Speaking before the Israeli Knesset in May, President Bush cautioned against the “false hope of appeasement.”  At the time, the remark was widely interpreted as a swipe against Barack Obama, who had previously signaled his willingness to engage in diplomatic negotiations with Iran.  It also seemed to be an affirmation of Bush’s aggressive stance towards the “axis of evil.”

Now, by sending William Burns, the third highest official in the State Department, to meet with Iran, the administration is signaling a dramatic policy reversal.  Burns has proposed a “freeze-for-freeze” strategy under which Iran would suspend its nuclear program in exchange for an agreement not to expand international sanctions already imposed on Iran.  This agreement would then form the basis of continued negotiations involving the use of civilian nuclear power in Iran and the termination of sanctions already imposed on the country. 

The proposal, which the administration has insisted is good for only two weeks, marks an opportunity to move forward on the Iranian nuclear question.  But can international diplomacy work?  If our efforts in Iraq have taught us anything, it’s that regime change and policy change brought through force are always more difficult, more expensive, and less effective than anticipated.  Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union; Nixon negotiated with China.  Neither was guilty of “the false hope of appeasement.”  Negotiations can be effective in achieving foreign policy objectives.  But will diplomacy work with Iran?  Perhaps it’s too early to tell.  But attempting to resolve international crises through diplomacy certainly seems like a logical first step.

New TV Series Has 'Extremist' Christian Beheading 'Moderate' Muslim

Last week, the BBC aired a new TV series titled "Bonekickers" touted as a "groundbreaking" show where "history comes alive," and a series that is "Based in fact." The premier episode, though features an odd thing if "fact" is the aim of the Beeb's new TV series: a Christian beheading a Muslim. Yeah, THAT is really a "fact" based premise, isn't it?

Of course, the few remaining Christians in Britain have found themselves a bit put out by this "fact based" show where it is a Christian beheading a Muslim instead of the other way 'round.

And it isn't just a beheading, the entire episode turns our current "fact based" reality on its head as the plot gives us a group of "right wing Christians" bent on purging England of its immigrant population, a group the TV series is fictionalizing as the "White Wings Alliance." In a day when extremist Muslims the world over are killing people for not being a Muslim, this show features the exact opposite situation. Christian "extremists" killing innocent, moderate Muslims. For what reason? Only the Beeb knows for sure.

The whole premise is so ridiculous that Andrew Anthony of the Guardian newspaper said, "A Martian watching TV drama of late would probably conclude that the country is crawling with homicidal Islamophobes, desperate to kill those few Muslims who have not already been interned by the government or shot by the police." In his droll way, of course, Anthony is saying that none of that is happening despite the outrageous plot line that appears in this "fact based" series.

The Independent's reviewer was no kinder saying, "Murderous Christian fundamentalists, like the ones on Bonekickers, are frequently on TV, but their Islamic counterparts rarely make an appearance. Our TV controllers have a tendency to make like the three wise monkeys when it comes to Muslim extremism: hear no evil, see no evil, broadcast no evil." So much for "facts."

From the Bonekickers website, the show is describe as such:

Bonekickers is a highly original six-part series about a dynamic team of archaeologists... As a team their skills combine under a variety of imperatives to extract bodies, books, weapons and all manner of artefacts which lead them into an investigation of the past that will unlock dangers and mysteries in the present.

Based in fact, the series has on board the expertise of Professor Mark Horton, Head of Archaeology at Bristol University, a specialist in the archaeology of historical societies around the world and Bonekickers consultant on the factual evidence and background to the relics featured in each episode.

In any case, many viewers complained about this upending of reality, so many so that the BBC had to respond with a statement. And the BBC has responded to critics of their new series quite unsatisfactorily, it seems.

Complaint

We've received some complaints from viewers who felt the scene featuring a beheading in Bonekickers on BBC One, Tuesday 8th July 2008 was inappropriate viewing.

The BBC's Response

We regret that some viewers felt the beheading scene was inappropriate. It appeared half way through episode one of Bonekickers, by which time the character's extreme fundamental belief' had been revealed, providing the audience with a good build up to the scene in question.

This storyline looked at religious fundamentalism within a fictional Christian group, and one character in particular who took his beliefs to an extreme. His ignorance and misguided behaviour lead to the beheading of a peaceful Asian Muslim character in the drama. His actions are clearly condemned by leading Muslim and Christian clerics. The drama also has the balance of a Christian character that has a deep faith which she uses humbly and only for good.

The killing and the method used reflected the flawed beliefs that the character had. It does not attempt to condone or glamorise such a violent act in any way. The drama seeks to highlight the consequences of a misguided fundamentalist taking his beliefs to violent extremes.

