Wednesday, March 19, 2008

We've got him now

Osama Bin Laden has threatened to attack Europe over the publication of the Muhammed Cartoons in a recent audio recording. The Washington Post reports:

The five-minute speech was the second time in four months that bin Laden has delivered threats to European countries. He made only one oblique reference to President Bush -- calling him "your aggressive ally . . . who is about to depart the White House" -- and instead addressed his remarks to "the intelligent ones in the European Union."

The al-Qaeda leader criticized European countries for joining in military campaigns in Muslim lands. Although he lamented those actions, he suggested that the Muhammad cartoons were even more immoral and that retaliation was coming.

The rule of thumb in a fistfight is when you land a blow which makes your opponent yell, hit him there again. And the louder he yells the more you hit him in that particular area. Osama Bin Laden has just said "ouch".

Doubtless there will be those who will argue that Bin Laden's warnings are a reason to suppress publication of the Cartoons, either to demonstrate our moral superiority or to manifest our sensitivity; every precept of political correctness argues to cease and desist. That would be a big mistake.

What makes the Mohammed Cartoon attack on radical Islam so potent that Bin Laden himself must oppose it, is two things. First, anyone can make fun of radical Islam. Second, the Cartoons are aimed at the weakest point of the Jihad: it's sources of authority. It is paradoxically true of all organized nihilisms that they rely upon their unquestioned authority to negate. For example, whereas Bolshevism could regard humans as expendable, dogma was sacrosanct. The real message of organized nihilism is that "everything is permitted" except to make fun of nihilism itself. Every act is lawful in radical Islam: to bomb markets, kill children, lie, cheat and steal. Everything: except to publish the Mohammed Cartoons.

I argued that the Islamic reaction to Geert Wilders converted every paintbrush, chisel and computer into a bomb. Islam has to suppress every affront to Mohammed lest Mohammed be shown to be impotent against affront. As in the pulp tales of travelers transgressing upon lost cities, death must follow the blasphemy of the local idol or the local idol, not the traveler, loses face. What Geert Wilders has done is draw a line in the intellectual sand which he invites everyone to cross. And Osama Bin Laden must on no account allow anyone else to cross for fear of what will follow: inflatable Mohammeds, Numa-numa Mohammeds, or Allah forbid, Gay Mohammeds.

Many pixels have been burned out arguing that the distributed Islamic insurgency is invincible. But what about distributed resistance? What about distributed blasphemy? How long will Osama Bin Laden's dogma survive that?

It's Radical Islam's worst nightmare: a Swarm directed against authority. Without the authority of Mohammed, not only Wahabism but the world itself falls to pieces. Spengler, arguing that radical Islam is a form of atheism or at best pantheism, quoted Benedict XVI's Regensburg assertion that in Wahabism's view, Allah is entirely arbitrary. Reality subsists on Allah's unknowable will; upon Allah's inscrutable authority.

For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here [Professor Theodore] Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that "nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice" idolatry.

It is this separation between reason and beauty on the one hand, and Allah's will on the other that permits Wahabists to describe mass-murder and outrage as "holy". It's holy because Allah commands it; and for the Faithful, Allah commands it because Muhammed says he did. Caricature Muhammed and the whole system falls to the ground. Spengler's commentary on Benedict XVI's observation is worth repeating:

Allah is no more subject to laws of nature than the nature-spirits of the pagan world who infest every tree, rock and stream, and make magic according to their own whimsy. The "carried-forward idea of the unity of God" to which Rosenzweig refers, of course, is the monotheism carried forward in outward form from Judaism, but dashed to pieces against the competing notion of absolute transcendence.

As Rosenzweig observes, "An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place, a Hobbesian war of each aspect of nature against all. Contemplation of nature in Islam is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It is not surprising that Islamic science died out a generation or two after al-Ghazali.

That's why Bin Laden focuses his ire upon the Muhammed Cartoons, leaving his criticism of Iraq almost as an afterthought. Bin Laden has laid down the line against the Cartoons because he has to. It's a threat to his power-core; and even within his fully operational Ummah Battlestation he feels a great distrubance in the Force. And by so doing, he's revealed the Jihad's greatest weakness. He fears freedom; fears individuals unrestrained by the bonds of political correctness. And he fears, as anyone who has noticed his dour mien should have guessed, scorn and laughter above all.

We've got you now.



Ha-ha-ha.


We're coming for you in our tragedy and glory.




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102 Comments:

Blogger RightWingNutter said...

Mel Brooks: Humor is just another defense against the universe.

In commenting on The Producers he said something to the effect that the best defense against people like Hitler is to laugh them to death.

He was on to something.

3/20/2008 12:22:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

I've said it many times before that Allah is not of the same concept as God the Creator.

Maybe we're tuned into the same muse, my friend. See, I had an insight just a few hours ago that suggests sometime far more important to us than whether or not God the Creator exists or not. (I am sorry but some believers will think this blasphemous, but that is not my intent.)

There is Something Eternally Undeniable that allows each of us to not only defeat Islamofascism, it provides us the scorn needed to defeat all tyranny over the mind of every single man.

3/20/2008 12:55:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

The idea that we are made "in the image and likeness of God" implies that to a certain minimum extent, God is knowable. That there is enough commonality for comprehension to be possible.

At the heart of Benedict's Regensberg remarks were a dialogue between Paleologos and his Muslim interlocutor.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man ...

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature.

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?


In other words, Paleologos was arguing that if the Koran commanded men to spread God by the sword then the Koran perforce did not come from God, or Allah if you prefer.

Benedict's little talk in Regensberg contained a ticking intellectual bomb.

3/20/2008 01:07:00 AM  
Blogger Jonathan Levy said...

Has anyone else seen this animation? It's been around since March 2006 at least.

Warning: Offensive languange.

http://www.zipperfish.com/toons/yaafm/yaafm-12-muslims/

It's got some flaws, and is sometimes unnecessarily crude and offensive, but as comedy it's brilliant, and it contains (if I may presume) exactly the combination of mockery and defiance that Wretchard is thinking of.

3/20/2008 01:09:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

I truly don't want to mock anyone's religion, even if I don't agree with it. But if war has been declared and declared on me, then better that I mock than that I kill or be killed. Though both may eventually happen.

3/20/2008 01:15:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

You may well have struck the mother lode.

3/20/2008 01:22:00 AM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

Ridicule is a powerful weapon of warfare. It can be a strategic weapon. The United States must take advantage of it against terrorists, proliferators, and other threats. Ridicule is vital because:

It sticks.

The target can’t refute it.

It is almost impossible to repress, even if driven underground.

It spreads on its own and multiplies naturally.

It gets better with each re-telling.

It boosts morale at home.

Our enemy shows far greater intolerance to ridicule than we.

Ridicule divides the enemy, damages its morale, and makes it less attractive to supporters and prospective recruits.

The ridicule-armed warrior need not fix a physical sight on the target. Ridicule will find its own way to the targeted individual. To the enemy, being ridiculed means losing respect. It means losing influence. It means losing followers and repelling potential new backers.

To the enemy, ridicule can be worse than death. At least many enemies find death to be a supernatural martyrdom.

Ridicule is much worse: destruction without martyrdom: A fate worse than death.

And they have to live with it.
-- J. Michael Waller

Distributed Resistance sings, it does.

3/20/2008 02:16:00 AM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

Weaponized ridicule distributed over YouTube.

3/20/2008 02:33:00 AM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

Ridicule WORKS!

3/20/2008 02:37:00 AM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

An honor-shame culture doesn’t deal well with humiliation and total pwnage. Fanatics hate being laughed at.

3/20/2008 02:45:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

Groan. My reading and proof reading ability diminishes late at night.

My comment at 12:55AM should read:

...something far more important to us than whether or not it is a fact that God the Creator exists.

3/20/2008 02:49:00 AM  
Blogger lewy14 said...

My wife remarked, back in 2002 when Bin Laden was pinned down at Tora Bora, that ideally the Marines should return triumphant with a trophy - not Bin Laden's head, but his pants.

If they could capture him, pants him, video tape the whole thing, and release it to the world, he would be neutralized more effectively than by any other means.

Sadly, pantsing the enemy is likely a violation of international law.

3/20/2008 03:59:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

A science fiction writer on crack couldn't have come up with a 7th Century turd hiding out in the wilds of Pakistan threatening Europe and the Pope over a new Crusade because of some innocuous cartoons published in a small town newspaper. What a silly world we live in.

Joseph Ratzenberger was not mocking Islam by quoting the Byzantine. He was raising the broader issue of how a rational person could arrive at Allah by reason when Allah demands that reason always be subsumed to obedience.

He didn't say it but it's not that a great a leap to recognize that Islam requires man to surrender his mind and his humanity to the will of Allah. I think what's what Ratzenberger was getting at when he asked "what has Muhammad contributed to humanity"?

Ratzenberger is a first class intellectual and his Regensberg address raises many more philosophical issues than its one paragraph mention of Islam.

3/20/2008 04:33:00 AM  
Blogger RWE said...

So Bin Laden says “No more Mr. Nice Guy….” I’m terrified.

Any of y’all ever read the Dean Ing novel “Soft Targets?” It came out in the mid-80’s and is about the rise of Islamic terrorism in the U.S. and the response formulated to it – which was to ridicule it.

However, it presupposed the assistance of the international media, who would fearlessly print and broadcast those depictions.

By all rights we should have Jay Leno saying “You know, Bin Laden does the work of three grown men. And their names are Moe, Larry and Curly.”

Instead they are ridiculing the man who said “You are either with us or with the terrorists.”

3/20/2008 04:37:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

It is this separation between reason and beauty on the one hand, and Allah's will on the other that permits Wahabists to describe mass-murder and outrage as "holy".

...

