Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/05/2008 10:40 ||
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#1
Just another nail in the coffin. The sooner the abomination known as "Pakistan" ceases to exist, the sooner "peace" can be achieved in an enlarged Afghanistan. It will also end the "Kashmir problem", which is another Pakistan-backed insurgency. It's beginning to be pretty obvious that muslims are unable to govern themselves.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/05/2008 15:12 Comments ||
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#2
Pakistan and Afghanistan should be divided along ethinc lines. The Pashtuns in both nations should be one country. The Uzbecs and Tajics in Afghtanistan should join their respective countries. The Baluchi in both countires (and in Iran) should get their own nation as well. That would leave Punjab which could be a nation-state (but might create trouble for Punjabi state in India) and the bits around islamabad.
When 30 years ago I resurrected Flashman, the bully in Thomas Hughes's Victorian novel Tom Brown's Schooldays, political correctness hadn't been heard of, and no exception was taken to my adopted hero's character, behaviour, attitude to women and subject races (indeed, any races, including his own) and general awfulness.
On the contrary, it soon became evident that these were his main attractions. He was politically incorrect with a vengeance.
Through the Seventies and Eighties I led him on his disgraceful way, toadying, lying, cheating, running away, treating women as chattels, abusing inferiors of all colours, with only one redeeming virtue - the unsparing honesty with which he admitted to his faults, and even gloried in them.
And no one minded, or if they did, they didn't tell me. In all the many thousands of readers' letters I received, not one objected.
In the Nineties, a change began to take place. Reviewers and interviewers started describing Flashman (and me) as politically incorrect, which we are, though by no means in the same way.
This is fine by me. Flashman is my bread and butter, and if he wasn't an elitist, racist, sexist swine, I'd be selling bootlaces at street corners instead of being a successful popular writer.
But what I notice with amusement is that many commentators now draw attention to Flashy's (and my) political incorrectness in order to make a point of distancing themselves from it.
It's not that they dislike the books. But where once the non-PC thing could pass unremarked, they now feel they must warn readers that some may find Flashman offensive, and that his views are certainly not those of the interviewer or reviewer, God forbid.
I find the disclaimers alarming. They are almost a knee-jerk reaction and often rather a nervous one, as if the writer were saying: "Look, I'm not a racist or sexist. I hold the right views and I'm in line with modern enlightened thought, honestly."
They won't risk saying anything to which the PC lobby could take exception. And it is this that alarms me - the fear evident in so many sincere and honest folk of being thought out of step.
I first came across this in the United States, where the cancer has gone much deeper. As a screenwriter [at which Fraser was almost as successful as he was with the 12 Flashman novels; his best-known work was scripting the Three Musketeers films] I once put forward a script for a film called The Lone Ranger, in which I used a piece of Western history which had never been shown on screen and was as spectacular as it was shocking - and true.
The whisky traders of the American plains used to build little stockades, from which they passed out their ghastly rot-gut liquor through a small hatch to the Indians, who paid by shoving furs back though the hatch.
The result was that frenzied, drunken Indians who had run out of furs were besieging the stockade, while the traders sat snug inside and did not emerge until the Indians had either gone away or passed out.
Political correctness stormed onto the scene, red in tooth and claw. The word came down from on high that the scene would offend "Native Americans".
Their ancestors may have got pie eyed on moonshine but they didn't want to know it, and it must not be shown on screen. Damn history. Let's pretend it didn't happen because we don't like the look of it.
I think little of people who will deny their history because it doesn't present the picture they would like.
My forebears from the Highlands of Scotland were a fairly primitive, treacherous, blood-thirsty bunch and, as Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, would have been none the worse for washing. Fine, let them be so depicted, if any film maker feels like it; better that than insulting, inaccurate drivel like Braveheart.
The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched over here, too, and at its core is a refusal to look the truth squarely in the face, unpalatable as it may be.
The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched over here, too, and at its core is a refusal to look the truth squarely in the face, unpalatable as it may be.
Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.
It comes in many guises, some of them so effective that the PC can be difficult to detect. The silly euphemisms, apparently harmless, but forever dripping to wear away common sense - the naivete of the phrase "a caring force for the future" on Remembrance poppy trays, which suggests that the army is some kind of peace corps, when in fact its true function is killing.