The inclusion of the scene had been carefully considered and was very much central to the story line and reflected the character's extreme fundamental beliefs and state of mind.

They regret nothing, of course.

So, lots of “extremist Christians” running about the countryside beheading moderate Muslims over there in England? There must be. After all, we did mention that this is a “fact based” series, didn’t we?

Speaking of bones, this appears to be another reason why the west hasn't the backbone to stand up to Islamic extremism, doesn't it?

(Photo credit: Blackstar.co.uk)

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/07/13/new-tv-series-has-extremist-christian-beheading-moderate-muslim

The 'Christiane Amanpour' of the BBC ( http://www.freedomszone.com/archives/2007/10/are_islamists_worse_than_other.php )...that infamous Islam-ized journalist's style of trivializing the real menace upon the world TODAY from Islamofascism by "equating" religions as "there are extremists everywhere"...

Technorati - BBC Islamofascism Christiane Amanpour Al Qaeda Infidels War on terror Anti west Jihad UK Eurabia Bonekickers Europe

Example:

[...] "An exhausted Dubya is now doing everything he once said he would not," writes Gordon G. Chang for Commentary Magazine's Contentious Blog blog burst titled Is the Bush Administration Crumbling?

The President, for example, is rewarding North Korea prior to surrender of its nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, the administration agreed to talk with Iran even though the Islamic Republic is continuing to enrich uranium and undoubtedly maintaining a covert bomb program. And on the same day, it was revealed that the Bush White House is undermining democratic Taiwan to please communist China by refusing to sell the former defensive weapons. Next month, the President will be joining the likes of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to honor Chinese autocrats at the opening ceremony of an event recently described as the “Totalitarian Olympics.”

Mr. Bush probably won’t have to sit next to Sudan’s Omar Bashir–seating is said to be alphabetical for attending heads of state–only because the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Monday asked for an arrest warrant for the genocidal ruler.

The American leader who believes so much in freedom and democracy has done more than any autocrat to support the strengthening coalition of authoritarian states. Getting little in return, Bush is yielding on almost every request from Beijing and most of them from Moscow. In doing so, he is abandoning American allies and undermining critical American goals. By reversing course on major initiatives, he is eroding American credibility. Now, it seems every foreign policy of the Bush administration is, well, Kerryesque [...]

Also:

[...] "last week the Bush administration abruptly refined that position--as Barack Obama might put it," writes Stephen F. Hayes in a www.weeklystandard.com article titled 'Stunningly Shameful'; The Bush administration flip-flops on Iran

Without any indication that Iran was suspending its uranium enrichment program, the State Department announced that Burns would be heading to Switzerland for direct meetings with Iran's nuclear negotiators.

So what changed? Very little [...]

[...] It has been a dispiriting few weeks. Several conservative political appointees have said that they are embarrassed to be working in the Bush administration. One called the new policies "preemptive capitulation." Another suggested that whatever credit the Bush administration deserved for keeping Americans safe in the seven years after 9/11 would be offset by the blame the administration will have earned for emboldening America's enemies with its reflexive weakness. And a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice said: "This is stunningly shameful."

But, our diplomats were not finished. In his appearance on Capitol Hill, Burns was asked about reports that the United States is considering opening a U.S. interests section in Tehran. He declined to talk about internal State Department deliberations but reported that such a move--one that would bring the United States one step closer to the "more normal relationship" Condoleezza Rice promised back in January without any indication that Iran intends to stop or even slow its pursuit of nuclear weapons--is under active consideration.

The Iranians have certainly been paying attention to this kinder, gentler Bush administration and its sudden embrace of the thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another school of diplomacy.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei understands that aggressive rhetoric is effective. "The positions of the Islamic Republic and the red lines of the Iranian nation are very clear and if the parties of negotiation negotiate within this framework, the authorities will engage in dialogue. But the condition is that no one threatens the Iranian nation," he said last week, according to a translation published on NationalReviewOnline. "The Iranian nation will cut the hand which is raised against the dear Islamic Republic. .  .  . There are those who say that the American president would do something in his final months of presidency. .  .  . [T]he Iranian nation will punish him, even if he is out of office and no longer has any official responsibility" [...]

Question: Is it the Bush administration or the conservative movement as it is presently organized and constituted that has entered its sudden and accelerating late phase? Bush has passed into anti-Bush, a late phase marked by irony and negation according to the law of analogy, just as Christ passes into anti-Christ, church into anti-church, and just as the Clintons closed their own era by turning on their own party and its newly anointed, the very basis of their rule.