The idea that we are made "in the image and likeness of God" implies that to a certain minimum extent, God is knowable.

Sadly, complete confusion of cause and effect. God is made "in the image and likeness of our culture", not the other way around.

We are knowable, so God is knowable, and God is like me, and you. Personally a laughing stock, it doesn't say much for God. But consider how bad God would be if I was a Muslim. Er,... that's it.

The point about laughing at Mo is that you are laughing at their CULTURE. This is bigger that God.

Don't you think they know this?

But am I being boring? Do tell.

ADE

3/20/2008 04:42:00 AM  
Blogger What is "Occupation" said...

I told you so...

It me...

pork rinds for allah...

You fight the enemy that attacks you based on HIS beliefs, not truth...

If they hate pics of mohammed? set of picture drawing camps...

If they are scared of pig's flesh? bury their dead terrorists in the skins

If they are scared by women's sexuality? Provide porn cd's

This is a war they started...

which is fighting dirty?

wrapping bacon on a dead terrorist?

or chopping the head of daniel pearl? nick berg?

3/20/2008 04:50:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

bigger thaN God

So God's human, all too human.

ADE

3/20/2008 04:51:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When I get some time- probably not for a few months- I'm going to make some flyers of the Mohamed cartoons, and go around putting them up on telephone poles, power boxes, fences, like people do with flyers for bands and concerts. Or like that guy Robbie Conal who used to put up posters mocking Reagan administration officials. He was considered quite the daring guerilla artist. I'm hoping I won't get arrested, if I do I hope some conservative public interest lawyer will defend me. I won't be looking to the ACLU for help.

3/20/2008 05:10:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

I think it was Einstein who remarked that the most astounding thing about the world was that we could understand it at all. And this is because it can be compressed, expressed in a shorter notation than mere ennumeration.

The fact that reality isn't purely random allows us to know things. When we gaze outward into intergalactic space we assume that hydrogen is hydrogen wherever it is and not some new element whose properties depend totally upon location. If the world were completely arbitrary then mathematics, pattern recognition, physical laws -- all would be useless. The only thing a scientist could do would be to catalogue the infinite instances of unrelated phenomena. That is what a Wahabist universe looks like.

But alas for them, information exists; and because we share in the image and likeness of reality we can comprehend it somewhat. And so, we know. We comprehend. And I can write these words and you can understand them. Anyone who knows the pattern can understand them. And except for dyed-in-the-wool dialectical materialists, for whom everything (if he considered it, including himself) is conjury, words tend to have intelligible meanings instead of infinitely variable denotations. And therefore knowledge can exist apart from the Koran; understanding is possible without Mohammed. And blasphemy against Mohammed becomes the logical consequence of the truth.

A science fiction writer on crack couldn't have come up with a 7th Century turd hiding out in the wilds of Pakistan threatening Europe and the Pope over a new Crusade because of some innocuous cartoons published in a small town newspaper. What a silly world we live in.

You can carry on a perfectly consistent conversation with a madman by matching his bid and raising. Once I was warned against the budol-budol gang in the Philippines, who I was reliably informed, could mesmerize a person with a hypnotic stare. Rather than say it was nonsense, and that budol-budol men didn't exist, I produced a pair of shades and solemenly announced that such mesmeric stares would be deflected by my mirrorized G-15 Ray ban sunglasses. It made sense in that universe and everyone nodded in agreement. And I'm proud to report that no one has hypnotized me since.

Osama is worried that our magic is stronger than his magic. And he would be right.

3/20/2008 05:12:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

But Pork, where's the joy?

Have a look at this, from the world's most irreverent, the Aussies.

ADE

3/20/2008 05:17:00 AM  
Blogger Elmondohummus said...

FYI, Wretchard, Jawa Report makes an argument that the Bin Laden video is based on old speeches. Link here.

3/20/2008 05:47:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

"The Devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked." Thomas More

3/20/2008 05:52:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

W, you are worlds apart
The fact that reality isn't purely random (W: supposition on your part, but you know that, and you'll ditch it at the first sign of evidence) allows us to know things. When we gaze outward into intergalactic space we assume that hydrogen (if you know what hydrogen is) is hydrogen wherever it is and not some new element whose properties depend totally upon location. If the world were completely arbitrary then mathematics, pattern recognition, physical laws -- all would be useless (but they are not useless, so they have credibility - cause and effect - your world view is working, others isn't). The only thing a scientist could do would be to catalogue the infinite instances of unrelated phenomena. That is what a Wahabist universe looks like (YES).

But alas for them, information exists, (as does denial); and because we share in the image and likeness of reality (fundamental point of departure) we can comprehend it somewhat. And so, we know. We comprehend. And I can write these words and you can understand them. Anyone who knows the pattern can understand them. And except for dyed-in-the-wool dialectical materialists, for whom everything (if he considered it, including himself) is conjury, words tend to have intelligible meanings instead of infinitely variable denotations. When your cultural world view is other than Western, everything appears as magic, oppression, imposed - the refrain of the left).

ADE

3/20/2008 05:54:00 AM  
Blogger jeyi said...

Forgive for going slightly OT here, but just last week, our friends the Saudis chose not to support the international protocol -- proposed, as I remember, by the Organization of Islamic Conference-- against "offending religious beliefs" because that would conflict with the holy obligation to suppress such outrageous idolatries as Buddhism.

3/20/2008 05:59:00 AM  
Blogger What is "Occupation" said...

ade, love the mufti muzzle....

but what we need to do is instill FEAR in the 7th century islamic savage...

smoke and mirrors in a modern sense...

In christian europe for centuries the church taught the faithful that jews would kidnap host crackers and torture the crackers, thus actually torturing the body of christ...

thus thousand of REAL humans, that were jews, were slaughtered because the savages of europe were stupid and sheeplike...

but now, thanks to the movable press and certain other things, most jews dont worry about host torture or gentile bloodletting for matzo making (except in russia and the middle east)

it's time to USE the beliefs of the savages of islam to MOCK, torture and fuck with their minds...

Create CD's that show HOW the Illiterate mohammed COPIED and Changed the Torah and New Testament...

Create CD's that show animation of the Prophet having sex with camels...

Create Magic to destroy their cult of personality..

sound sick?

maybe...

but at times when knowledge is hidden on purpose to keep the savages steeped within their control, knowledge must be released...


from the catholic church HIDING the dead sea scrolls from the jews and yes their own flocks

to the palestinians reinventing history

to the falseness of the untraintian papers

to the book of mormon

to the q'ran

all must be exposed

all must be documented so that even the barefoot natives can understand...

the purpose is not to destroy different people's faiths (look at mel gibson's passion of the christ) it's to create an penalty for VIOLENCE against the those that wish to murder us because we dont believe

3/20/2008 05:59:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

FYI, Wretchard, Jawa Report makes an argument that the Bin Laden video is based on old speeches.

Bin Laden could be dead. And yet the fight of ideas echoes on and not the less for it. You thrust past the target, follow through beyond the ball. "I believe in the Holy Spirit ... the Communion of Saints." Memes live on and so does our part of the resistance. For Bin Laden, know that it is not your body which is corrupt, but your ideas. And we should not rest until they are not only discredited, but funny.

3/20/2008 06:00:00 AM  
Blogger Elmondohummus said...

Agreed. The ideals are already bankrupt; it's just a matter of convincing the Islamic world of that.

Anyway, if the jihadists are going to resurrect the words of a dusty corpse (assuming he's really dead), then there had better be true wisdom and an adherence to reality to those words. We quote Churchill for a reason, and mock bin Laden for the same. Churchill's words reflected a recognition of the reality of what the Nazi's represented as well as a positive vision that allowed the people of his nation to overcome the threat they embodied, a threat to everything the West stood for. In contrast, bin Laden's words provide little more than thin substance, a vomit of deluded ideals combined with anger and a fantasy imposed on God contradicting the love for reason Pope Benedict identified in God and discoursed upon in his speech.

The followers of bin Laden worship a dead, moldy ideal in their embrace of Jihad, even if the man pushing those ideals is still alive himself (For the record, I don't think I agree with the Jawa Report's conclusion that he's dead. All they've really proven is that the propogadists have recycled old material, that's all). Mockery of such outmoded philosophy is just the beginning of the resistance.

3/20/2008 06:51:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

Pork but what we need to do is instill FEAR in the 7th century islamic savage...

Pork, they are in a paroxysm of fear. Their world is up. They know it. Beautiful women, they can't handle. Beautiful goats, phoarrr!!! But what happens when the goats run out through competition with Westerners?

The Indians move ahead. The Chinese move to control Darfur. The Japanese are in a world they cannot begin to dream about. The Brazilians move to supply China. And then there is Israel, always Israel, the slap in the face. Failure for them all around. The collapse of a world view. And so a culture dies. Darwin.

And with the world view, Mo collapses. And with his death, innocents die, as the diehards believe that they have God-given insights. Delusional.

And so evolution favours the pragmatic, the evidence-based.

Belmonteers, really.

ADE

3/20/2008 06:52:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

Speaking of Churchill...

A recent poll of young adults in Britain concluded that something like 20% of this group believe that Winston Churchill is a purely mythical figure created by the British government.

This fully supports my assertion that about 20% of any given population is somewhere between hopelessly deranged and outright sociopathic. It doesn't say much about the prospects of the long term success of democracy when you consider that these nutjobs get to vote.

3/20/2008 07:05:00 AM  
Blogger Mike said...

As RWE commented, Wretchard's thesis presupposes the cooperation of the media, artistic and entertainment communities, which so far has been less than forthcoming. Obscure internet film-makers and a handful of cartoonists aren't going to do it, not any time soon anyway. The majority of the media, along with most artists, are more concerned with ridiculing those who warn of the danger from radical Islam, and they refrain from attacking Islam lest they be seen as taking sides with those they like to ridicule.