The continual attempt to soften and sanitise the harsh realities of life in the name of liberalism, in an effort to suppress truths unwelcome to the PC mind; the social engineering which plays down Christianity, demanding equal status for alien religions.
The selective distortions of history, so beloved by New Labour, denigrating Britain's past with such propaganda as hopelessly unbalanced accounts of the slave trade, laying all the blame on the white races, but carefully censoring the truth that not a slave could have come out of Africa without the active assistance of black slavers, and that the trade was only finally suppressed by the Royal Navy virtually single-handed.
In schools, the waging of war against examinations as "elitist" exercises which will undermine the confidence of those who fail - what an intelligent way to prepare children for real life in which competition and failure are inevitable, since both are what life, if not liberal lunacy, is about.
PC also demands that "stress", which used to be coped with by less sensitive generations, should now be compensated by huge cash payments lavished on griping incompetents who can't do their jobs, and on policemen and firemen "traumatised" by the normal hazards of work which their predecessors took for granted.
Furthermore, it makes grieving part of the national culture, as it was on such a nauseating scale when large areas were carpeted in rotting vegetation in "mourning" for the Princess of Wales; and it insists that anyone suffering ordinary hardship should be regarded as a "victim" - and, of course, be paid for it.
That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country's decline.
No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain's entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief.
Probably no country on earth has experienced such a revolution in thought and outlook and behaviour in so short a space.
Other lands have known what seem to be greater upheavals, the result of wars and revolutions, but these do not compare with the experience of a country which passed in less than a lifetime from being the mightiest empire in history, governing a quarter of mankind, to being a feeble little offshore island whose so-called leaders have lost the will and the courage, indeed the ability, to govern at all.
This is not a lament for past imperial glory, though I regret its inevitable passing, nor is it the raging of a die-hard Conservative.
I loathe all political parties, which I regard as inventions of the devil. My favourite prime minister was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing.
This would not commend him to New Labour, who count all time lost when they're not wrecking the country.
I am deeply concerned for the United Kingdom and its future. I look at the old country as it was in my youth and as it is today and, to use a fine Scots word, I am scunnered.
I know that some things are wonderfully better than they used to be: the new miracles of surgery, public attitudes to the disabled, the health and well-being of children, intelligent concern for the environment, the massive strides in science and technology.
Yes, there are material blessings and benefits innumerable which were unknown in our youth.
But much has deteriorated.
The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic.
The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic.
My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British.
Oh how Blimpish this must sound to modern ears, how out of date, how blind to "the need for change and the novelty of a new age". But don't worry about me. It's the present generation with their permissive society, their anything-goes philosophy, and their generally laid-back, inyerface attitude I feel sorry for.
They regard themselves as a completely liberated society when in fact they are less free than any generation since the Middle Ages.
Indeed, there may never have been such an enslaved generation, in thrall to hang-ups, taboos, restrictions and oppressions unknown to their ancestors (to say nothing of being neck-deep in debt, thanks to a moneylender's economy).
We were freer by far 50 years ago - yes, even with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment.
We still had liberty beyond modern understanding because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied to the youth of today.
We could say what we liked; they can't. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of specialinterest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have. We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed PC to scorn, had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist.
We had available to us an education system, public and private, that was the envy of the world. We had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard).
Our children could play in street and country in safety. We had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying and was not afraid to punish it in ways that would send today's progressives into hysterics.
We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.
Above all, we knew who we were and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.
Not any more. I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the past 50 years.
We have had the two worst Prime Ministers in our history - Edward Heath (who dragooned us into the Common Market) and Tony Blair. The harm these two have done to Britain is incalculable and almost certainly irreparable.
Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable.
Short of assassination there is little people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their own way at all costs and hold public opinion in contempt.
I feel I speak not just for myself but for the huge majority of my generation who think as I do but whose voices are so often lost in the clamour.
We are yesterday's people, the over-the-hill gang. (Yes, the old people - not the senior citizens or the time-challenged, but the old people.) Those of ultra-liberal views may take consolation from this - that my kind won't be around much longer, and then they can get on with wrecking civilisation in peace.