(In Eastern Rome's late phase---Byzantium historians call it, though the "Byzantines" never did---they called themselves Romans and properly so---the Emperor became the Sultan's vassal and cooperated, even collaborated, in the destruction of Christian cities and estates. Those whom the gods would destroy ... )

In any case conditions have become complex for the political and cultural right. The White House---the seat of the conservative movement's waning power---its last remaining center of influence having lost both houses of congress in 2006---has become a Bush family fuherbunker. The shocked and awed cabinet secretaries and political appointees of this broken administration are everywhere retreating on, or reversing themselves on, every principle they once held.

So, what is the sum of all this? Where do these paths lead? Is the party over?---by this we mean the GOP. Or is more than just the party over? Will anything rise up in its place? Our hopes too must rest on the person and presence of one Barack Obama. For the political right to persist in its present form Sen. Obama must somehow provoke enough resistance to organize a coalition coherent enough to defeat him at the polls in November---however narrowly or even on a split decision like 2000. Or once in office stay true to his promises and govern from the left flanked by Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi. The image of this alone could resuscitate the now shattered coalition of the political right. Well, one would hope.

How sad, however, that our destiny is no longer our own.

...The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand ...

Question: What will claw its way out of this tomb? An Osiris whole and new to announce a new era? Or a flesh eating zombie, a foul and dangerous caricature of its former self?

N.

Free Life Commentary,
an independent journal of comment
published on the Internet
Issue Number 99
9th April 2003
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc099.htm

Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War
Frank McDonagh
Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1998, 196pp, £14.99 (pbk)
ISBN 0 7190 4382 X
Reviewed by Sean Gabb

I read through this book during my lunch break today, sat in an unusually warm and sunny Kensington park. An old man saw the cover with its bold title and rather nice line drawing of Chamberlain. "Neville Chamberlain?" He said to me with an accusing stare. "What a wanker he was." I thought of putting the book down and starting an argument about the realities of British foreign policy before 1940. But lunch breaks for me are far too unusual for wasting on argument with someone who would only start ranting about Saddam Hussein and plastic shredders or whatever—and I get quite enough of that from the Internet. So I smiled and carried on reading.

His reaction, though, was no more than the conventional wisdom. Despite more than 30 years of revisionist scholarship, Neville Chamberlain is still seen by the world exactly as those in and around the first Churchill Government wanted him to be seen. That view is of a weak and confused man out of his depth in the snakepit of European politics. With his rolled umbrella and wing collar, he blundered round Europe in the late 1930s, deceived at every point by bad men of greater intelligence, but hoping that he could settle German demands for territory as peacefully as he might settle a strike in a Birmingham button factory. In the process, he refused to let the country re-arm sufficiently to face the inevitable conflict in defence of liberal civilisation. His name has become shorthand for weakness and self-delusion in foreign policy. "Appeaser" has become one of the ultimate insults in political debate throughout the English-speaking world; and every argument over the present war with Iraq must include some slighting reference to Neville Chamberlain and some lavish praise of Winston Churchill, his apparently more realistic and courageous antithesis.

In fact, this view of Chamberlain has largely disappeared from the scholarly literature. What we have instead is a cool understanding of the limitations of British power in a changing and increasingly hostile world. This book expresses the view briefly yet fully, and it gives useful extracts in support from contemporary documents, and contains a good bibliography for further reading. As such, it is an excellent introduction to the subject for students and for those simply interested in the approach to the greatest war ever fought by this country and the last in which it entered as a primary belligerent.

And that is all I will say about the book. I am reviewing it simply as an excuse for writing more about British foreign policy - this time from the perspective of the 1930s.

Undoubtedly, the Great War had been a disaster for this country. It was an act of stupidity to enter it, and even more stupid not to try for a negotiated settlement in 1916. It had killed nearly a million men, and left many more maimed. Its financial cost had been immense, requiring heavy taxes and a devaluation of Sterling, and a tenfold increase in the national debt. It had also distorted patterns of investment. The vast overseas portfolio built up during the previous generations had been partly liquidated and replaced by heavy indebtedness to American interests. Internally, capital had diverted into an unsustainable expansion of heavy industry—areas in which the country had for some time been losing its comparative advantage, and the products of which could no longer be readily sold in an increasingly fragmented and economically hostile world market. The years before 1914 were not some long, golden summer. But to those looking back from the years after 1918, that is how they often seemed.

But while disastrous, the Great War had not for us been a catastrophe. It was, if in various ways, for Germany, France, Russia and Turkey—but not for us. It had not been fought on our territory. Nor had it been followed by any serious challenge to the established order. Though these did not at all justify the heavy costs, it had even been attended by certain benefits. Germany and Russia and Turkey were destroyed by defeat and revolution. France was prostrate. The United States had briefly emerged as an active great power, only to return to a determined isolationism. In terms of naval supremacy and imperial security, the country was restored to something like the position it had enjoyed after Waterloo. And, while taking the German colonies was of no value, the despoiling of Turkey had given us control over the Middle East and its increasingly important oil reserves.