There are a few notable exceptions – I'd love to see the guys behind South Park and Team America go after Bin Laden more overtly, for example. At the more 'highbrow' end of the scale, Martin Amis has done a great job over the last few years of calling Islamic extremism for the unmitigated evil that it is. Unfortunatley, he's pretty woolly on the solutions; he's against the Iraq war but pro-Afghanistan, and his big idea for defeating radical Islam appears to be the 'feminisation' of the religion. Good luck with that Martin.

3/20/2008 07:20:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

Pascal Fervor said...

I've said it many times before that Allah is not of the same concept as God the Creator.
//////////
God the creator elohim is a plural singular (we)construction
According to wikipedia:

* In one view, predominant among monotheists, the word is plural in order to augment its meaning and form an abstraction meaning "Divine majesty".
* Among orthodox Trinitarian Christian writers it is sometimes used as evidence for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This is regarded as fanciful by some secular linguists and some biblical scholars.
* In another view that is more common among a range of secular scholars, heterodox Christian and Jewish theologians and polytheists, the word's plurality reflects early Semitic polytheism. They argue it originally meant "the gods", or the "sons of El," the supreme being. They claim the word may have been singularized by later monotheist priests who sought to replace worship of the many gods of the Canaanite or Semitic pantheon with the Hebrew singular patron god YHWH alone.
////////////////
I'm a christian. So I go for option 2. However, I tend to think there is some truth in option 3 because of the evidence presented by the dead sea scrolls. What those scrolls show is that the book of Enoch (and the book of Jubilee) up to the destruction of the second temple --was a part of the old Jewish bible. In the century or two after the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD jewish authorities held conventions to decide what was -- and was not --a part of the old testatment. Enoch didn't make the cut. The book of Enoch is chalk full of angels and demons. So its reasonable to infer that Jewish authorities wanted to emphasize the oneness of God.

Catholics and protestants took their cue from Jews on the book of Enoch and don't include it in the old testament. The only place you can find it today is in the old testament bible of the Ethiopian jews.

to read further arguments on the matter google elohim plural singular

3/20/2008 07:20:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

If I were in charge of generational foreign policy (as if there were such a thing) I would do everything possible to improve the health and economy of Ethiopia and a few other select African nations, train their military and arm them to the teeth, and beyond, so that Black Africans could push the Arabs out of Africa.

Islam will never be extinguished if we wait around for Muslims to suddenly get some sense. Islam and Arab culture are so inextricably intertwined that the only way to extinguish Islam is to completely discredit Arab culture by crushing out of existence the African Arab states.

That probably puts me in the 20% nutjob category but it's difficult to imagine human progress moving much beyond today's boundary without eliminating its major obstacle - Islam.

3/20/2008 07:31:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

plural singular (we)construction
/////////
(we) is not a good example of the confusion as to the meaning of "Elohim."

A better example might be the word "people" where people is used interchangeably with persons or peoples.

3/20/2008 07:41:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

peterboston

Peter, I know I'm a bit heavy on this thread tonight, but logical errors get to me.

Training black Africans so that Black Africans could push the Arabs out of Africa is already happening. We don't need to train them, we just need to let them drink Coke, listen to Reggae, perve on topless Eurobabes, and make them White (mentally).

And so the war will be won.

This war, which will go for 25 years, is about culture. After that, Darfur will be the financial capital of Africa, because over the phone, we will not see colour.

All the rest is floss.

ADE

3/20/2008 07:53:00 AM  
Blogger Zenster said...

The al-Qaeda leader criticized European countries for joining in military campaigns in Muslim lands. Although he lamented those actions, he suggested that the Muhammad cartoons were even more immoral and that retaliation was coming.

This only goes to show how much more fearsome and dangerous our right of Free Speech is compared to conventional war. Why is Islam so scared of Free Speech? Islam simply cannot abide it and survive.

Moreover, it goes to prove Whiskey_199's point that nobody knows what will trigger Islam's fatal random number generator. Something even less obvious than the Motoons could suddenly be found even more offensive and used as justification for launching a nuclear attack. This unpredictability is a significant reason why all Muslim majority countries must be prohibited from possessing nuclear weapons.

RightWingNutter: Mel Brooks: Humor is just another defense against the universe.

"If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win. That's what they do so well; they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter--they can't win. You show how crazy they are."

— Mel Brooks —


Personally, I'm still waiting for my Koran toilet paper.

3/20/2008 07:53:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

ade

When the next great building project in Khartoum is a cathedral - then it's happening. Africa is still generations from overcoming crushing health and economic burdens. Not until then.

3/20/2008 08:10:00 AM  
Blogger ADE said...

Peter,

You're right on time frame.

You might be right on the definition of "success criteria" (a Cathedral in K), but that's not my definition.

Mine is that I can talk to a call centre in K, and they sound like you. It will happen, and I'll like it.

ADE

3/20/2008 08:47:00 AM  
Blogger Pangloss said...

I was mining the same Spengler vein back in December.

Consider the Pantheistic universe. Every stone, plant, bird, breeze, cloud, and pond has its own motive spirit, pneuma, or daimon. The moon, the sun, the earth, night, space, and the stars, all have their own motive spirit, demigod, or god. All these spirits can and do choose to do what they will. The material world is subject to the whims of supernatural spirits, and the sorcerer practices magic to dictate by force the choices of petty spirits and use trickery, blood sacrifice, and pleading to convince the powerful spirits to intervene on his behalf. There is no natural law, no science. Nobody knows if the sun will rise in the morning tomorrow. The sungod might be killed while passing through the underworld, he might drink of the river Lethe and forget his role as the sun, or he might refuse to ascend to the sky in a fit of pique. The strong man who can exert his will by force and blood is feared and admired by all. Learning, other than magic and sorcery, is suppressed.

The pantheist society is the classic pagan society, characterized by blood feuds, blood sacrifice, despotism, and constant low-level warfare.

Compare with Islam. Allah is a magic-worker. There is no natural law in the universe under the rule of Allah, only the raw stuff of chaos, malleable in His omnipotent, omnipresent magic, and all mankind can do is despair at His power and man’s worthlessness in His shadow. All man can do is fall in abject submission before Allah and pray to be spared when He indulges His whims to destroy lives, families, and nations. The strong man who forces others to bend to his will is admired by all. Others submit like slaves to him. Learning, other than memorization of the Koran and Ahadith, is nothing more than suspect trickery.


And Allah is revealed as an almighty sorceror, much like Cthulhu, an evil worker of magic who cares not for the fate of Man.

3/20/2008 09:04:00 AM  
Blogger joe buz said...

"we just need to let them drink Coke, listen to Reggae, perve on topless Eurobabes, and make them White" (mentally).
all toghether now:
Chant down Babylon one more time!

3/20/2008 09:39:00 AM  
Blogger RattlerGator said...

Wretchard, as someone who is not often exposed to classical music, I want to thank you for including that YouTube piece.

Absolutely beautiful.

3/20/2008 09:40:00 AM  
Blogger RWE said...

“And we should not rest until they are not only discredited, but funny.”

As I think I have said in these pages before, in answer to the question “How will we define victory in the War on Terror?” The answer is:

“When Jewish comedians can present a play on Broadway entitled ‘Springtime for Bin Laden’ to sell out crowds.”

But no… they are instead presenting plays called “How to kill George W. Bush” and similar topics. Thus, we ain’t won yet.

I must admit that I don’t know if the artistic class are merely cowards or stupid cowards.

3/20/2008 10:33:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

bin Laden's latest struck me as being a "booga booga!" moment, too. Silly little terrorist.

It also strikes me that in the Saudi's voting down the proposed anti-free speech legislation that the world's Muslims were going to try to inflict on the rest of us to prevent "ridicule of religions", there is also an "ouch" moment.

I have a feeling the real reason for them voting down this UN-proposed legislation is that it's finally dawning on them that we are NOT going to back down on the issue of free speech, no matter how much they whine, seethe and "booga booga!" us.

However, the overt reason given for the vote is equally fascinating: that if Muslims insist that we respect their religion and not laugh at it, then they are duty-bound to respect our religions, too, including Judaism, Hinduism and Buddism.

Further, wise Saudi imams are afraid that in "respecting" religions other than Islam, Muslims may be moved to convert once they become familiar with gods and sins that do not include the pantheon spelled out in the Koran.

In other words, Saudi Muslims are willing to take the chance that the West will keep on laughing at Mohammad *if* they can keep their Arab brethren ignorant about the details of all the world's other religions.

Ouch.

3/20/2008 10:43:00 AM  
Blogger LarryD said...

Another quote from Spengler:
It would be misguided to file this away as a curious relic of Medieval theology without direct bearing on the spiritual character of Islam. On the contrary, the absolute transcendence of Allah in the physical world is the cognate of his despotic character as a spiritual ruler, who demands submission and service from his creatures. The Judeo-Christian God loves his creatures and as an act of love makes them free. Humankind only can be free if nature is rational, that is, if God places self-appointed limits on his own sphere of action. In a world ordered by natural law, humankind through its faculty of reason can learn these laws and act freely. In the alternative case, the absolute freedom of Allah crowds out all human freedom of action, leaving nothing but the tyranny of caprice and fate.

This part of Judeo-Christian theology goes back to Moses Maimonides and Saint Thomas Aquinas. As Jonathan David Carson puts it:

... God works, at least most of the time, through the laws of nature, via causes. Just as our wills can be both free and subject to God, and divine foreknowledge does not foreclose the contingency of earthly events, God and nature cooperate in the production of effects.

Thus, nature both has its own laws and remains subject to the will of God. The laws of nature place no limitation on the freedom of God, and science can investigate natural causes without trespassing in the divine realm. Indeed, science, by investigating the operations of nature, simultaneously elucidates divine providence. Far from being "unlawful," science is, in this view, completely compatible with the worship of God, indeed more than simply compatible because it is the product of a desire to know God, a desire even for a divine intimacy.


