer to him anyway. He thus associated Mr. Obama's landslide victory with that of a black candidate who never did win the Democratic nomination, much less the Presidency, and who had run overtly as an African-American candidate in contrast to Mr. Obama's explicit campaign theme of transcending race.
Anyone who thinks this was accidental has spent too much time with Sid Blumenthal. While Mr. Obama won a respectable 24% of white voters, according to Saturday's exit polls, Mrs. Clinton still won 36% and John Edwards 39% of the white vote. Mr. Obama won 78% of the black vote.
The Clintons are now eager to make Mr. Obama into a Rev. Jackson-style "black candidate" as they contest primaries with a larger share of white and Hispanic voters than there were in South Carolina. The Clintons want to portray Mr. Obama as a candidate with a narrowly racial appeal, both to undermine his larger and inspirational message of "unity," and also to play to whatever doubts still exist about an African-American candidate among Democratic voters.
It's going to be fascinating to see if Democrats and the press let the Clintons get away with this. Imagine if Mitt Romney had made the Jesse Jackson comparison. Democrats would have immediately denounced the remarks as "racist," or as a part of some Republican "Southern strategy."
This primary contest has been a rolling revelation for many Democrats and the media, as they've been shocked to see the Clinton brand of divisive politics played against one of their own. Liberal columnists who long idolized the Clintons are even writing more-in-sorrow-than-anger pieces asking how Bill and Hillary could descend to such deceptive tactics. Allow us to answer that lament this way: Our readers aren't surprised.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/28/2008 11:23 ||
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The nakedly divisive comments by the formerly savvy Bill Clinton were decidedly counterproductive. The schism they opened in the liberal political coalition will not heal by the time the general election rolls around and will lie there waiting to be exploited by Republican campaign strategists.
The Democratic Party heavy machinery is still levered in Hillary's favor which makes it highly unlikely that Obama can win the nomination. But her task of getting to the starting line without alienating Obama's base just became more challenging.
An obvious choice can be unnerving. When the apparent perfection of one option or the unspeakable awfulness of another makes a decision seem too easy, it is human nature to become suspicious.
This instinct intensifies as the stakes of the given choice are raised. American voters know no greater responsibility to their country and to the world than to select their president wisely. While we do not yet know who the Democrat and Republican nominees will be, any combination of the leading candidates from either party will make for the most obvious choice put to American voters in a generation. To wit, none of the Democrats has any business being president.
This pronouncement has less to do with any apparent perfection among the Republican candidates than with the intellectual and experiential paucity evinced by the Democratic field. "Not ready for prime time," goes the vernacular, but this does not suffice to describe how bad things are. Alongside Hillary Clinton, add Barack Obama's kindergarten essays to an already confused conversation about Dennis Kucinich's UFO sightings, dueling celebrity endorsements and who can be quickest to retreat from America's global conflict and raise taxes on the American people, and it becomes clear that these are profoundly unserious individuals.
To be sure, there has been a fair amount of rubbish and rhubarb on the Republican side (Ron Paul, call your office), but even a cursory review of the legislative and professional records of the leading contenders from each party reveals a disparity akin to adults competing with children..
For the Republicans, Rudy Giuliani served as a two-term mayor of New York City, turning a budget deficit into a surplus and taming what was thought to be an ungovernable metropolis. Prior to that, he held the third-highest rank in the Reagan Justice Department, obtaining over 4,000 convictions. Mitt Romney, before serving as governor of Massachusetts, founded a venture capital firm that created billions of dollars in shareholder value, and he then went on to save the Salt Lake City Olympics.
While much is made of Mike Huckabee's history as a Baptist minister, he was also a governor for more than a decade and, while Arkansas is hardly a "cradle of presidents," it has launched at least one previous chief executive to national office. John McCain's legislative and military career spans five decades, with half that time having been spent in the Congress. Even Fred Thompson, whose excess of nonchalance has transformed his once-promising campaign into nothing more than a theoretical possibility, has more experience in the U.S. Senate than any of the leading Democratic candidates.
With just over one term as a Senator to her credit, Hillary Clinton boasts the most extensive record of the potential Democratic nominees. In that time, Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately for requesting $1-million from Congress for a museum to commemorate Woodstock.
With just over one term as a Senator to her credit, Hillary Clinton boasts the most extensive record of the potential Democratic nominees. In that time, Senator Clinton cannot claim a single legislative accomplishment of note, and she is best known lately for requesting $1-million from Congress for a museum to commemorate Woodstock.