By 1920, it was clear that the Great War had ripped holes in the financial web that had once bound the world to the City of London. There could be no exact return to the position of 1914. But, if it had shaken the foundations of British power, the War had not undermined them. Something like the old position could still be restored. It was necessary to make a complex and difficult set of changes. At home, it was necessary to cut taxes and spending back towards the levels of 1914, and to force down the price level to the point where the gold standard could be restored at the old parity. At the same time, the over-expansion of heavy industry had to be reversed, so that labour and capital could flow into the more productive new sectors—cars, chemicals, electricals, general light engineering, and so forth.

In the Empire, it was necessary to reduce the commitment to India —returning to something like the system of indirect rule used before the Mutiny—and to shift the balance of imperial interest to the now more valuable Middle East. Outside the Empire, it was necessary to restore as much as possible of the old financial and trading system.

Any one of these required much effort and some luck to achieve. Astonishingly, most of them had been achieved after a fashion by the 1930s. The Great Depression had put an end for the moment to hard money and free trade, but caused little harm overall to the domestic economy. The unemployment and other hardships were mostly confined to the declining heavy industries. From the Midlands down, the country was enjoying a steady increase of output and living standards. Indeed, looked at from about 1935, the Great Depression seemed to serve British world interests rather well.

After 1918, the only potential challenger was the United States. Its size and wealth appeared to place it beyond all hope of competition. If it wanted to outbuild the Royal Navy, it could. However, its prevailing constitutional and moral order made a challenge unlikely. Though it might take an occasional interest outside the Americas, it was essentially isolationist. Though it might have the cash to challenge British primacy, it lacked the will. It had been tricked into the Great War to serve British interests. Now, it had largely withdrawn. The Great Depression seemed to confirm its impotence. The general collapse of its economy after 1931, and the emergence of mass unemployment—averaging, I think, around 35 million—threw it proportionately into a scale of suffering quite unknown in this country. Moreover, the election of Franklin Roosevelt had opened it to a departure from economic orthodoxy that opinion in this country rightly saw as likely to keep it in depression for as far ahead as could reasonably be seen.

All this country needed to consolidate the recovery was time - time for the new arrangements at home and abroad to take full effect. What had to be avoided at all costs was another big war. That would destroy all the cautious but solid progress made since the removal of Lloyd George from power in 1922. The Treaty of Locarno had got us out of all practical European connections after 1925—the guarantee to both France and Germany was in effect a guarantee to neither, as it justified a refusal to enter into close military relations with either. The League of Nations was a useful means of imposing British will elsewhere in the world where it was no longer convenient to act unilaterally.

By 1935, the country had never in living memory enjoyed such profound home and imperial security, or spent so little of the national income on defence. Let all this continue, and by 1960, the financial and strategic costs of the Great War would have scarred over as surely as those of the Napoleonic wars had a century before.

This is the background against which Adolf Hitler was viewed by this country's ruling class. There is no need, I think, to argue that he was a thoroughly bad man. He turned Germany into a semi-socialist police state, and tainted with his embrace what had previously been one of the homelands of liberal civilisation. However, I share the official perception of his early years that he was no threat to this country. His published writings and speeches at the time, and his private conversations made available after his death, all point to a settled ambition. This was to expand German power deep into Eastern Europe. He wanted to gather up the Germanic fragments of the Habsburg Empire under his own rule, and to conquer large colonies of settlement for the German people in Poland and western Russia. That was the consistent purpose of his foreign policy in the east. In the west, his only declared and perceptible aim was to reach a settlement with Britain that would give him a free hand in the east.

Yes, we are told endlessly that his eastern policy was just his first step to conquering the world. Give him Poland and Western Russia and their great resources, the claim goes, and give him the lack of an enemy to the east—Soviet Russia being destroyed—and he would surely turn eventually on Britain. I suppose he might have. But he might also have died his hair green, or applied to join a kibbutz, or had an early sex change operation. In deciding what someone might have done in circumstances different from those he actually faced, we can say nothing for sure. If we want to say anything at all, we can only do so in the light of his stated or revealed intentions. For Hitler, there is no evidence that his ambitions stretched to a conquest or even a humbling of Britain.

He had a sincere, if not always well informed, admiration of Britain and the British Empire. He respected our victory in the Great War, and wanted to avoid another conflict. He did not share the desire of other German nationalists for a return of the lost German colonies. He had no interest in naval construction, and went out of his way to condemn the naval race that had poisoned Anglo-German relations after 1898. He signed a naval agreement with us in 1935, and I think this is the only treaty he ever made that he took care to observe. When the Arabs rose against us in Palestine, they sent emissaries to him in Berlin, seeking financial support. Since they were all good anti-semites, one might have thought they would reach a deal. But Hitler refused all help, declaring in effect that he would not lift a finger against white rule over the coloured races.

