Month: January 2008

The Ron Paul Revulsion

This online journal is somewhat of a backwater in the blogosphere — I am read mostly by other bloggers. I chalk this up to usually measuring out to Post-graduate in reading level of articles, and the stories I do require non-general knowledge to understand the content and context. If you are here for the buzz then I would say that what I write about won’t be the buzz until sometime in the future.

So I was a bit surprised by the comments received on three articles – usually I am lucky to get any, but these articles all received 30+ comments each. Two of the articles dealt with white supremacist political groups in Belgium and Europe, and the third was this one, dealing with the plethora of kook-pundits supporting Ron Paul.

So consider this a follow-up link for my previous Ron Paul article. Over at Revolusion 2008 they’ve cut and pasted some comments from the Ron Paul forums where Ron Paul activists come to grips with the probability that Ron Paul did write those things, and they decide to lie about it. This shows you the utter mental dysfunction and lack of credibility of the average Ron Paul supporter.

After the TNR posting of Ron Paul’s past writings it’s not his character that’s in question anymore — instead it’s revealing the thorough lack of character and conscience of his supporters as they scramble to rationalize racism. The sun has dawned on why tea-cup racialists, racists, and self-proclaimed nazis such as Don Black, Bill White, etc. are supporting him.

More at Little Green Footballs

Al Qaeda Attacks on Israel Foiled; AQ Roundup

Al Qaeda’s desperation to score a big attack is becoming more obvious as once again they violate the principles of cell-structure and fail. In Egypt a 14 member Al Qaeda “cell” was captured by authorities – but 14 is more a squad than a cell.

The dangerous part of this is that the squad was comprised of 12 engineers and two Egyptian army officers who were planning terror attacks with remote drones. Their leader had met with an AQ operative from Afghanistan in Saudi Arabia, and the terror operations appear to have still been in the planning stages. The timing is notable – these arrests were made in November, but Egypt is just now releasing the information ahead of President Bushe’s visit. From Ynet:

About two months ago Egyptian authorities arrested a 14-member terror cell comprised of engineers and army officers that were planning to carry out a series of al-Qaeda-linked terror attacks against Israel, Al Jazeera reported Saturday.

Quoting local security sources, the report said the cell members – 12 engineers and two officers in the Egyptian army – were planning to assemble an unmanned aircraft to attack targets inside Israel.

The report said the cell manufactured rockets similar to those being used by Palestinian terror organizations, which were meant to be launched toward Israel from inside Egyptian territory.

The report quoted the local security sources as saying that the cell’s commander, an engineer at Alexandria University, had visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, where he met with Afghan nationals with apparent links to al-Qaeda.

Al Qaeda is really back to their start – leadership confined to Pakistan for the most part, working with the ISI generated terror splinter groups and the Muslim brotherhood groups where Al Zawahiri got his start in Egypt.

 They increasingly become more irrelevant to the general populace, but they are persistent and will eventually get lucky in one of their attacks. Nobody should be taking them one whit less seriously than we did the week after 9/11, we must be more persistent than they and continue to demolish them in total, and that must of course include all of the AQ aligned terror groups in Pakistan, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood root-groups in Egypt. The Pakistani groups were spun up by the ISI for differing purposes, mostly to expand Pakistan’s borders and to destabilize their neighbors. The Egyptian groups are the start modern Islamic terror, it goes back to Said Qutb.

The Pakistani groups such as Lashkar e Tayyeba (Taiba, Toiba) and Harkut ul Jameya Islami (various spellings here as well,) have long been out of all control and now have turned on their creators like Frankenstein’s monster. It’s time for the villagers in Pakistan to start lighting torches.

Other Al Qaeda News:

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 21 Al Qaeda Killed in Iraq Bombing Runs

Mauritania Extradites AQ Operatives

Yemeni Al Qaeda Vow to Free Captured Operatives

Germany Probes Al Qaeda Threat

Scotland Yard Sees AQ Links to Bhutto Assasination, Mehsud Tape Real. (This agrees with my initial assessment that Zawahiri gave the order & Baitullah probably performed the logistics.)