But they should beware. There may well be more who think like me than the liberal Left establishment likes to think. When my views were first published in book form in 2002, I was not surprised that almost all the reviewers were unfavourable. I had expected that my old-fashioned views would get a fairly hostile reception, but the bitterness did astonish me.
I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.
But the readers' reactions to the book were the exact opposite of critical opinion. I have never received such wholehearted and generous support.
For the first time in 30 years as a professional writer I had to fall back on a printed card thanking readers for writing, apologising because I could not reply personally to them all.
Most of the letters came from the older generation, but by no means all. I was made aware that among the middle-aged and people in their 20s and 30s there is a groundswell of anger and frustration at the damage done to Britain by so-called reformers and dishonest politicians who hardly bother to conceal their contempt for the public's wishes.
Plainly many thought they were alone in some reactionary minority. They had been led to think that they were voices muttering to themselves in the wilderness.
Well, you are not. There are more of you out there than you realise - very many more, perhaps even a majority.
# Edited extract from The Light's On At Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser (published by Harper Collins)
#1
I just re-stole this excerpt and sent it to a bunch of my friends and relatives. It makes a chain letter worthwhile for once - but it won't catch on like ones that promise a free computer or something.
We're faced with civilizational suicide by a thousand cuts. We're losing the War. It's well past time to strike back. Consider that before you vote in 2008.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
01/05/2008 12:14 Comments ||
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#7
I heard elsewhere a comment to the effect that Flashman could be made into a movie, but only with an eastern European director, filming the English and Irish scenes in eastern Europe and on location in India.
That is, because only an eastern European director could be good enough without the nasty British or US political correctness screwing things up.
Flashman, they noted, while having some comedic elements, is not a comedy. And casting Flashman would be exceptionally hard. While Malcolm McDowell did the sniveling and smarmy parts well, he didn't depict the cowardly, lewd, rude, cruel or mean parts of Flashman as well as he could.
#9
From across the Atlantic, I think I first noticed that American-style PC had infected Britain when back in the 90s I first watched that Brit detective series that starred Helen Mirren (what's it called?). More recently, new episodes of that dismal series have returned to PBS, and I tuned in wondering if the earlier giddy level of PC had been toned down. No such luck. Instead, I was struck by how PC destroys the essence of the detective story, which is Who Dunnit? Because of PC, it is now possible to precisely predict who dunnit from the very beginning of the show, it's always the respectable middle-class white male.
Posted by: moody blues ||
01/05/2008 13:43 Comments ||
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#10
Yes, hell of a dann catch 'Moose.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
01/05/2008 16:23 Comments ||
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#11
Fraser as usual: blunt, straightforward and absolutely spot on. I am so sorry he's gone.
I can't remember the last white male Briton I spoke to who, when speaking of the UK, didn't say something on the order of "I feel like I'm a stranger in my own country."
#12
For those of you not familiar with the Flashman series, a few details that may entice you.
First of all, you can get a used paperback copy at Amazon for $6.58. Second, it is one of the best historical novels you will ever read, the historical part is very accurate, and heavily footnoted. It is an excellent introduction to the world of the 19th Century. About 1/3rd of the original reviewers thought that it was a genuine autobiography of Flashman.
The character Flashman himself was taken from the very popular novel, "Tom Brown's School Days" (1857), by Thomas Hughes. Flashman was an abusive, vicious upperclassman villain who savagely beat the underclassmen until he was thrown out of school for drunkenness.
The Fraser novels begin at the point where he was thrown out of school. He returns to the home of his father in London, who refuses to take him back after he willingly molests his father's mistress. To get rid of him, he buys him a commission as an officer in a lancer regiment in India.
Flashman eventually meets up with the most notorious people of the era, inadvertently being thrust from military disaster to military disaster, yet from his efforts to cowardly escape, he ends up riding into the thick of things, then being honored and rewarded for the heroism deserved by others.
He is a liar, a cheat, a braggart, a coward, a rogue, a scoundrel, a whore monger and occassional rapist, and invariably the pawn of the the brilliant and ruthless in their games of realpolitik.
Importantly, the setting for all of this are some of the greatest battles of human history, from the British retreat from Afghanistan, the Charge of the Light Brigade, through many others including the US Civil War, Fraser's "great lost novel". His adventures take him all over the map.