It is possible that victory in the east would have raised his ambitions in the west. We cannot be sure that it would not. But neither can we assume that he would have been any more successful in his invasion of Russia than he actually was after June 1941. Without facing us, he would not have had to divide his forces between France, North Africa and the Balkans. At the same time, he would not have had forces hardened in those wars, or the record of invincibility that for a while silenced his internal critics. And the Russian winters would have been no less ruinous of invaders than it had always been before. He would probably have taken Moscow and Leningrad. But I do not know how much further into the Eurasian landmass he could have reached. He would have faced much the same war of attrition with the partisans, and would probably have had to keep a vast army of occupation in the east before it could be made safe for German settlement. He might well have been able to present no threat of any kind to the west. His only contact with us might have been endless requests for loans, and complaints at our unwillingness to join his crusade against Bolshevism.

Even otherwise, he would have dominated much the same area as Stalin did after 1945, and done so at a comparative disadvantage. Most obviously, he was not the acknowledge head of an international conspiracy to spread his rule. He had no bands of committed followers stirring up trouble everywhere from China to Peru. As its name suggests, national socialism was not an ideology for export. It was an ideology of Aryan domination. Even in other Aryan countries, it had little following. Oswald Mosley made a big noise in this country for a while, but never came close to electoral significance. Under Soviet rule after 1945, the Slavs of Eastern Europe went into their factories and film studios and, for a while, worked with something like unforced gratitude for their masters. Under Hitler, they had to be coerced from the start.

Granted, his economic policies were less insanely destructive. At the same time, the expectations of his people were higher, and they had been less frightened by his tyranny out of expressing them. And he was a socialist. If he had presided over a recovery from the Great Depression, that recovery was running into trouble after 1938. Inflation could only be hidden by wage and price controls, and was evidenced instead by shortages of consumer goods—see, for example, how the German forces sent into the Czechlands in March 1939 stripped the shops in Prague bare of things like razor blades and overcoats. Not all the frenzied rhetoric in the world could have saved Hitler's revolution from running out of steam after 1940. It was only the war that kept up a semblance of prosperity into the middle of the decade.

A German domination of the east might have involved us eventually in a cold war. But ours would have been an unexhausted, unbankrupted, unhumiliated Britain and British Empire. There would have been no American support. Neither though would there have been need of any.

There are two further points to be made against me. The first was made by a friend last week, as we sat arguing over what I have just written. Suppose, he asked, Hitler had not only failed to conquer Russia, but had lost. Suppose Stalin had all by himself beaten Hitler and conquered all the way to Germany. Would this not have been worse for us? There would have been no limit to the prestige of Communism, and every Comintern agitator throughout the world would have had a glorious time against liberal civilisation. At least in the real war, the victory was shared between us and them.

I have no answer to this point. It requires more detailed understanding than I have of the relative balance of forces in hypothetical circumstances between Russia and Germany. But while it strikes me as reasonable to say that Hitler might not have won very easily, I find it hard to believe that he could have lost to Stalin.

The second point is the atrocities committed by the Germans. These are often used as justification for going to war. Do I not care about these? My answer is that I do not think they were grounds in themselves for war. An individual has all manner of moral responsibilities, and looking to these will by no means be always in his own interest. A government, however, is a trustee of the nation to which it is accountable, and must look only to the interests of that nation. It would be wrong for our government to visit positive evils on foreigners. It would be right for it to perform such good offices for them as did not involve much cost to us. But it has neither the duty nor the right to go about the world acting as some knight errant, putting down the bad and raising the good. When we talk about the British Government, the adjective is at least as important as the noun.

It must also be said that the worst atrocities were committed towards the end of a general war, and do not seem to have been long premeditated. They happened at a time in which fear of defeat and a misplaced desire for revenge had extinguished the usual moral feeling, and in places far removed from the battlefields that most attracted western curiosity. I have no doubt that an invasion of Russia after about 1943 would have resulted in great atrocities. But I do doubt if these would have been so bloody as the ones actually on record.

Of course, we cannot be definite on what would have happened had there been no outbreak of war in 1939. But the worst I can imagine for us is no worse than did happen after 1945. And it could easily have been better.

This being so, it was not our business if Hitler wanted to tear up the 1919 settlement in the east. It involved us in dangers that can only now be demonstrated behind a mass of subjunctives. Nor, to be fair, was there anything we could have done to stop him. Our guarantee to Poland was a nonsense, bearing in mind our lack of ability to send help. Even if we had—as is often urged—intervened to stop the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, or the union with Austria, or the occupation of the Sudentenland, we probably had not the military power to enforce our will, even against a Hitler weaker than he became. Nor would there have been the public support at home or abroad to legitimise such pre-emptive actions.