Eiffel Tower Terror Plot Foiled

eiffel_tower_6.jpgPortugeuse air-traffic controllers intercepted garbled short wave transmissions from Islamist Terrorists and interupted a plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower in Paris France Thursday.

 More from This is London:

The 1,060ft high tower has more than six million visitors a year – an average of more than 16,000 a day.

A successful strike on the 7,500 ton iron tower, which was looked down on Paris since 1889, would be a French 9/11 and could cost thousands of lives.

The threat was uncovered in a “vague and muffled” radio conversation picked up by air traffic controllers in Lisbon on Thursday.

It comes after a spate of other threats made in recent days on the websites linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terror network, calling for the “brothers of Islam to strike Paris”.

Egyptian Man Sells Wife’s Kidney on Black Market

In the Islamic world where lax medical mores lead to less-than-Hypocratic oathes and principles, a man drugged his wife, and sold her kidney in the organ black market. The fact that he is treating his wife like property in the worst way should not surprise anyone, that also is endemic in the Islamic world.

Story from AFP:

 CAIRO (AFP) — An Egyptian woman has brought a case against her husband for allegedly drugging her and arranging for one of her kidneys to be removed and sold on the black market, local media reported on Saturday.

A judicial enquiry has been launched in the Nile Delta town of Menufiya after Warda Mohammed el-Banna said her husband Saad Helmi had her operated on after a pretend motorcycle accident, the opposition Al-Wafd daily said.

Her husband allegedly gave her a glass of drugged orange juice and said they were going out to see relatives. The woman said she passed out en route and woke up in a private hospital in the up-market Cairo district of Heliopolis.

He explained her scars by saying she had been operated on after they had an accident, but a few days later Banna started feeling weak and tests revealed she was missing a kidney.

 Some use the excuse of poverty for actions like this, but compared to the rest of the Islamic world, Egypt is generally middle-class.

dailytimes-kidneyforsale.jpgIt’s not like this situation in Pakistan for instance, the sign says “Would you buy my kidney please?” in Urdu. Story from Darwaish at All Things Pakistan.

This also puts those occasional “will work for food” signs you see held up by fat winos in the US into perspective.

By Demons be Driven

This next essay reprise echos and continues the theme of the last – that AQ, MB, HuT, and the other Jihadists are not in search of Calipha, but rather for temporal power here and now. This is especially true now as they have turned on Pakistan, and the people of the first state founded as Islamic. As they worked in Iraq, they are now working in Pakistan. You see the rise of attacks on fellow muslims, as well as sectarian strife. You see political differences picked at and infected by vile ideals. You see the new attacks on the Ahmadiya, the Christians, going on in the background of the attacks on the Government of Pakistan.

Serving the faith
Abduction the oath
It lies in wait for the offering
Religion is old
For drawing the young
Purity withers and dies
Never return to the ones that provided
Children draining parents of will
I hold out my hand to a bloodless child
I’m taken by the one I was saving from death

By demons be driven
Beckon the call

In Iraq the news has been disheartening of late, we see civil strife but in reality it goes beyond that, in Iraq they are by demons driven. Over time the people will recognize this evil, as Osama Bin Laden has gone from being the scion of Allah to being the scourge of demons.

215 killed in coordinated car bombings has the classic earmark of Al Qaeda, the Sunni insurgent attack on the ministry was a pure grab at power; the institution attacked used to be run by Sunnis – again this attack was probably inspired and encouraged by Al Qaeda.

AQ is pretty deft at harnessing the sectarian, class, and race divisions within the Islamic world to create their havoc, they learned well from the Soviets, and I have no doubt that Zawahiri and Bin Laden have both read “The Prince”, “On War”, “The Art of War” and all of the other classic military and revolutionary texts and handbooks.