Barack Obama is nearing the halfway point of his first term in the Senate, having previously served as an Illinois state legislator and, as Clinton has correctly pointed out, has done nothing but run for president since he first arrived in Washington. Between calling for the invasion of Pakistan and fumbling a simple question on driver's licenses for illegal aliens, Obama has shown that he is not the fellow to whom the nation ought to hike the nuclear football.
John Edwards, meanwhile, embodies the adage that the American people will elect anyone to Congress -- once. From his $1,200 haircuts to his personal war on poverty, proclaimed from the porch of his 28,000-square-foot home, purchased with the proceeds of preposterous law suits exploiting infant cerebral palsy, Edwards is living proof that history can play out as tragedy and farce simultaneously.
Forget for a moment all that you believe about public policy. Discard your notions about taxes and Iraq, free trade and crime, and consider solely the experience of these two sets of candidates. Is there any serious issue that you would prefer to entrust to a person with the Democrats' experience, rather than that of any of the Republicans?
Now consider the state of debate in each party. While the Republicans compare tax proposals and the best way to prosecute the War on Terror, Democrats are divining the patterns and meaning of the glitter and dried macaroni glued to the page of one of their leading candidate's kindergarten projects. Does this decision not become unsettlingly simple?
It's fascinating how Democrats aren't choosy about sidling up to America's enemies - it seems that any old enemy will do.
TodayÂ’s Washington Post features an op-ed on the upcoming Pakistani elections by Jackson Diehl entitled, "No More Coups." The piece slams Musharraf and praises the efforts of a visiting delegation of Pakistani politicians that prominently includes former cricket star Imran Khan. Khan heads what Diehl calls "his own small centrist party." According to Diehl, Khan said that Majority Leader Harry Reid and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden were particularly responsive to his anti-Musharraf message.
So as head of a "centrist" party, what does Imran Khan see as the best policy for his country? To find out, read "How to save Pakistan," KhanÂ’s own Op-Ed piece in the Guardian. I discussed this opinion piece by Khan in "The Best We Can Expect?" where I noted that Khan actually wants to break PakistanÂ’s strategic relationship with the United States, withdraw PakistanÂ’s army from the tribal areas, abandon patrols on PakistanÂ’s border with Afghanistan, and force America and NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan altogether. (Not a word about any of this from Diehl, of course.) You can glean some of this from KhanÂ’s Guardian essay, but in fact that piece omits some important passages from the original version published in Pakistan.
In the original version of Khan’s op-ed, he blames "the threat of extremism" on "policies that serve foreign interests" (i.e. U.S. interests) and goes on to say that no civilized society ought to allow its army to be "used so mercilessly against its own citizens" (i.e. the Taliban). Khan then adds: "The more the General [Musharraf] bows to Washington’s desire to ‘do more’...and the more innocent Pakistani blood is shed under the garb of fighting the war on terror or curbing extremism, the more Pakistan moves toward becoming a failed state." (So Pakistan’s decades-long problems of state-building are America’s fault.)
In short, Imran Khan opposes the war on terror and would remove all military pressure from the Islamist sanctuaries in PakistanÂ’s northwest. Just days ago, terrorists trained and dispatched to Europe by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were captured before springing a wave of attacks across the continent. And just now Baitullah Mehsud and his Taliban forces are the targets of a significant offensive by the PakistanÂ’s army in South Waziristan (as I report here and here). We may want Musharraf to allow American troops to join the fight, but Imran Khan would do far less than Musharraf. Khan would never have launched the Pakistani offensive in the first place. In fact, Kahn would shut down the war on terror in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) altogether. Yet even now, Khan is being praised in the Washington Post as a "centrist" and catered to by Democratic leaders in Congress.
The truth we donÂ’t want to face is that the Pakistani people are, shall we say, unenthusiastic about fighting the terrorists in their own country. Electing politicians like Imran Khan will lose us the war on terror, not solve it.
Kahn’s notion that the likes of Baitullah Mehsud and his followers are "innocent blood" is absurd. Pakistan is harboring a substantial military force dedicated to the destruction of the United States and the West. That gives us every right to be involved. In fact, it gives us a right to invade, which we’ve prudently declined to do only because we have been able to establish a level of cooperation with the government of Pakistan. Yet we are at war with the Islamists taking refuge in Pakistan, and we had best not forget that. Americans–including the Democratic leadership in the Senate–might want to keep this in mind when consorting with the likes of Imran Khan.