And so the policy of Neville Chamberlain was neither cowardly not absurd. It reflected the realities of British power and British interests at that time. I do not accept the accusations of some American conservatives that Winston Churchill was equal to Hitler or Stalin in his infamy. They are angry that he got their country into a war from which it emerged supreme abroad but ruined in its constitutional and moral order at home. I sympathise with this complaint. But he was in every sense a better person.

Even so, did ruin this country. He did so because he never understood the true foundations of British greatness. He saw that splash of red on the map of the world, and never realised that he was looking only at the effect, not at the cause. His ambition was "to make the old dog sit up and wag its tail". In fact, what he wanted for us before 1940, and what he did to us after, was the equivalent of making an invalid get up from his bed and dance too soon after an operation. He brought on the collapse that the Great War had only threatened. He undermined the foundations of our greatness abroad, and at home acted as the front man for a socialist revolution. For five years, he dressed and spoke and acted as if the traditional order was safe in his hand—while quietly behind his back it was taxed and regulated and smeared out of existence. "Why worry? We've had a Labour Government since 1940" was the comment of one observer after the 1945 general election.

All considered, the 20^th century as it actually ran was not too bad for this country. We did not lose any big wars, or have a revolution or civil war. We did not even suffer a real economic or financial collapse. Within a few years of each of the two big wars, we had recovered our old living standards in full and were making rapid continued progress. We ended the century as the third or fourth richest and the second most powerful country in the world. We are even remarkably free in practice to live as we please. We did far better than I think we deserved. But it could have been better still. If only we had kept out of those dreadful wars and remained masters of our own fate, the whole world, I have no doubt, would have been a better place.

Eigentlich muss es irgendetwas Drittes geben zwischen dem bodenlosen Zynismus, den Nicolas Sarkozy walten lässt, damit er eine Party steigen lassen kann, mit sich selber als Hauptattraktion, und der absoluten Trostlosigkeit, die sich zwangsläufig einstellt, wenn Leichen und Gefangene ausgetauscht werden.

Gibt es tatsächlich. Leider hat aber auch der SPIEGEL die Politik der prinzipienfesten Härte gegnüber Tyrannen und Terroristen viel zu lange und erbittert als weltfremde neokonservative Cowboymethoden bekämpft, als daß die empörten Krokodilstränen ob der Anwendung der genialen Realpolitik europäischer Prägung jetzt nicht ein bißchen arg künstlich daherkämen.

Und daß ein unfaßbar bitterer Anlaß wie die so dumme wie unmoralische Freilassung eines grausamen Kindermörders auch noch als Anlaß mißbraucht wird, ein bißchen billiges Sarkozy-Bashing unterzubringen, nur weil der die langjährigen Forderungen der westlichen Medien nach einem Kuschelkurs gegenüber Assad brav umsetzt, macht die Sache nicht besser.

Two months ago George W. Bush gave a speech in Israel, in which he compared Obama’s call for diplomacy with Iran to Europe’s Nazi appeasement during the buildup to World War II. In other words, we should fight Ahmadinejad now, before they perpetrate a second Holocaust, or something. The mostly Israeli audience cheered for Bush’s eagerness to commit American lives to Zionist interests. One would think a nation so hell bent on other people dying for their causes would be willing to make some sacrifices of their own.

But despite it’s drum-banging when it comes to the extendability of American souls, Israel is freeing live terrorists in exchange for Jewish corpses.

Remember Israel fought a war with Lebanon in 2006, after Hezbollah militants seized two Israeli soldiers? Just hours after Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were captured in the cross-border raid, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defiantly announced, “We will not give in to extortion, and we will not negotiate with terrorists regarding the lives of Israeli soldiers. That was true yesterday, and it is true today.”

If only Olmert had clarified that it wouldn’t be true tomorrow, many deaths and the public relations quagmire that ensued might have been spared.

With due respect to the seized hostages, I rather agreed with Jerusalem’s initial refusal to barter for human lives. Doing so merely signals to one’s enemies that terrorism is an effective bargaining chip. Today Israel set in motion a deal that implies just that.

Hezbollah returned the remains of the Goldwasser and Regev to Israel. In return, Israel will free Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese militant who was captured in 1979 after taking part in a gruesome attack that left four Israelis dead, including two young children. After slaughtering an Israeli man in front of his 4-year-old daughter, Kuntar smashed the little girl's skull on the beach shore rocks.