When Al Qaeda kills the children of Allah, the devout, the Umma, then their struggle can no longer be jihad and instead becomes the old, cold and calculated struggle for pure power that the Islamic world is so familiar with. 

This struggle will be with us a long while as the Islamic world transitions from feudal  to post-feudal to modern. While we can sneer at the time it’s taking, going from the Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights spanned 576 years, and there was plenty of strife in-between. The period from the end of the American Revolution until the Bill of Rights was passed covered 8 years; in Iraq we have unending second guessing when the same can’t be done in three years.

In Iraq the Sunni are the dispossessed — like the Loyalists of the American Revolution, many have lost their power, and some their possessions, postions, and place in society.

After the revolutionary war in America, greater than 30,000 Loyalists left the country for homes in Canada, the Bahamas, and other places under the crown. While there were some efforts by the new government to return property, those efforts were so delayed that they amounted to no compensation. In the end the British crown compensated the Loyalists, and made homes for them.

Had this not been done, and had third parties continually instigated, the US could easily have had as bad a period of strife post Revolutionary war as the Iraqi’s are experiencing now. In the end it boils down to land and wealth – as it almost always does. Everyone needs a place to call their home, their property, their wealth, their capital.

For the hard-core Sunni insurgents in Iraq, those not willing to adapt and join the new Iraqi democracy, similar efforts must be undertaken. It’s my sincere hope that Vice-President Cheney’s visit to Saudi Arabia hopes to accomplish some of this. If some hard-core Sunni elements do emigrate, then it takes the devil’s tools out of Al Qaeda’s hands.

Most accomplished military commanders throughout history have left a clear path of retreat for their enemies at battles, for in the end genocide is not the goal — victory and peace are the goals.

For the Iraqis who will remain, and for those neocons whose spines have de-calcified to jello: liberty is always ugly and bloody at birth, it takes perseverence, pain, and an adamant backbone. Do not loose your spine as some in the US have done, for that is a certain path to failure when you have already won freedom.

Do not by the demons of Al Qaeda be driven, do not beckon the call.

Ancient Enemies

From November last year, Analysis of the other roots of Jihad that lie beyond hate of Israel and the US, such as tribal nationalism, economics, expansionism, class envy, and of course which particular sect is most Muslim, and therefor tops the caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut Tahrir, Al Qaeda, and other Jihadist groups are experts at leveraging these flaws in the Muslim world to their benefit.

In conflict resistless each toil they endur’d
Till their foes shrunk dismay’d from the war’s desolation.
And pale beam’d the crescent, its splendor obscur’d
By the light of the star-spangl’d flag of our nation.

– Francis Scott Key 

guards.jpgThe tribes of Araby and the tribes of Persia have fought since times ancient. When Alexander conquered Egypt the Arabs flung open town gates and flogged the Persians out as he passed for the Persians were more hated than the new conquerers.

Today we see no change — Sunni and Shia are again at odds for ascendency in the Middle East, egged on by prideful despots. As one power rises the other will fall; both held fast in hatred and enthralled to tyranny.

Occasionally there are interlopers in their internecine wars, the Greeks, the Jews, The Romans, The Americans; but when it comes to precedence of place their pride feels its greatest sting when their ancient tribal enemy rises above them.

We are at such at time again – and in four countries the strife between these ancient enemies threatens to overthrow stability and four existing governments. The pattern of these struggles remains constant throughout history — the land always ruled by tyrants, opposed by rebellious mystics wrapping themselves in twisted religion who are abetted by the neighboring tribes driven by timeless emnity.

Centuries ago the west freed themselves from rulers tied to deity with the Magna Carta and many bloody that birthed modern liberty, the Reformation, and the Renaissance. In Islamic lands there’s been no reformation, no declaration of individual rights, no rendering unto Ceasar. Instead it’s the dictator, the monarch, the tyrant, the despot tied to Allah who still rules.