And this is why the West has developed science and technology, while the Muslim world stagnated. As an article of faith, we believe that the universe makes sense.

3/20/2008 11:35:00 AM  
Blogger Eric Norris said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

3/20/2008 11:56:00 AM  
Blogger steel342 said...

"A science fiction writer on crack couldn't have come up with a 7th Century turd hiding out in the wilds of Pakistan threatening Europe and the Pope over a new Crusade because of some innocuous cartoons published in a small town newspaper."

Wrong. Douglas Adams could have!

3/20/2008 12:00:00 PM  
Blogger steel342 said...

"A science fiction writer on crack couldn't have come up with a 7th Century turd hiding out in the wilds of Pakistan threatening Europe and the Pope over a new Crusade because of some innocuous cartoons published in a small town newspaper."

Wrong. Douglas Adams could have!

3/20/2008 12:00:00 PM  
Blogger Eric Norris said...

Well, if it's funnies we need, let's get started.

There once was a boy named Mahomet,
Who liked to—I’d rather not comment:
I’ll just allude
To the fact he was nude
And the horse that he rode was named Comet.

Mahomet's best friend was Osama.
He liked to dress up like his momma;
He’d close his cave door
And don a chador,
And dance around, giggling, to Madonna.

3/20/2008 12:02:00 PM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

larryd

Averroes replied to The Incoherence of the Philosophers in The Incoherence of the Incoherence, so al-Ghazali, whose views inform Reliance of the Traveller in particular and mainstream Islam in general, attacked Avicenna, one of the two greatest of the "Islamic philosophers," who was defended by the other, Averroes.

And we are told by the entire decrepit establishment that we should honor the "Islamic philosophy" of the Golden Age!
American Thinker article

Thanks for that link. I concur in the "decrepit establishment" description. Almost every Mideast Studies Department will hold up Averroes and Avicenna as the protectors of Aristotle's philosophy, and who did so while their European contemporaries were capable of nothing better than slopping pigs.

I am more than a little surprised that the mainstream body of Western history operates as if the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire never existed. Well it did. Greek was the primary language and they indeed preserved the writings of their ancient Greek forebears just as they had spent centuries integrating Greek philosphy into their Christian Orthodox culture. That Aristotle was largely absent from European thought for several generations was because Islamic pirates had made a Mediterranean voyage a death or slavery sentence.

Arm the Africans. Let us be done with these people.

3/20/2008 12:11:00 PM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

may our mothers be bereaved of us if we fail to help the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)

http://www.jibjab.com/view/160856

"Osama--Yo Mama"

Osama - yo' mama didn't raise you right
When you were young she must have wrapped yo' turban too tight
She should have kept you home on those arabian nights
It's plain to see - you need some therapy

3/20/2008 12:46:00 PM  
Blogger Benj said...

We published the following piece along with the Danish cartoon it comments on at FIRSTOFTHEMONTH.ORG back in the day. Got spammed so bad that we still haven't really recovered our call and response capability there...Anyone interested in the history of humor/blashphemy and Western humanism might check the work of Bakhtin - "Rabelais and His World" in particular - hard to read through B.'s special jargon but he was one of the really great minds/scholars of the 20th Century...

Stop Breaking Down

By Fredric Smoler

One of the cartoons which my local newspaper has refused to print shows two veiled women, their staring round eyes, all that can be seen of their faces, expressing alarm, while a bearded man, apparently the Prophet, with a bar obscuring his eyes, his features otherwise visible, radiates a chilling and furious certainty. It is a pretty good cartoon: it raises the question of who is blinded, and to what, and who has been silenced, and how. It does this with remarkable economy, and with compassionate if mirthless wit. As economical if mirthless jokes go, it isn’t a patch on the one represented by the editors, academics and politicians who claim that reproducing that cartoon is a mistake more or less equivalent to threatening to murder whoever drew it.

This claim generally involves what someone once called the Mucius Scaevola school of argument—there is an awful lot of on the one hand, on the other hand. On the one hand, bad to provoke and offend, on the other, bad to threaten murder and commit arson, to seek to destroy liberty of expression, to impose one’s taboos on everyone, everywhere, with threats of massive violence. Sometimes the claim is not so even-handed: the recklessness and cruelty of the first act was frivolous and inexcusably stupid, whereas the second act was moved by powerful principle and honest moral passion. In the New York Times, the reliably contemptible Stanley Fish opined that insofar as a commitment to free speech, ‘an abstract principle’, is a moral commitment, one that differs from the sterner morality of those who wish to murder heretic and blasphemers, “the difference…is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.”

It is not always clear—it is rarely clear—precisely what Fish is arguing; the sneering itself usually seems to be the point. In the Guardian, Ronald Dworkin argued that “The British media were right, on balance, not to republish the Danish cartoons…the public does not have a right to read or see whatever it wants no matter what the cost…”. But Dworkin boldly alleges that it would be improper for a government to suppress the republication of the cartoons: we have a right to see them. It is not wholly clear how we are to exercise these rights when editors, in Dworkin’s view prudently, bend to the threats of murderous mobs, but an ability to consider things separately when they are inextricably connected is the wag’s definition of the legal mind.

Fish, hilariously, is a professor of law, as is, less hilariously, Dworkin. The New York Times and the Guardian are newspapers. The Chinese, who possess neither academic freedom, nor a free press, nor the rule of law, nonetheless possess a useful proverb: never smash your own rice bowl.

3/20/2008 01:05:00 PM  
Blogger Zenster said...

Wretchard: Islam has to suppress every affront to Mohammed lest Mohammed be shown to be impotent against affront.

This is the classic "Glass Jaw" on a monumental scale.

I think it was Einstein who remarked that the most astounding thing about the world was that we could understand it at all.

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."

— Albert Einstein —


therefore knowledge can exist apart from the Koran; understanding is possible without Mohammed. And blasphemy against Mohammed becomes the logical consequence of the truth.

As with he who tries to please everyone, much the same can be said of the ultimate One Size Fits All nature of Islam. If the boots are too small, chop off some toes. If the pants lags are too long, get out the rack. Inflexibility renders most things brittle and prone to catastrophic failure. That Islam's massive superstructure can be threatened to its very core by a mere handful of cartoons drawn in one of the world's tiniest nations speaks volumes about Muslim fragility.

3/20/2008 01:29:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Thanks Zenster for the kind remarks.

Wretchard I would argue that instead of bin Laden or AQ's weakness (bin Laden may or may not be dead) it's OURS.

Bin Laden sees a great weakness in the West. He's using that weakness to exert control. He like WANTS cartoons or whatever. It produces more outrage and support for himself. And the prospect of inflicting with relative impunity a great deal of violence on the West, particularly helpless, weak Europe, and extorting money, power, territory from them. Up to autonomous regions inside Europe (as prelude to dismembering most European states).

He has taken Europe's measure and seen that they will not fight but will surrender. This measure induces them to surrender.

Europe cannot control all points that will piss off AQ. Even censoring or imprisoning Wilders and the cartoonists won't prevent the next ice cream swirl or something else to be deliberately seized upon. As evidence of offense and a point to demand groveling, obedience, control, money, and power from Europe.

A Europe inclined to lob a few nukes into Pakistan (or many) to "settle the matter" would not be so attacked. And eventually that is where they will go. Denmark, France, and Italy together could create nukes capable of destroying about 3/4 of the 170 million Pakistanis in a few years if they really wanted to.

We are seeing two forces collide. AQ wants control over a weak and will-not-fight Europe. Europe does not want to fight but cannot afford to surrender (it would provoke a Cromwell or Napoleon). Disaster for all around.

3/20/2008 01:49:00 PM  
Blogger RWE said...

Relative to LarryD’s “why the West has developed science and technology, while the Muslim world stagnated.”

A friend of mine, a USAF pilot, described an instructor pilot’s experiences with teaching a certain Arab student. The student would screw up, as all students do, and then throw up his hands and say “Allah has it!”

Now pilots frequently describe God as their co-pilot, and on at least one occasion a pilot was heard to say over the radio “Okay, God, I have it now”after a particularly hairy event, but actually turning loose of the controls is taking the concept of a divine crewmember a bit too literal.

Eventually the Arab student got to the point where he was considered safe to go solo. And sure enough, on final approach he let Allah have it again.

And Allah is a pretty piss poor pilot, as it turns out. The student was killed.

3/20/2008 04:19:00 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

LOL
:)

3/20/2008 04:31:00 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

Look ma, no hands.

3/20/2008 04:39:00 PM  
Blogger Tom the Redhunter said...

I disagree that the cartoons further bin Laden's goals, whiskey_199, but I certainly understand your reasoning.

And you may be proven right.

My thought though is that bin Laden only wins if he can prevent them from being published. This would show his strength and the weakness of the West.

On the other hand, if we keep publishing them it will show that the West can't be intimidated and that we're willing to stand up for free speech.

So bin Laden and other radical Muslims only "want cartoons" in the sense that it gives them something that they can try to keep from being published.

3/20/2008 05:13:00 PM  
Blogger Ymarsakar said...

Wretchard I would argue that instead of bin Laden or AQ's weakness (bin Laden may or may not be dead) it's OURS.

Bin Laden sees a great weakness in the West. He's using that weakness to exert control.


Whatever weaknesses he sees are also weaknesses of humanity. Since he is also human, last time I checked, our weaknesses are his weaknesses.

Some differences in the tribal mind vs the civilized mind comes into play, yes, but human weaknesses are constant, not really all that variable.

He like WANTS cartoons or whatever.

Just cause you want or wish for something doesn't mean you'll like it when you get it. That's also another weakness of human nature.