Huge crowds, led by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, will greet Kuntar upon his return to Lebanon. As Hezbollah celebrates, Israel will mourn.

The latest agreement with Hezbollah is part of Olmert’s broader new strategy to cut deals with Israel's adversaries, including Syria and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. But this agreement has rejuvenated debate in Isreal about the war and Olmert’s wishy-washiness in dealing with Israel’s enemies.

This is a WTF Moment. Where are the crowds now that denounce appeasement and cheer sacrifices for some greater cause? What better way to embolden terrorists and encourage further violent acts then to send this new message to militants; not only does terrorism pay, they need not even keep their victims alive!

Israeli historian Tom Segev, author of 1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East, has criticized this transaction. “We always say that we will not negotiate with terrorists, but we always do,” Segev said, noting that, “It makes much more sense to exchange dead bodies for dead bodies. But it is an inevitable deal because of the emotional and irrational traditional values which direct many of our beliefs.” Segev adds that the deal “highlights the failures” of the 2006 war in Lebanon.

That war was intended to discipline all of Lebanon for Hezbollah’s violence. Imagine if an entire nation launched an offensive against the U.S. to vindicate the action of Lindy England or the dipshit who threw the puppy off the cliff. Many of us who don’t currently hate the Middle East might become convinced that they were irrational and dangerous. Likewise Israel’s brutal war in 2006 radicalized factions of Lebanon that previously sympathized with Israel—a generation of diplomatic healing undone in a 34-day failed war, in which, ultimately, appeasement became the order of the day anyway.

A mix of Jewish tradition and Israeli culture put tremendous pressure on Olmert to secure the release of the soldiers and hostages, dead or alive.

Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said:

You could see this as a weakness when you're dealing with Hezbollah and Hamas, who cynically exploit the pain, anguish and suffering of the families. But you can also see this as a sign of strength that says something positive about Israel, our society and the value we place upon our people: You don't leave a soldier behind enemy lines.

You could see it that way. That’s been precisely how they’ve seen it for the past three decades. Over that period, McClatchy review found that Israel has released roughly 7,000 prisoners in exchange for the freeing of 19 Israelis and to repatriate the corpses of eight others. Among the freed militants was Hamas spiritual leader Ahmded Yassin, whom Israel agreed to release in 1997 in exchange for two Mossad spies captured when Israel tried, and failed, to kill Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. For the next seven years, Yassin oversaw the Hamas suicide-bombing campaign during the second Palestinian uprising.

McClatchy sums up for us the significance of what has happened here:

If Israel was going to end up cutting a deal with Hezbollah, did 160 Israelis — and more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians — die in vain during the war?

Won't freeing a notorious Lebanese killer as part of the deal encourage Hezbollah and other militant groups to try to capture more Israelis?

Is Israel making hollow promises when it vows never to negotiate with terrorists?

On the last point, as Hezbollah well knew when it captured the soldiers, the answer is yes.

• Team Obama Slams NY Times's Article about its Own Poll.  NY Times's story today on its own NYT/CBS poll extrapolated racially devisive conclusions that seemed inconsistent with the polling data.  Team Obama responded quickly highlighting the inconsistencies between the article's conclusions and the data.
• More Grim Economic News.  Labor Dept reports spike in energy costs in June of 6.6% and an overall inflation rate of 1.1% in June.  That's the fastest rate of inflation since 1991 (when the last George Bush was in office), and double May's inflation rate.
• Obama campaign slams McCain this morning over McCain seemingly discovering Afghanistan yesterday, and flip-flopping to agree with Obama's policy of dedicating more troops to Al Qaeda's home base.  Obama camp notes that McCain can't seem to get his story straight on where, under his plan, the additional troops would come from.  Obama camp wants to redeploy two brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan.  McCain campaign first spoke of keeping all the troops in Iraq and using foreign NATO troops in Afghanistan, then seemed to shift to Obama's position of redeploying troops in Iraq in a later conference call yesterday.
• Appeasement Alert:  Bush Administration sends top official to sit down & talk with Iran.

• NY Times gives highlights of Obama's appearances on Larry King and PBS Tuesday night.

D-bags are fond of accusing others of being Nazis. We live for it. We also like to accuse white people of it. The difference is when we're not accusing someone of being a Nazi, we're accusing them of appeasement.

Winston Churchill was a monarchist, suspicious of democratic institutions, who railed against  the abdication of prince Edward. His thorough self-knowledge was an advantage when he saw Hitler's absolutist ambitions. Churchill correctly identified how big a d-bag Hitler would turn out to be.

Then again, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Er wird für den Tod von Hunderttausenden Zivilisten verantwortlich gemacht: Dem sudanesischen Präsident al-Baschir droht ein Haftbefehl. Laut "Washington Post" will der Internationale Strafgerichtshof den Staatschef wegen Völkermord anklagen.