Highly recommended as an enjoyable history lesson.
#13
What I particularly enjoyed about many fo the Flashman novels was that they took place during Victorian wars that my American education had somehow bipassed or given short-shirft. Tapang Rebellian, Sepoy Mutany, Sikh War, Great stuff all.
#14
See CS Lewis, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast," an essay on muddled thinking and the ancestry of Political Correctness. Lewis wrote this as an addendum to "The Screwtape Lettters" in a new edition in the early 1960s. He saw this coming.
HT No Pasaran!
Warfare: Quick, which nation shows average civilian deaths at 33 a day in the last third of 2007? Now name the one where civilian deaths average 19 a day? If you guessed Iraq and Venezuela, you'd have it backward. Quagmire!
Shocking? Of course. But true. With even Venezuelan officials admitting their country clocked 12,249 murders in 2007, Hugo Chavez's socialist "sea of happiness" resembles a war zone. In December alone, Venezuela had 670 murders while Iraq had 476 and that number is falling fast.
This is Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, the place wildly praised by Hollywood eminentos like Oliver Stone and Sean Penn, and its crime is so bad it tops that seen in actual warfare. Quagmire!
People like Stone and Penn frequently criticize the Iraq war effort and its progress toward peace. But not once have we seen any of them express outrage at the slaughter brought to the streets of Venezuela courtesy of Hugo Chavez, a supposed champion of the poor. Quagmire!
Some champion. On Jan. 1, around the same time Hollywood film director Oliver Stone was loudly praising Chavez's revolution in Caracas, 63 murders started off Venezuela's New Year; 35 died the same day in Iraq.
Stone probably knows this, because anyone who's ever been to Caracas knows all about the severity of the crime. Venezuela is the kind of place where families around the dinner table discuss kidnapping and make pacts to not pay ransom for fear of bankrupting the family. Quagmire!
Meanwhile, night travel is strongly discouraged and no one wears jewelry openly. Security guards pack big firepower to guard tiny businesses like bakeries, and bulletproof cars are common. Quagmire!
Lonely Planet's Venezuela guide warns its hardy-backpacking readers who can put up with anything to never set foot in the dangerous Chavista slums encircling the capital. You risk life and limb to do so. Quagmire!
Meanwhile, it's Venezuela's poor who can't defend themselves who are hit the hardest. Quagmire!
Cuban doctors sent for propaganda purposes to help the poor often flee for their safety, leaving boarded up "free" health care kiosks in Caracas slums like Petare and Catia. Quagmire!
Even low-level Chavista political operatives in red T-shirts fear the rampant violence and crime of the slums. Quagmire!
A perfect movie describing the terror was 2005's "Secuestro Express," which might have been entered for Academy Award consideration if the Venezuelan government, perhaps with Hollywood complicity, hadn't prevented it. Quagmire!
It's not just that there are a lot of crimes. There's also a lot of getting away with it. The government, starting to feel heat from the locals over crime, particularly after El Mundo reported the figures, is on the defensive, saying it's busy solving the crimes. Quagmire!
But most violent crimes go unsolved because the Chavez government is more interested in pursuing "political" crimes like persecuting dissident TV stations and opposition politicians than hunting down the thugs who make Venezuela less safe than Iraq. Quagmire!
The root of the problem isn't just in a government unwilling to catch crooks, but also in Venezuela's growing geographical role as the drug transshipment point to Europe.
Eighty percent of the cocaine reaching Europe via the Spanish and Italian coasts comes from Venezuela. Yet Venezuela cut off all cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, leaving it open to pressure from drug gangs escaping the heat in Colombia.
Worse yet, Jane's Defense reports that Venezuelan military officers, who don't get to share directly in Chavez's theft from the government, are frequently allowed to take cuts of drug traffickers' profits, to keep them loyal.
The result: Traffickers operate freely and multiply inside and outside Venezuela. Quagmire!
Meanwhile, over in Iraq, we are winning the war. The civilian casualty figures are down dramatically, and it's safer to walk around in Baghdad now than it is in Caracas.
The willingness to fight and to win is the difference between the brave Iraqi and American war effort and the festering mess in Chavez's chaotic Venezuela.