3/20/2008 06:40:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

The weakness is an appetite for being bullied. For paying the Danegeld. For being without any recourse to threats from abroad, and a distant abroad.

Osama or AQ let's be clear has the ability to hit all of Europe. Over cartoons.

All of Europe has ... no ability to hit back. They will HAVE TO in the short run surrender to AQ. In the long run that surrender will cause a counter-reaction and cause a re-armament. Disastrous all around. But there you have it.

3/20/2008 06:49:00 PM  
Blogger Doc99 said...

Sammy's rants deserve a proper response. Fortunately, that response has already been written:

French Soldier: I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Sir Galahad: Is there someone else up there we can talk to?

French Soldier: No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/quotes

3/20/2008 07:26:00 PM  
Blogger Meremortal said...

My only surprise is that this idea has taken so long to catch on. It is obvious that mockery will destroy Islamic terrorists. I want to see Rage Boy lying panting with exhaustion in the street, surrounded by Mohammed cartoons posted on every streelight near him. Mock incessantly, unceasingly, until they collapse. As they will, for there is no answer to mockery in their world. They can't kill everyone. They can't stop the mockery. They will implode.

3/20/2008 08:20:00 PM  
Blogger Zenster said...

Meremortal: Mock incessantly, unceasingly, until they collapse. As they will, for there is no answer to mockery in their world. They can't kill everyone. They can't stop the mockery. They will implode.

ONE MORE TIME.

Fifty or sixty years ago? Sure, mockery would do just fine. WE ARE NOW IN THE AGE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. We no longer have the luxury of such genteel methods as ridicule and lampooning. Islam must be crushed and damned soon. Pakistan's tenuous control of its own nuclear arsenal should be enough to give any competent military planner conniption fits. We do not have a few decades to wait. We have less than TEN YEARS to turn this situation around before total Hell breaks loose.

All Muslim majority countries must be denied access to nuclear weapons until Islam has been neutralized. Nothing less will do. Anything short of such a policy will permit Islam to inflict sufficient damage upon the Western world that even the most brutal retaliation will not change how civilization will have been mutilated, possibly beyond all recognition.

I would sooner see every Muslim on earth perish than endure even a single major Western metropolis being immolated by an Islamic terrorist nuclear attack. WE HAVE TOO MUCH TO LOSE. The sandswept MME (Muslim Middle East) cesspits are already so close to the stone age that they have little more to sacrifice save their populations. Something they are all too ready to do. Need I remind you of Khomeini's 1980 speech in Qom?

We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.

You DO NOT ridicule such insanity. You DO NOT mock such psychosis. You KILL IT in sufficient quantities whereby such concentrated evil no longer constitutes a threat. We can do this by targeting Islam's aristocracy or resign ourselve to genocide on an unheard of scale. Those are the options.

Again, Islam has nothing to lose. We have the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Louvre, the Uffizi and myriad other irreplacable troves of genius that must be retained to inspire further generations of artisans yet to come.

Permitting Islam to vandalize even one such treasue is an unpardonable sin. We have worked far too hard merely so some Neanderthal cretins can bull their way through the China shop of Western heritage.

Put another way: How many of these incalculable jewels of civilization are you willing to see immolated as the price of kick-starting dormant Western intervention?

My own answer? Not a one.

3/20/2008 10:58:00 PM  
Blogger Utopia Parkway said...

I suggested this the other day when I said: I sometimes wonder if a broad campaign to humiliate, insult and ridicule particular Arabs (say the Hamas leadership) would help to reduce their stature in their constituent's eyes. OTOH, animated gifs of OBL screwing a goat don't seem to have helped.

Should the Israelis be dropping the mohammed cartoons onto Gaza? Maybe if they replace Mo's face in the cartoons with Hanniya's that would help.

In order for this to be a widespread campaign it needs to spread by the net. The US govt can't be seen to be a part of it, although the CIA could do worse than make a bunch more Achmed the dead terrorist videos with arabic, persian, and pashtu subtitles, and post them on youtube.

In the end we can make the terrorists' heads explode.

3/20/2008 11:04:00 PM  
Blogger Derek Kite said...

Ultimately, the only power anyone has is fear.

Looking at the totalitarian regimes of the last century, it's amazing the lengths they went to in hunting down inoffensive and harmless groups that didn't fear the state. There are stories out of Nazi germany where members of the firing squad shot themselves after executing a prisoner who showed no fear.

Bin Laden and the Islamists have been successful at getting the west to run scared.

Without the fear, they are nothing.

Great post.

Derek

3/20/2008 11:28:00 PM  
Blogger Nomenklatura said...

This latest communication from Bin Laden is so absurd that I'm expecting his next one to be a demand for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

He's always had too much of the 'Austin Powers' about him.

3/21/2008 12:54:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

zenster

Not an historical certainty but a very good possibility that Muslims destroyed the Library of Alexandria. The Muslim commander who ordered the destruction is reported to have said that "If the material in the library contradicts the Koran than it is heresy and must destroyed, and if it confirms the Koran than it is only a distraction and must be destroyed."

It reportedly took six months to burn this accumulation of human knowledge in the campfires of the Muslim soldiers.

3/21/2008 01:38:00 AM  
Blogger watimebeing said...

Let me see if I have this right?

"we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."--Ann Coulter

No? Well maybe some traditional vaudeville routines, a la A Funny thing happened on the way to the forum.

Musical numbers with questionable lyrics interspersed with Koranic toilet humor? Heck yeah, that would be sure to bowl them over.

If they had a sense of humor they wouldn't be such fanatics in the first place. No we have to make fun of Osama Bin Laden and his take on the messages of Muhammed. And help those who don't find the humor in his stance (formerly called the Arab Street) to see the ridiculousness of it, they can extrapolate from there.

3/21/2008 02:26:00 AM  
Blogger ledger said...

Dr. McCoy to Captain Kirk: “He’s dead, Jim”

I agree with Elmondohummus that Bin is most likely dead.

He only lives on in archives of Al Jazeera. He pops-up from those old tapes when the rich oil ticks see the need for him to do so. And, they use is “young jihad” look as a psychological weapon and to rally his flagging troop.

Are we week?

I would guess so given how easily it is to infiltrate the MSM and cause them to deliver psychological warfare (the same Paliwood) to our homes.

We should have found out who those MSM people are that aid bin Laden's buddies and give them a pounding. But, we have not.

Now, ridicule is a good tool to fight those who hide in the shadows and spread fear.

But, we will have eventually weed out those who spread fear via the MSM – or reverse the tables and spread fear to bin Laden’s buddies using the MSM.

3/21/2008 04:31:00 AM  
Blogger Fred said...

zenster,

My fear is that our civilization has lost its mettle. Truly has. This is the first time in recorded history where a great civilization, one that accords liberty to those who wish to take it or those who have inherited it, despises itself and harbors within it elements that would willingly collaborate with the 7th century savages who would burn all our libraries and all our institutions that value rational inquiry.

And, as a Catholic, I shudder at the thought of a massive shaheed strike at the Vatican. Speaking of which, I wonder why there are a few cardinals residing within who didn't get the message from the jihadis when an Iraqi archbishop was put to death. These Leftist cretins still prevail upon Benedict XVI to have those annual meetings with the Muslim clerics for a dialog. I would tell those cardinals: you don't "dialog" with these savages; you kill them and their pestilential "religion" of pieces. How many threats must issue forth from the mouths of these thugs over fourteen centuries do you not understand?

Allah is NOT the Father of Jesus or the Lord God Creator of the universe. "Allah" is satan - that dark, malicious force that wages eternal war with the Author of Life.

3/21/2008 07:56:00 AM  
Blogger Marcus Aurelius said...

Wretchard,

I adore Barber's adagio, but could you not find a string quartet arrangement? Barber wrote it for string quartet and I find string symphony arrangements to be ponderous and heavy.

However, after performing some YouTube searches I find there is no real good version out there.

Onto topic.

As is stated when a fighter draws blood he hits the bloody spot again (anyone see Marquez vs. Pacquiao?) and again. That is what Bin Laden is doing he hits the weak spot.

It is not a given Europe will finally get it and stand up more forthrightly against Bin Laden and his wicked 12th century ideology. After all the Dutch reaction to threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali were to ask her to leave so some other people get bombed along with her.

RWE,

The city I lived in hosted the UAE's Air Force Academy and I heard similar stories out their too.

3/21/2008 08:28:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

Allah is NOT the Father of Jesus or the Lord God Creator of the universe. "Allah" is satan - that dark, malicious force that wages eternal war with the Author of Life.

Gee, you'd think God would give us a burning bush or something so we could more effectively pass that word along, rather than just going on guess-work and noting that historically Allah's fighters have lost *all* their wars.

I like it as a meme, though. If the cartoons won't get them frothing, then Allah-as-Satan should start a riot or two.

3/21/2008 08:33:00 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Another Loss For The Armies of Allah

3/21/2008 10:16:00 AM  
Blogger PeterBoston said...

bobal

How is the fall of Constantinople a loss for the armies of Allah?

The conversion of Hagia Sophia, perhaps the most spectacular cathedral in Christendom, into a mosque is, for me at least, reason alone to crush Islam into the bowels of the earth.

3/21/2008 11:00:00 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

Allah's fighters have lost *all* their wars.

Tongue in cheek.

I've been for bombing Iran all the way through this pickle we're slipping into.

3/21/2008 11:27:00 AM  
Blogger Mike H. said...

Logic in Islam...The word of God is absolute, the Koran is perfect because it's the word of God as handed down by God. The prophets of God are true from the time of Abraham.

Either God is lying or Moses is lying because the Commandments as handed down to Moses by god are the opposite of those handed down to Mohammed and written in the Koran.

Islam states that the people of the book fell away from the teachings of God and Islam was brought about to reestablish the true church on earth.