When rule is based on Allah’s will, and all are slaves to the state and Allah both, then government is weak, for it takes little to convince ignorant slaves that you know Allah’s will better perhaps than the current ruler. All the despotic kingdoms and dictatorships of the Middle East are like feathers upon the sand, awaiting the deathwind of the next religious fanatic.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan we see two parliamentary governments under attack by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their political arm, the MMA. The MMA, upset with passage of the Women’s protection bill, threatens to resign and disable the weak parliamentary government in Pakistan ruled by the party of Musharraf. Musharraf in turn recently escaped three attempts to assassinate him. Neighboring states aid the terrorists, Iran, India, and of course both Pakistan and Afghanistan agitate against each other.

In Lebanon we see fledgeling democracy being throttled by the political thugs of Hizb’Allah, who are also threatening to resign from parliamentary government and hold the citizens of Lebanon hostage. A head of state was assassinated, and Hamas is aided by neighboring states.

In Iraq we see the Sadrists threatening resignation, and holding the fledgling Iraqi democracy hostage, egged on by Al Qaeda. Many heads of state have been assassinated, and the Mahdi Armies are aided by neighboring states.

In Palestine we see Fatah and Hamas near civil war, with no real ruling authority. Thanks to the Israelis, the Hamas and FATAH factions don’t have to assassinate each other – a tip to the IDF gains them what they need. Hamas and FATAH are aided by neighboring states.

In each case above you glimpse the ancient emnity and you see tactics exactly the same. You see a political arm backed by a terrorist militia, aided and abetted by neighboring tyrants and madmen. Do you wonder that the tactics are the same, the timing the same, and the aim the same? You really shouldn’t.

By pointing to external enemies these tyrants survive, they externalize all problems and make others the reason for the dirt, dust, death, and despair in their lands. They point to America and Israel as the great satans; for there really are two enemies more ancient even than these and they side with one, while America and Israel side with the other.

Liberty must always oppose tyranny, freedom must always oppose slavery. And so you have it that America has fought at least three wars against these tyrants. The first was at the birth of our nation, and below you see the first famous song written by Francis Scott Key:

“Warrior’s Return”

When the warrior returns from the battle afar
To the home and the country he was nobly defended,
Oh! Warm by the welcome to gladden his ear,
And loud be the Joys that his perils are ended!
In the full tide of song, let his fame roll along.
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng.
Where mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Columbians a band of thy brothers behold!
Who claim their reward in they heart’s warm emotion:
When thy cause, when thy honour urg’d onward the bold,
In vain frown’d the desert; in vain rag’d the ocean.
To a far distant shore to the battle’s wild roar
They rush’d they fair fame and thy right to secure.
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
In conflict resistless each toil they endur’d
Till their foes shrunk dismay’d from the war’s desolation:
And pale beam’d the Crescent, its splendor obscured
By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation.
Where each flaming star gleam’d a meteor of war,
And the turban’d heads bowed to the terrible glare.
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Our fathers who stand on the summit of fame,
Shall exultingly hear, of their sons, the proud story,
How their young bosoms glow’d with the patriot flame,
How they fought, how they fell, in the midst of their glory.
How triumphant they rode, o’er the wandering flood,
And stain’d the blue waters with infidel blood;
How mixt with the olive the laurel did wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
Then welcome the warrior return’d from afar,
To the home and the country he so nobly defended.
Let the thanks due to valor now gladden his ear,
And loud be the joy that his perils are ended.
In the full tide of song, let his fame roll along.
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng.
Where mixt with the live the laurel shall wave
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.
New York Evening Post, January 9, 1806, Boston Independent Chronicle, December 30, 1805

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Walter Tevis, from who I borrowed some phrasing above, Walter originally wrote:

“My life is light, like a feather upon the back of my hand awaiting the deathwind.”