It just goes to show that waging war is about winning peace. And not waging it is the way to become another Venezuela. But there are none so morally blind as those, like Hollywood's many friends of Chavez, who refuse to see.
#2
Mr. Wife went on a business trip to Caracas a few years ago. After spending several days shuttling between the hotel and the corporate offices with his team, he wished to have a few drinks in the bar across the street. However, the hotel staff insisted on getting him a taxi to take him there, as it was too dangerous for him to walk across the street alone. In the end he gave up -- very different from his previous visits to that country, which he'd greatly enjoyed -- not least on account of the many beautiful women there. ;-)
The admonition, by Socrates, to always beware those who opine about that which they do not know is as perfect of a description as one is likely to get of the demands by the Lebanese opposition.
They claim to be democratic but act as authoritarians, they speak of plurality but seek to impose their narrow vision of political reality, they preach the need to establish institutions but scheme to destroy them and they take every opportunity to promote the need to respect rights, law and order when in practice they act as transgressors. It is not the self described label that counts, individuals and organizations are to be judged by their deeds. Lets not forget that the most ruthless dictators on the planet dispense injustice and promote misery under the guise of Democratic republics.
Any political minority is free to make any kind of demands, no matter how onerous or irrational these demands might be , but no minority is ever entitled to impose its conditions on a popularly elected majority. Once the demands set by a minority-political group are not met then the group in question should simply decline the opportunity to join the government and should work through the established institutions and processes to affect legislation, appeal to more voters and hopefully gain more parliamentary seats in the next election.
... but no minority is ever entitled to impose its conditions on a popularly elected majority.
In Lebanon, unfortunately, such common sense and logical thinking appear to have been hijacked by those that have already hijacked the Chamber of Deputies, the Constitution, citizens rights, sovereignty and law and order. A demand, any demand, during political negotiations is no more than the price that one group is attempting to exact from the other for agreeing to support the overall policies of the larger group. If for any reason the price is deemed to be high then the offer is rejected and the transaction is not executed. Only an undemocratic organization, an underground group mentality, will adopt the view that the buyer has no choice but to pay the price that it is demanding and that the search for a substitute is prohibited.
The lack of logic is furthermore compounded in the case of the Lebanese opposition. As if it is not enough that they want to force themselves on the ruling party they also demand that the ruling party offers them the right to veto any legislation. And unless their demands are totally met they will prevent the ruling party from carrying forward its constitutional responsibility to do the peoples business. Such behavior is simply tantamount to extortion and must be totally rejected on political as well as rational grounds.
At what level of representation does a minority earn the veto power? Is it at 25%, is it at 35% or is it always entitled to the veto power irrespective of its popular support? What are the bench marks that need to be met in order for a minority to earn the right to impose itself? Would the above conditions be operable if the roles were to be reversed, say in two years time and if that is so then what is to be accomplished by holding elections? It is clear that the current opposition in Lebanon has no interest in the Lebanese project but is merely setting up conditions and obstacles in an effort to destroy that which it claims it wants to preserve.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Lebanon was created in the process of France & Britain dividing the Turkish empire. It's a completely artificial creation, which never worked as a country, and never will.
In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan observed of Huck that "his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture."
She's right. It's not the economy, stupid. The economy's fine. It's gangbusters. Indeed, despite John Edwards' dinner-theater Dickens routine about coatless girls shivering through the night because daddy's been laid off at the mill, the subtext of both Democrat and Republican messages is essentially that this country is so rich it can afford to be stupid â it can afford to pork up the federal budget; it can afford to put middle-class families on government health care; it can afford to surrender its borders.
There is a potentially huge segment of the population that thinks homo economicusis missing the point. They're tired of the artificial and, indeed, creepily coercive secular multiculti pseudo-religion imposed on American grade schools. I'm sympathetic to this pitch myself. Unlike Miss Noonan, I think it's actually connected to the jihad, in the sense that radical Islamism is an opportunist enemy that has arisen in the wake of the Western world's one-way multiculturalism.
In the long run, the relativist mush peddled in our grade schools is a national security threat. But, even in the short term, it's a form of child abuse that cuts off America's next generation from the glories of their inheritance.