In so doing Islam has said that God is a liar because what he says now, to them, is not what he said to the Jews and Christians.

3/21/2008 12:00:00 PM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Zenster is correct. However we can push the analysis further.

People in safe, suburban environments are isolated from the reality that their lives and the surroundings are fragile, must be constantly defended, and are the exception not the rule in human history. That the threats are constant and rather than the entire world becoming one giant suburb with safety, well ordered and incorruptible, highly professional police, fire, etc. forces, the world is becoming more chaotic. More tribal. More divided. And more, far more violent.

As globalization spreads cheap and deadly technology to even poor countries. It's not just nukes but other things: RPGs and man portable SAMs and the AK-47 and everything else.

We won't move until 2-3 cities die. It's that simple. Because we just lack the will. Because we are fat, comfortable, and believe a comforting illusion that the world is becoming safer instead of the deadly reality that it is becoming more dangerous and unstable.

The stability of the Cold War and the muddle-through attitude, the reasonableness of the USSR (which did not want nuclear war, THEY had their dachas and the good life) is projected onto lean, hungry men with nothing to lose and the Caliphate to gain.

Israel is a good example of this. Olmert and company are Exhibit A in wishful thinking.

3/21/2008 12:59:00 PM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

In an apartment somewhere in Dar-al-Harb...

Two members of the Religion of Peace converse placidly as they chew Khat, sip tea, and enjoy the morning sunlight pouring in the high window of their workroom. They assemble electronic components, working with soldering guns and piles of chips, integrated circuit boards, resistors, connectors and wires.

Abd ul-Lateef: "So, Abd ul-Haleem my friend, would you pass me some of those wonderful cookies, please?"

Abd ul-Haleem: "The pecan sandies or the Lorna Doones?"

Abd ul-Lateef: "Oh, either will suffice, thank you."

Abd ul-Haleem: "So, Lateef, servant of the most Kind, shall we place this device on the public way, later to be detonated as the women and children pass on their way to their school, or..."

Lateef: "Actually, I calculate it will be most useful if we place it in the backpack of a certain young woman of limited mentation whose credentials were recently provided by the director of the Home for the Mentally Enfeebled on the Boulevard of Unexpected Martyrs. "

Haleem: "God is Great! And you, servant of the most Merciful and Benign Allah, you must have a marvelous plan for when best to detonate the bomb and so Glorify his name!"

Lateef: "Deed I do. We will watch from a safe distance, and wait for her to mingle with the families gathered in the candy bazaar, where the dulces will command their attention, then..."

Haleem: "Yes? Yes?"

Lateef: "Ka-boom." (He giggles) "Pass me the tea, will you please?"

Haleem: "The Rose Hips with Camomile, or the Red Zinger?"

Lateef: "Oh, the Zinger, to be sure."

Haleem: "Allahu Aqbar!"

Lateef: "Allahu Aqbar!"
Haleem: "Allahu Aqbar!"

Lateef: "Allahu Aqbar!"
Haleem: "Allahu Aqbar!'

Lateef: "Allahu Aqbar!"
Haleem: "Allahu Aqbar!"

Both: "Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar! Allahu Aqbar!"

Lateef: "Excuse me, I will have some tea now." He sips delicately for a moment, sighs, then stiffens... "Oh, by the by," he murmurs, "You have paid the cell phone bill for this month, haven't you?"

3/21/2008 01:02:00 PM  
Blogger Zenster said...

Fred and Whiskey_199, thank you for your continuing patience with what probably comes across as a too serious or too drastic approach to this horrible dilemma. It goes beyond ironic that the West's only hope of averting a global Muslim genocide lies in killing untold thousands of them at the earliest possible opportunity.

NahnCee: Gee, you'd think God would give us a burning bush or something so we could more effectively pass that word along, rather than just going on guess-work and noting that historically Allah's fighters have lost *all* their wars.

If there is a God, He most certainly has given modern man "a burning bush". It speaks with a voice both utterly compelling to hear and terrible to behold. From it issues forth irrevocable commands that cannot be rescinded by any earthly power.

I AM SPEAKING OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

I continue clinging to my last shreds of opposition regarding first-use of nuclear weapons. I dearly believe that we still need to retain the moral authority of deploying them in retaliation and not mere anger. A new tipping point is soon to arrive where nuclear preemption may well carry the day. May goodness help us all if we allow things to deteriorate that far.

I would certainly say that the time is long overdue for detonating a massive fuel-air bomb in the wastes of Iran or Saudi Arabia. This ordnance should be so huge as to easily simulate all the atmospheric, seismic and destructive effects of a nuclear weapon, right down to the mushroom cloud.

Subsequent notice should be given to all Islam that this is a final warning and that similar explosives will be used to annihilate entire Muslim cities with each ongoing terrorist atrocity. It should be broadcast with slow-motion footage of the explosion, preferably with demonstration structures and other everyday artifacts placed within the blast-front as with early nuclear tests.

Somehow, Muslims must be made to understand that their continued existence hangs both in the balance and by the most slender of threads.

Fred, as someone who refuses to believe in neither an angry God nor malevolent universe, it is equally difficult for me to believe in Evil Incarnate. However, if I were to believe in such a thing, nothing could possibly surpass Allah as that incarnation of Satan. With that minor condition in place, please know that we are very much in agreement.

3/21/2008 01:44:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Ot, but don't miss this:

The American Thinker: Obama's Anger.

3/21/2008 03:12:00 PM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

Thanks for the link to American Thinker, Doug.

It really is an astounding treatise.

I have to stop reading for a while; I can't take the roller coaster of flickering soul-bursting hope followed so closely by dark despair.

That is, hope from one writer's clarity and insight, followed by gut-wrenching disappointment at the brain-smashing pretzel logic of the next.

I must drink a bottle of gin, or play my fiddle, or shoot down some Zeros in 8-bit color.

3/21/2008 04:13:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

I Suggest the Fiddle, Mad One.
I have to suffice w/Beer or Cascading Style Sheets!

3/21/2008 04:43:00 PM  
Blogger CM said...

We used to do this kind of thing, in the days before Political Correctness: Der Fuhrer's Face

3/21/2008 04:53:00 PM  
Blogger Charles said...

Pangloss said...
The pantheist society is the classic pagan society, characterized by blood feuds, blood sacrifice, despotism, and constant low-level warfare.

//////////////
and also homosexuality in the pagan priesthood.

3/21/2008 07:40:00 PM  
Blogger Charles said...

LarryD said....
And this is why the West has developed science and technology, while the Muslim world stagnated. As an article of faith, we believe that the universe makes sense.
///////////
in a universe of cause and effect God is the first cause. I recall moving away from atheism 20 years ago or so--that even without believing in God--if you believe in cause and effect then you have to believe in an infinite regression of cause and effect OR you have to believe in a first cause. The physical scientists found a first cause "the big bang". And not an infinite regression.

The steady state universe which seems to fit more amiably into an atheists cosmology--was overturned back in the 1960's.

3/21/2008 07:53:00 PM  
Blogger destroyer_of_worlds said...

zenster

I was waiting for someone to articulate what I have been thinking. I too have often pointed out to people that TEN YEARS is the limit we have to work with. My own perspective focuses not so much on the loss of the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Louvre, the Uffizi etc., but rather on my regret at having to advise my children to avoid living in US or other Western cities in order not to reap the whirlwind.

It seems to me inevitable that some of our cities will be lost, unless a shot is fired across the bow of those who yearn for the hidden imam. This shot must not be just made for symbolic purposes, but with the follow-on fully contemplated and accepted, on a contingent basis. It was Nagasaki (and not Hiroshima alone) that demonstrated that US forces would not spare Tokyo and the rest, and that prompted Tokyo to surrender absolutely.

I like your idea of "a massive fuel-air bomb in the wastes of Iran or Saudi Arabia". To this Hiroshima I would suggest that the inevitable intransigence, rooted in the thrill that the Last Hour is at hand, be met with a Nagasaki that strategically fits: the destruction of Makkah Al-Mukarramah: Kaaba, meteorite and all.

Surely this would go some way to convince many Muslims that the will of Allah was that they should back off to some extent. Of course, we need the will that those a generation ago had, not hesitating to continue through Medina, Qom, Basra, etc., if this second show of force was not met with prompt and complete capitulation.

3/21/2008 09:31:00 PM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Charles said:

"in a universe of cause and effect God is the first cause. I recall moving away from atheism 20 years ago or so--that even without believing in God--if you believe in cause and effect then you have to believe in an infinite regression of cause and effect OR you have to believe in a first cause."

I'm an agnostic. The concept of god trips over "first cause", i.e. if god created the universe then who created god? "Cause and effect" or rather "causation" are phenomena of the universe that we live in. However there could be an infinite of "universes" in a multiverse. Our concept of "causation" might be meaningless in one of these other universes.

Causation is driven by time and it is reasonable to assume that each universe runs under a separate clock. "Time" is a meaningless concept outside of its specific universe.

Beyond the multiverse is chaos. Ultimately chaos drives everything and everything ultimately dissolves back into chaos (including god if he/she/it exists).

The word "god" carries too much extra baggage, e.g. visions of an old man holding thunderbolts, sitting on a golden throne. I prefer to ask the question whether our universe is an "artifact". If our universe is indeed an artifact then why are the rules of our universe setup the way they are? Do we have a role within this system of rules?

That's not necessarily a given.

It's quite possible that our universe is indeed an artifact that has already performed its designed function. We might simply be the remaining debris left after the main event, waiting to dissolve back into chaos.

Being an agnostic tends to be much more interesting than simply taking in a belief system that someone else cooked up 2000 years ago.