#2
but see, thats why Bhuttos death was SUCH a disaster = there isnt anyone left whos both pro-US AND has real support on the ground in Pakistan. Perv, Sharif, Khan - theyre ALL bad choices.
#3
DF: but see, thats why Bhuttos death was SUCH a disaster = there isnt anyone left whos both pro-US AND has real support on the ground in Pakistan.
My impression is that Bhutto was a corrupt socialist who drove the economy into the ground the last time she was prime minister. This is why the liberal media loved her - her socialist ideology. The same ideology that made Islamism attractive by comparison.
#4
As far as I can tell, Ms. Bhutto was a happy feudalist who used the language popular in the international circles in which she moved when not actively ruling her holdings. She used whoever advanced her personal agenda -- socialists, internationalists, Islamists, and democratizers alike.
#5
Oh big whoop, she was a pol. Her last admin she was very careful not to offend the military, which made sense given their strength. Sure she was from an old feudal family. And sure, her party had been socialist (so had Tony Blairs, Ehud Baraks, etc) She wasnt advocating socialist policies now, and she was as good a chance as any to move Pakistan away from feudalism. Well maybe Khan was more so, but hes definitely antiUS as quoted above. Perv certainly wasnt democratizing Pakistan - you can dream that he'll liberalize it to make it ready for democracy, a la Pinochet, but that seriously misreads the Pakistani street. Bhutto for whatever selfish political reasons had thrown in her lot with the West and against the Islamists.
#6
Imran's Khan's ex-wife Jemima (daughter of Sir James Goldsmith) relates a story... she noticed their son playing with a one armed "Action Man". She asked what happened to the doll. Her son replied "daddy said he was caught stealing".. Imran's idea of humor...
Posted by: john frum ||
01/28/2008 19:42 Comments ||
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#2
Putting kiddies and wimmen first in demonstrations is a long established arab tactic, they already were doing so during the algerian war, and I recall moroccan troops machinegunning a demonstration back in the 70's (JFM will remember the exact date & circumstances), with thanks allan no loss of actual lives, since the demonstrators had wisely put their human shields in the front. By the way, there was a much greater loss of lives then than anything during the apartheid, but, curiously, no one considered severing ties with morocco and doing an embargo act on it, I wonder why?
#4
RE: Post #3 - In order to effectively invade a country (what do you call the blowing up of borders and the forced entry of hundreds of thousands of foreigners if not an invasion), what you need to do is put the women and children in the front. This way, the people on the border you are trying to get over would be forced to shoot at women and children in order to stop you.
From my email...
by Dr. Emanual Tanay, Psychiatrist
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War ll owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,' but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the ' silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'? History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life. Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems of expand . So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.
Let's keep in mind that the phrase "the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace" is intended to have an effect, not on the terrorists, but on those opposing them. Terrorists reside amongst the people and surreptitiously receives aid from some of them. Attempts to root out terrorists and their supporters are deliberately hampered and stymied by incantations of "don't harm the innocent"! This comes from people who don't give a damn about the innocents harmed by the Terrorists.
#6
'Cowed and extraneous' bordering on violence enablers and accomplices.
Islam is what the world would be if everything were inside-out and backwards. Instead of policing their mess, they run from it and deny any knowledge of the result of their bloodthirst.
#8
Of course, the flip side of this argument is that we only need to kill the fanatics, not all the muzz. Unlike the case of the Nazis, it's fairly safe to say "scratch a muzz, find a jihadi."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/28/2008 13:35 Comments ||
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The Nazis had many fewer supporters/sympathizers worldwide but they possessed concentrated power in a military-industrial national entity.
Radical Islamists had one power base crushed in Afghanistan because it was a technologically backward, impoverished, militarily weak state. Without a single powerful nation which can export their ideology as a "champion", their movement will still present a threat but one which can be dealt with through vigilance and the careful application of diplomacy and force.
So it's really all about Iran. Eliminate that actor from the stage as a major military player without another rising to replace it and the nightmare scenario of worldwide Islamist ascendancy can be restrained.
At the poetry reading in New York
a guy in Armani shouts: I came for poetry, not your politics --
She says -- Global warming, this green morning . . .
She spells out the scientist's name.
I am the "guy in Armani," and I feel I must respond.
The passage above is from a recently published poem, "A Fissure in the World" by Joan Bauer. It describes an incident that occurred at an October 2005 reading from "Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami," a collection edited by Judith Robinson.