Posted by: Excalibur ||
01/05/2008 11:27 ||
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#2
Glad to have her here and see that she is reading some of the local stuff. Like many Americans, I have that Achille's heel of "wanting to be liked" - I hope she likes some of what she has found here. This is a good book - first one to really make me realize how different it is to be up against a tribe.
An attempt by leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to win friends and influence Muslims is alienating another group evangelical Christians.
Reactions have been negative and strong. Islam expert Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo has called it a betrayal and a sellout. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary (Southern Baptist), termed it naiveté that borders on dishonesty.
Others are just beginning to hear of it. In November, NAE President Leith Anderson and NAE Vice President Richard Cizik signed onto a Christian response to an invitation to dialogue from 138 Muslim leaders around the world.
Their response initiated by Yale Divinity School and endorsed by other liberal Christian leaders apologized for the sins of Christians during the Crusades and for excesses of the global war on terror, without mentioning Muslim atrocities. It appeared to leave the fundamentals of Christianity especially the deity of Christ open for discussion.
It even seemed to acknowledge Allah as the God of the Bible. Before we shake your hand in responding to your letter, it stated, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.
The very name of the Muslim communiqué A Common Word between Us and You is from a verse in the Quran that condemns people of the Scripture (Christians) for alleged polytheism (the doctrine of the Trinity).
Mohler said the agreement sends the wrong signal and contains basic theological problems, especially in marginalizing Jesus Christ. He also condemned the apology for the Crusades.
I just have to wonder how intellectually honest this is, he said. Are these people suggesting that they wish the military conflict with Islam had ended differently that Islam had conquered Europe?
Neither Anderson nor Cizik could be reached for comment. On the NAE Web site, Anderson asserts he signed the letter as a private individual, although he is identified as NAE president. He also seems to acknowledge problems with the statement.
Sometimes we all sign onto things that are not all that we would like them to be, Anderson wrote. Even after we write and say our own words, we discover that we wish we had done better.
Gary Bauer, president of the Campaign for Working Families, told CitizenLink the NAE leaders have left the (card) table without their pants that is, theyve been taken and may not even realize theyve been taken.
Bauer said he already was dismayed by the NAEs recent controversial excursions into questionable areas such as global warming.
Many of us have been concerned about the NAE getting into all sorts of areas where it has had no previous expertise, Bauer said. And now, Im afraid, I see signs that theyre going down the same road that the National Council of Churches is going.
The National Council of Churches has embraced liberal causes and is affiliated with ultra-liberal groups, such as MoveOn.org and People For the American Way.
Sookhdeo called for Christian leaders who signed the letter to withdraw their names, saying the confession of guilt puts Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk.
I find it difficult to understand how senior evangelical leaders in the West can join hands with other Christians who actually are betraying the Christian faith (and) their Christian brothers and sisters in the Muslim world, he said.
Posted by: tipper ||
01/05/2008 04:13 ||
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#1
Muslims want free exercise of religion here, while they deny it to minorities in their savage homelands.
Muslims are under murderous obligation to believe that Jewish and Christian texts are Satanic distortions of original Islam. Abraham - actually a Chaldean - is held to be the first Muslim.
As a group, Muslims are passive when they are weak, and aggressive when strong. The evangelicals who make league with that mortal enemy appear to suffer the delusion that fighting a common enemy - secularism - with Muslims will strenthen Christianity. In some universities, Muslims are taking control of public areas, and using same to prostrate to their fictitious deity. Lenin had his useful idiots; Muslim imans own Jews and Christians.
#2
This almost sounds like a segment from the Book of Revelation, rendered in a non-abridged detail.
Naiveté? My ass. They just did welcome their Islamic overlords, hoping that they get some special considerations for services rendered when new rulers take charge.
#4
Or burned at the stake. That works for me too. I am speaking historically, you understand, I am not say these Huckabee voters Christians should be thrown to the lions or some such. Though the lions do look a bit peckish. Just saying.
#11
Church leadership cadres in most US churches only seem to be concerned about figuring out how to promote or save gay clergy. Makes one wonder about the folks who gravitate toward administration in churchs.
#12
I was alarmed until I read the list of evangelicals. Bill Hybels, Willow Creek Church, The Billy Graham Institute in Wheaton, Rick Warren and Saddleback Christian Church, and the Navigators are not dhimmis, will not betray their faith, and most certainly are not naive! These signees are the ones we want to dialogue with Muslims. The Crusades were barbaric, especially the Children's Crusade, and it is well past time to move on in history. Like Islam, Christians must first warn the unbelievers.....