3/21/2008 09:32:00 PM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Destroyer_of_worlds said:

"My own perspective focuses not so much on the loss of the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Louvre, the Uffizi etc., but rather on my regret at having to advise my children to avoid living in US or other Western cities in order not to reap the whirlwind."

I'm also a father and my children are young. If we lose more than two cities, and my family survives then I'll feel obligated to cut-and-run in order to save my children. Of course, where I'd run to is a big question. Also, I suspect I would not be welcomed with open arms if I was amongst thousands of Americans fleeing mushroom clouds.

This brings me to the simple observation that it's better to kill the bad guys on their turf before they come after us. That's the ultimate justification behind the Iraq War.

3/21/2008 09:42:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

d For the Record

3/21/2008 10:11:00 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hi there,

I read your blog and I think you're a good writer. I'd like to invite you to join our new online community, polzoo.com. We're a user generated political editorial and social network site. We also choose from amongst our own bloggers to be featured on the front page. Come check us out. I think your voice would be a great addition to our site.

3/21/2008 10:56:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Donner Party of ’08

Looking for leadership, they turned to a quiet man in the rear, a doctor from Vermont: Howard Dean. Do something, Doc! Scream! But he cowered, mumbling about do-overs and going back to Michigan or Florida.

At their lowest ebb, they looked back and again saw the straggler, McCain. He was stronger, walking with renewed vigor despite his age.

He was joined by a grizzled old cuss named Cheney. One strange hombre, Cheney had shot a man in the face. He’d forgotten that his country was a democracy. When he was told that two-thirds of the nation wanted to heed the founders’ advice and avoid prolonged foreign conflicts, he spit on the ground, and said, “So?”

His party was united. What had been hatred for McCain was now hatred for the other party’s preacher. They could direct all their historic resentments, their bound-up frustrations, against this preacher, the Rev. Wright. So long as they hissed and booed at his picture every night, they stayed together, saying the nastiest of things.

The original Donner Party made history for one reason: by eating their dead. Cannibalism — it was all they could do to stay alive.

These modern Dems press on, tearing into each other, crawling to get to the summit, still five months away, in the mile-high city. They are now ravenous with hunger, and it is starting to show.

3/22/2008 02:20:00 AM  
Blogger OmegaPaladin said...

Zenster & Whiskey_199,

In your plan for massive murder of every living Muslim, have you considered what you will do with those who have risked their lives fighting alongside in Iraq? How exactly will you avoid killing Arab Christians? I am all for a relentless anti-terror strategy combined with blocking Islamic Supremacism wherever it raises its ugly head. What you are advocating is just utterly insane.

Take a step back and look at your position. This isn't a threat of overwhelming retaliation, this is eliminating an entire religion preemptively.

3/22/2008 03:35:00 AM  
Blogger 3Case said...

Mockery and ridicule are fine secondary tools. Personally, I prefer the lance corporals as a means for dealing with the pi--ant bin Hidin' and his genocidal dwarf sidekick...a round or two or three in the brainpan for each is the only proper resolution for their issues with us, never mind the high logic. The lance corporals have done a glorious job of reducing the pi--ant and the dwarf to raving about cartoons, their minions being wasted before them daily for 5 years now. Wasn't a whole lot of effective mockery and ridicule during those 5 years. There has been NOTHING done by mockery and ridicule to bring our enemies to the point of mockery and ridicule. The mockery and the ridicule serve as a cautionary tale to those who would either a.) choose to follow now or b.) emulate in the future the pi--ant and the genocidal dwarf.

As to the nature of God, While not a Christian Scientist, I have long liked the Scientific Statement of Being:

"There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual."

3/22/2008 06:29:00 AM  
Blogger 3Case said...

That Donner Party '08 piece in the NYT serves a marker for how far the quality of the writing at the NYT has fallen these last 30+ years...t's it's highschool creative writing quality, at best.

3/22/2008 06:37:00 AM  
Blogger Charles said...

eggplant said...


The concept of god trips over "first cause", i.e. if god created the universe then who created god?
//////////////
If someone else created God then he is not God. If there was a cause before the first cause--then what's presumed to be the first cause is not the first cause. Its the second cause. etc. the formulation above is another form of an infinite regression.

That's not what the physical scientists found during the 1960's. What they found was that something came from nothing. They don't know how/why or what came before. What they discovered was a first cause. But there is no impirical evidence of anything before that.

3/22/2008 07:07:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

eliminating an entire religion

Non-functioning entire everything's have been eliminated in nature before. Just ask Darwin and the fuzzy mammoth ... and bubonic plague germs. If it's a threat to us and it's irremediable then for god's sake, it needs to be elmininated.

I don't understand the angst about Iraqi's fighting alongside us in Iraq, either. Presumably they are fighting to make their own lives and country better, and I think we've already given both Shiites and Sunni's quite enough good will in the form of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, so at some point they will be on their own.

Whether or not they become incinerated in the coming conflagration might be something they should take into consideration in the way they conduct their daily lives -- NOT as a "you owe me" bargaining chip to hold over America for years and year and years (rather like our black brethren have done, now that I think about it).

* * *

Re the Donner Party story, I too found it to be awkward, poorly written, and exceedingly shallow. THe writer could just as easily have used an example of adversity of Washington at Valley Forge, and his soldiers leaving bloody footprints in the snow as they fought against overwhelming odds -- ultimately, to achieve great victories and to create a new nation.

Maybe progressive writers, and especially those employed at the NY Times, don't have the education to go that far back in history.

Or maybe everyone at the NY Times is currently terminalloy depressed and incapable of being optimistic about anything, let alone being competent enough to do anything right.

3/22/2008 08:27:00 AM  
Blogger Fred said...

Charles,

Thank you for bringing into this discussion your points about the cosmological implications behind what recent astrophysicists and physicists have discovered.

I would further add: LAWS, which are present at the very moment of the birth of the universe, do not "evolve." There is not enough time for this. So, rationality and Agency are right there. Aquinas was right.

However, it is going to take some time before these things make inroads into the wider academic community and culture, where there are vast bastions resistant to the implications of these thoughts. Physicalist reductionism, psychological reductionism, and (still) the very crude remnants of the Vienna School logical positivism still carry the day. Often, people have a lot invested in clinging to these.

The proof of the tenacity of these entrenched views: after Anthony Flew published his book and articles in effect crossing over from atheism to theism, his critics (and we know who they are) called him addled or suffering dementia.

3/22/2008 09:30:00 AM  
Blogger Zenster said...

destroyer_of_worlds: I was waiting for someone to articulate what I have been thinking. I too have often pointed out to people that TEN YEARS is the limit we have to work with. My own perspective focuses not so much on the loss of the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Louvre, the Uffizi etc., but rather on my regret at having to advise my children to avoid living in US or other Western cities in order not to reap the whirlwind.

The mournful reasoning behind advising your children about relocation is just one more reason to crush Islam. We have already lost far too much to terrorism in terms of human life, not to mention arduous airport security, domestic surveillance and, especially, the tremendous financial price tags associated with such enhanced efforts.

That the sheer fear of terrorism should be allowed to begin regulating our life choices is intolerable. It represents yet one more reason why political Islam must be eradicated.

I like your idea of "a massive fuel-air bomb in the wastes of Iran or Saudi Arabia". To this Hiroshima I would suggest that the inevitable intransigence, rooted in the thrill that the Last Hour is at hand, be met with a Nagasaki that strategically fits: the destruction of Makkah Al-Mukarramah: Kaaba, meteorite and all.

One poster over at Gates of Vienna made a similar point and I am having increasing difficulty in refuting it. What really resonated with me is the observation by an unknown author that Muslims would probably begin to feel a bit silly if they kept bowing five times a day to a plain of hot smoking glass. My opposition to nuclear first-use is really the only strategic mismatch that prevents me from backing the idea entirely. Rest assured that if the West is to destroy Mecca—and probably Medina as well—it actually should be done with nuclear weapons. The locations must be rendered uninhabitable so that no reconstruction or occupation can take place.

Be certain that irrefutably demonstrating Allah’s fallibility by destroying the shrines would go a long way towards uprooting Islam’s smug complacency about being foreordained to rule the world. Your analogy to the multiple atomic bombings of Japan is entirely correct. Pacific Axis forces were brought to surrender only by convincing industrially oriented Japan that we had nuclear weapons in production. So must there also be a clear sequence of escalation laid out before Islam with an endpoint that even includes the near extinction of Muslim life on earth.

OmegaPaladin: Zenster & Whiskey_199,

In your plan for massive murder of every living Muslim, have you considered what you will do with those who have risked their lives fighting alongside in Iraq?


I cannot speak for Whiskey_199, but I will ask: Do you bother to actually read my posts here at Belmont Club or is that too troublesome because it interferes with your ability to rush in and play the Genocide card? What part of:

It goes beyond ironic that the West's only hope of averting a global Muslim genocide lies in killing untold thousands of them at the earliest possible opportunity.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, I have consistently maintained that the only way to avert—that’s AVERT, emkay?—a Muslim genocide is to begin the targeted killings of Islam’s clerical, financial and political elite. This war cannot be fought on a bullet-by-bullet basis. There are simply too many fronts for that sort of strategy to succeed. Although my above quote is more in reference to the use of massively disproportionate retaliation in destroying Muslim cities in exchange for future terrorist atrocities, the basic concept remains. Islam must be warned off and forced to capitulate or face total destruction.

The current Western modus operandi of fastidious conventional warfare simply will not work for a multitude of reasons. Our current course literally guarantees the advent of terrorist nuclear attacks upon Western targets and that will most likely prove the trigger for nuclear annihilation of Muslim population centers.

In short:

IT IS OUR PRESENT "LAW ENFORCEMENT" STRATEGY IN FIGHTING TERRORISM THAT IS HURRYING US TOWARDS A MUSLIM GENOCIDE.