It was not a love of verse that brought me to the Bowery Poetry Club. I was the guest of Heather Robinson, Judy's lovely daughter. . . . The mistress of ceremonies, poet Daniela Gioseffi, opened the proceedings with a vulgar rant about Beltway politics -- specifically, her glee over the "fall" of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, then the Republican congressional leaders. (Rep. DeLay had just been indicted, and Sen. Frist was under investigation for insider trading.)
It was then that I said I came to hear poetry, not politics -- although according to a contemporaneous account I emailed to a friend, I said it in a mutter rather than a shout. Evidently I muttered loudly enough to get Ms. Gioseffi's attention, because she replied, expressing incredulity that not everyone at the Bowery Poetry Club would share the same political outlook. I believe I repeated that I came for poetry and not politics -- possibly shouting, as Ms. Bauer reported. Ms. Gioseffi said, "You can't be politically disengaged and be human."
At this point I definitely shouted: "Oh, so people who disagree with you aren't human?" She answered that this was neither the time nor the place for such contention. "I agree," I said. If only she had thought of that before opening her mouth.
The poets got on with their poetry. Midway through, however, Ms. Gioseffi returned to politics, this time in a zanier vein. She blamed global warming for the recent Asian tsunami, whose cause actually was geologic, not climatic. Then she claimed the government was "fussing with the weather" and blowing up "neutron bombs" in order to use the Earth as a weapon. "This isn't paranoid," she assured the crowd, citing a book by someone she kept emphasizing was a doctor. . . .
At the reception after the reading, Heather wisely tried to steer us clear of Ms. Gioseffi, but this proved impossible. The peremptory poet confronted me and demanded: "Are you the man who was laughing rudely while I was talking?"
"I'm the man you said was subhuman."
"There has never been a Republican in here before," she informed me. It seems I had broken a barrier.
"Well," I asked, "if there had never been a Jew in here, would that make it OK for you to say anti-Semitic things?" She told me she was Jewish, which rather missed the point.
Then she said, "You have to be politically engaged if you know the truth, like I do." I started to reply, but she interrupted me, declaring triumphantly: "I won two American Book Awards for writing about these topics!" Case closed. She walked away. . . .
Actually, I doubt that Ms. Gioseffi was right when she said there had never been a Republican in the Bowery Poetry Club. Probably there are a few Republicans with a love for poetry and a high threshold for abuse who endure the latter in order to enjoy the former.
But no more than a few, and you don't have to be a Republican to be put off by crude and hateful political rhetoric. Sure, there is a market for it, or Keith Olbermann and Michael Savage would be out of their jobs. But why must one who seeks elevation from verse be subjected to the degradation of the adverse?
And just for the record, I was not wearing Armani on that day in 2005. My tastes run more to sport jackets from the Syms discount chain and slacks from the Gap. But I suppose "Armani" better fits Ms. Bauer's political stereotype. That's what they call poetic license.
This inspires me to respond in haiku:
D. Gioseffi, poet
"Republicans: inhuman!"
She boldly declaimed
Add your own poems in the comments box.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/28/2008 15:56 ||
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Go ahead. Laugh if you want. No doubt some will say it's a fitting comeuppance for a former trial lawyer. It's not the first time I've been on the receiving end of a lawsuit, but no litigation against me has been successful.
A few years ago, I spoke out against a bureaucrat (who, ironically, was supposed to be promoting affirmative action) after he complained about "Jew lawyers and Jew architects." I thought those words should have cost him his job, or at least led to a request for his resignation. Instead he was demoted and reprimanded, and sued me, apparently because I had the audacity to offer my opinion. Go figure.
While I've come to recognize that such complaints are one of my job hazards, this time it's different. There's a guy I'd never heard of (and whose name I will not repeat) who has plenty of time on his hands because he resides in a federal slammer down South, where he is serving time for wire fraud and identity theft. Alas, he has enough time on his hands to be his own lawyer and launch his own lawsuits. He's claiming I caused him "major mental damage" when I supposedly said, "Anyone who steals credit cards and does identity theft should rot in prison." Evidently it's not his prison stay that caused his "mental damage," but rather my public declarations about criminals that finally knocked him off his rocker.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/28/2008 13:04 ||
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#1
I doubt he'd like my suggestion about what to do with identity thieves any better. But if he is one, at least he wouldn't suffer mental anguish - for long.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
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The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, 
When hyperliberal Sen. 