#13
uh huh, thanks Danielle, but that doesn't fly here. Let Saudi open a church and we can have a dialogue. Until then, they can FOAD, but not IN MY NAME.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/05/2008 14:11 Comments ||
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#14
Gee Dannie anyone that signed that surrender Yale BS is a Dhimmi and the Crusades were civil compared to Muhamhead's 77 murderous battles he himself took part in.
Don't know much about the middle east history do you? That's OK I'm sure KOS will have you.
#15
Turns out you can send an e-mail to this morons under the "sign this petion" section.
I can not even begin to explain the amount of sadness I have over you people. Islam was founded in bloodshed and demands our conversion, enslavement (Dhimmitude) or murder. It has been this way since Muhammad left Mecca and began his reign of theft, murder and pedophilia.
And to call our God the same as the Islamic pagan moon god shows pure naiveté on your parts.
Folks the hole in the ground in New York wasnt done by radicals it was done just as the Koran calls for.
Sickened,
Mica
#16
Let's all be up front and totally clear here. Jesus is Lord, allan IS NOT, and muhammad is NOT a prophet. If you can't say that, you can't be part of the discussion. Period.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/05/2008 18:33 Comments ||
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#17
M. Murcek: that's what I believe, but I'm not willing to say that "if you believe different - end of story". I know a lot of Jews, Hindus, Buddhists that I would otherwise have no issue with, who don't belive what you wrote, but they aren't trying to kill me or impose their religion. I can live with them in peace. Others? Not so peaceful
I'm sure you meant something clearer.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/05/2008 18:54 Comments ||
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#18
Here:
"Let's all be up front and totally clear here. Jesus is Lord, allan IS NOT, and muhammad is NOT a prophet. If you can't allow to let me say that, you can't be part of the discussion. Period."
A new crisis is emerging, a Global Food Catastrophe® that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.
"It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard."
Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.
"The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.
We are living in an era which could be termed a crises crisis.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/05/2008 7:22 Comments ||
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#4
There are always upsides. The developed world can shrug and say to the underdeveloped world "You can have all the food you need, just use GM crops."
#5
Another way to look at it.
My cousin took her 30K acres (Montana) out of wheat and put it into hay BECAUSE the insurance companies would never make good on a crop failure for any legitimate reason. She just said the hell with it and feeds her cattle the hay.
Now if insurance companies were honest - at a minimum - that would be another 30K acres of hard spring wheat to make pasta.
Now multiply it by other disaffected farmers and what is in set-asides.
#6
There is an oil to food dependency. If there is an oil supply interruption for a few weeks people won't be able to drive to the store to buy food. If the interruption is for a few months there won't be any food in the store to buy. Not so much in the food producing countries, but in the vast swathes of food importing countries in Asia and Africa.
#7
You forgot Tractors, Harvesters and Combines, all use fuel of some sort, mostly Diesel, some Gasoline, and a few compressed LNG.
No Fuel, no food, simple as that, there aren't enough horses, oxen etc, (Much less the old animal-drawn equipment left around, museum stocks are vanishingly small at best, the Amish will do OK, no-one else will)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/05/2008 14:57 Comments ||
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#8
The United States grows enough food to feed its people and export food around the world on just 2% of the land area. At the turn of the 20th Century in 1900, more than 40% of land was used to grow food. There are more trees in the United States today than there were in 1900. There are more houses, roads, etc., than ever. I don't think there's a food shortage in the United States, and probably won't be. The problem is that third-world farming methods use incredible amounts of land to produce very little in the way of food. Transportation and distribution methods are wasteful, and storage is a major problem. Government interference (a la Zimbabwe) contributes heavily to the food "shortage".
We have plenty of food. We could have considerably more. European bureaucracy keeps American food off the shelves, and pushes up food prices in Europe, hitting the poor the hardest. Politics and corruption keep food from the poor in the rest of the world. It's not a food problem, but a government problem. Change the government to something that works for everyone's betterment, and there will not be a "food" crisis.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/05/2008 15:40 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
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
dominated Mexico for six years.
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.