A point that Whiskey_199 has made before bears repeating. Iran’s production of HE (Highly Enriched) uranium can have only one form of dual use. Namely, the manufacture of a “gun-type” nuclear bomb whose only mode of delivery will be via truck or shipping container. No Iranian military plane can carry such a burdensome cargo without easily being intercepted. Likewise, no Iranian missile can even launch such a bulky payload at this time either.

While many here at Belmont Club may have silently nodded in agreement to this cogent observation, that is wholly insufficient to the task at hand. It is a central reason that I am making this post right now.

When people encounter such a precedent-setting meme as Whiskey_199’s above mentioned observation, it needs to be loudly recognized. These are the sort of intellectual munitions needed to fight back against liberal complacency and general ignorance. For its importance, many other people here at Belmont Club should have checked in with affirmation of how Iran’s pursuit of HE uranium is an incontrovertible sign that it seeks to engage in nuclear terrorism. This meme must be spread until it overwhelms the current opposition to military intervention in Iran.

This is but a small example of how many more fronts need to be opened up in the fight against political Islam. Consider how even just eliminating Iran’s top echelons of leadership might be sufficient to steer the country away from seeking a nuclear arsenal. This is a prime example of how targeted killings represent a vital method in defeating political Islam.

OmegaPaladin: This isn't a threat of overwhelming retaliation, this is eliminating an entire religion preemptively.

Pray tell, what is preemptive about neutralizing a cult ideology whose essential goal is subjugation of all other religions and cultures at the likely price of half this world’s population? Islam’s core doctrine prescribes this and it is not the byproduct of some radical interpretation of the Koran. This is the bottom line for all true believers in the Muslim world.

There is nothing preemptive about crippling a sworn enemy who has openly stated its intention of destroying all traces of Western civilization. Islam does not flinch for an instant at the notion of killing every single Infidel on earth. How is it that we must scruple so agonizingly over the notion of treating with Muslims exactly as they would treat with us? Especially so when Muslims are—at best—ONE FIFTH of this planet’s population even as they seek the subjugation or destruction of the other FOUR FIFTHS?

Incidentally, while your concern for Arab Christians is touching, they are just as quickly being put to death at Muslim hands and have nearly the same—if not fewer—chances of surviving Islam as they do our own assault upon it.

3Case: Mockery and ridicule are fine secondary tools.

Bravo! Key word: secondary. That is the entire point of my posts in this thread.

The lance corporals have done a glorious job of reducing the pi--ant and the dwarf to raving about cartoons, their minions being wasted before them daily for 5 years now. Wasn't a whole lot of effective mockery and ridicule during those 5 years. There has been NOTHING done by mockery and ridicule to bring our enemies to the point of mockery and ridicule. The mockery and the ridicule serve as a cautionary tale to those who would either a.) choose to follow now or b.) emulate in the future the pi--ant and the genocidal dwarf.

MINOR NITPICK: I tend to agree with Whiskey_199’s observation about how such ridicule like the cartoons served a vital role as a bellwether that has exposed salient Islamic traits—like objection to Free Speech—which only serve to raise the West’s hackles. Beyond that, I remain in agreement. Ridicule and mockery are amusing pastimes at best in comparison to the central task of killing Islam’s top brass.

NahnCee: eliminating an entire religion

Non-functioning entire everything's have been eliminated in nature before. Just ask Darwin and the fuzzy mammoth ... and bubonic plague germs. If it's a threat to us and it's irremediable then for god's sake, it needs to be eliminated.


For the West to shrink from assuring its own survival so as not to bloody our hands in the process of eliminating a sworn enemy would be like all dogs committing suicide rather than see the extinction of mange.

PS: NahnCee, the bubonic plague is still around, we’ve just managed to contain it with environmental control of its vectors and swift medical response to any outbreaks.

3/22/2008 12:27:00 PM  
Blogger Mad Fiddler said...

OmegaPal,

I like your choice of Lieberman for McCain's Secretary of State.

The preceding 8 years of contrarian, obstructionist, "we-know-how-to-conduct-foreign-policy-better-than-Chimp-so-we're-going-to-do-everything-under-the-sun-to-ignore-him-and-do-what-WE-want-or-else-just-screw-everything-up" performance by the adolescents serving as career state department staff demonstrates emphatically that it is time to put them out to pasture and hire some NEW amateurs.

I would be satisfied if an applicant could answer the following question correctly:

Is there a time within the last century that the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan each had military forces on Russian soil, attempting openly not clandestinely to defeat the Communists?

(Hint: The answer is affirmative.)

3/22/2008 01:59:00 PM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Charles said:

"If someone else created God then he is not God. If there was a cause before the first cause--then what's presumed to be the first cause is not the first cause. Its the second cause. etc. the formulation above is another form of an infinite regression."

This whole line of discussion boils down to an analysis of language. I gave up on modern philosophy because it degenerated into an elaborate exercise of analysing the meaning of language.

The operative word above is "cause". "Cause" is driven by physical laws. Physical laws are specific to our universe.

Charles also said:

"That's not what the physical scientists found during the 1960's. What they found was that something came from nothing. They don't know how/why or what came before. What they discovered was a first cause. But there is no impirical evidence of anything before that."

Here the operative word is "empirical". Science by definition is an exercise in the repeatable collection and rationalization of empirical evidence. Phenomena that occurs outside of our universe is not susceptible to empirical observation.

Much ink has been spilled by people like Karl Popper in attempts to understand concepts like the above. Popper's effort largely failed because he got wadded up in the language analysis of philosophers like Wittgenstein. In my humble opinion, that whole line of inquiry has become sterile. Ultimately all truth comes from nature. If language gets in the way then one must devise an abstraction that gets around the limitations of language.

3/22/2008 02:06:00 PM  
Blogger Cannoneer No. 4 said...

Has any body seen Adnan el-Shukrijumah?

3/22/2008 04:06:00 PM  
Blogger Pascal said...

Charles:

Gen 1.1: "In the beginning Elohim created...."

The "We" construct of Elohim would almost certainly includes His angels, or messengers in addition to Ehyeh -- I Am -- which is the Name he gave in answer to Moses' question. Elohim in plural seems to imply God's agency. Thus a rational answer for what seems a paradox.

The Word of the Speaker is directed at a creature capable of rational thought. Meaning, we who are able to build rational parallels an analogies so we may understand what is being told us.

///

Eggplant:

John 1.1: "In the beginning was The Word."

This is the answer to the often WAG question "so who created God?"

See, before The Word is Potential. I'd say that that Potential is just A Thought. Our physical world responds in the same way. Potential energy is nothing until put to work.

Once Potential is put into action, then it become The Word. That Word is Be. The INFINITIVE so that I Am may exist. This to me is a rational explanation for a metaphysical event.

See, all other events follow from The Word Be. Thus Ehyeh -- I Am.

Remember: I am agnostic. What do I really know? Nothing. I can, however, surmise from all that has gone on before me. I cannot even be sure anyone understands what I have come to understand and am endeavoring to share. Let me know.

3/23/2008 12:34:00 AM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Pascal Fervor said:

"Once Potential is put into action, then it become The Word. That Word is Be. The INFINITIVE so that I Am may exist. This to me is a rational explanation for a metaphysical event."

The operative word is "Be" or "being". There is alot of physics behind "being". Some entity must exist such that it is observable either by another entity or by itself. The act of observation requires causation (existance of "time"). The observation itself requires some form of memory in order for the observation to be operative. Memory by definition means some form of abstraction upon the original observation and the ability to retrieve the information after the observation (time flow).

As ironic as it sounds, quotes from the Bible have no relevance when delving into the deeper questions of whether or not the universe is an artifact. The Bible, Koran, Book of Mormom, etc. are interesting when exploring human psychology, story telling, traditions, athropology, myth making, history, etc.

"Remember: I am agnostic. What do I really know? Nothing."

Welcome to the club. "I think therefore I am" That's the only thing a sentient being is 100% certain of. Beyond that everything else involves assumptions and leaps of faith. The trick is to not engage in so many leaps of faith that one find oneself piloting a passenger plane full of innocent people into a tall building.

This thread has almost expired so I'll write no more about this.

3/23/2008 11:38:00 AM  
Blogger Pascal said...

Eggplant: The operative word is "Be" or "being". There is alot of physics behind "being".

1.Obviously I left out the word to due, once again, to late night composing. The Infinitive I meant to point out is To Be.

2.Potential needs no other to work upon. It simply is Pent Up. In fact that is all it remains until THERE IS something for the potential to work upon. In the beginning there was The Word that put that Potential to work. That would require the Imperative form. That would have been Be. Be -- and thus I Am that I Am. And it was so. And His Agency followed from there to set up the physical laws that operate in time. Whether or not it happened is totally without proof, and not provable, and thus not scientific. But The Concept is a Fact, and its derivation is a rational progression, or at least it seems so to me.

Oh. BTW Fred -- thanks for invoking the word Agency. I think it is spot on.

3. The irony for me is that it was my mentor's mentor who was the first human to observe "I think, therefore I am." Descartes was no slouch even if he could not see the things that Pascal saw.

Now for us, 4 centuries later, to discard the biblical phrases that indicate that our millenias old predecessors could see that "to be" is the start of it all (this is granting that only human authorship of the Bible is acceptable to some -- that is, the more atheistic than agnostic), without the advantage of our centuries of physics, seems to me either to be foolish or arrogant and perhaps both.

The biblical quotes I presented are not proof of anything other than those predecessors were 3-4 millenia AHEAD OF Descartes -- pretty darn insightful.

Eggplant: The trick is to not engage in so many leaps of faith that one find oneself piloting a passenger plane full of innocent people into a tall building.


What a shame. Up until this you had refrained from equivalency. Nevertheless, thanks for your thoughts.

3/23/2008 01:03:00 PM  

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