Na endlich, das wurde aber auch Zeit! Jetzt fehlt nur noch jemand, der ihm den Haftbefehl zustellt. Obama ist schließlich noch nicht Präsident und kann die von ihm aus dem Irak abgezogene Kavallerie schlecht bereits vorher losschicken, und die UNO als naheliegende Organisation fällt ja leider aus, wenn sie mal wirklich gefordert ist:

[...] Einige Uno-Diplomaten befürchten, dass ein solcher Schritt den Friedensprozess in Darfur erschweren könnte. Sie schließen auch Racheakte der sudanesischen Streitkräfte gegen die rund 10.000 Friedenssoldaten der Vereinten Nationen und der Afrikanischen Union nicht aus.

Racheakte? Also wenn, dann wäre es wohl eher mal an der Zeit für einen Racheakt der UNO:

Bei einem Überfall unbekannter Milizen sind sieben Blauhelm-Soldaten ums Leben gekommen: Hunderte bewaffnete Reiter griffen die Soldaten an, dabei wurden 22 weitere Blauhelme schwer verletzt. Uno-Generalsekretär Ban verurteilte die Attacke als "inakzeptablen Akt extremer Gewalt".

Aber was ist schon von einer Organisation zu erwarten, die einen brutalen Angriff auf ihre Streitkräfte statt mit einer offiziellen Kriegserklärung durch die gesamte Völkergemeinschaft nur mit belanglosen Diplomatiesprech abtut, der unmißverständlich zeigt, daß ihr selbst das Leben der eigenen Soldaten nicht das geringste wert ist?

Monday July 7,2008
By Leo McKinstry

QUESTION: “What is the definition of an Islamophobe?”

Answer: “Someone who objects to being blown up on the way to work.” The politically correct brigade might not like it but there is a large element of truth in that “joke”.

In recent years we have had to endure a constant threat to our society from Muslim extremists who kill, maim and brutalise in the name of Allah. Yet, in the inverted moral universe created by our Left-wing political establishment, any criticism of Islam provokes indignant cries of “racism” or “Islamophobia”.

But, as the joke implies, the very term Islamophobia is a piece of nonsense. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing remotely irrational in feeling alarm at the menace posed by the jihadists and their apologists. A sense of hostility towards militant Islam is a sign of intelligence, not prejudice.

In the light of today’s third anniversary of the July bombings in 2005, the eagerness of Muslim representatives to don the mantle of victimhood is truly sickening. Last week, Minister for International Development and Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik had the nerve to claim that “Muslims feel like the Jews of Europe” because of supposed persecution.

Meanwhile, the Channel 4 Dispatches programme is tonight examining the phenomenon of so-called Islamophobia, claiming that Muslims are an alienated, vulnerable community under siege.

The intellectually barren argument is that Islam “has an overwhelming message of peace and tolerance”. Try telling that to relatives of those killed in the Twin Towers or in the London bombings.

The Jews suffered the most appalling, lethal persecution culminating in the Holocaust. It would, of course, be grotesque to pretend that anything like that is happening now. Any Muslim alienation stems entirely from their refusal to integrate, preferring to cling on to their own alien customs.

Muslim hard­liners are the ones doing the persecution, using the threat of mayhem against enfeebled governments and tyrannising the more vulnerable members of their own communities, especially women.

If anything, Muslim radicals are the closest political ideologues to the Nazis in their worship of totalitarian power, their hatred of democracy, their vicious anti-Semitism and their addiction to violence.

It is obscene for political commentators to characterise as a disease or a prejudice the wish to preserve our civilisation in the face of barbarism. The real disease of modern Britain is the cringing of our cowardly political establishment towards Islam.

That mood of official surrender was graphically highlighted last week in the call from the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips for Muslim sharia law to be incorporated within the British legal system, following a similar demand from the Imam – sorry, Archbishop – of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Both men like to present this proposed accommodation with sharia as an example of tolerance. It is nothing of the sort, for sharia is a savagely intolerant medieval code which treats women as second-class citizens and has a wide range of punishments for practices – such as drinking alcohol – that are not even illegal in Britain.

The establishment of sharia would be a charter for legalised misogyny, anti-gay oppression and puritan bullying in Muslim neighbourhoods and prove how successful the Islamist threat of violence has been.

The game was given away by lawyer Stephen Hockman, QC, a former head of the Bar Council, who warned at the weekend that sharia law will have to be implemented “otherwise we will find there is a very significant section of our society which is increasingly alienated with very dangerous results”.

Surely he can’t mean we had better give in or there will be another bombing campaign?

Sadly, it is part of a pattern of official appeasement towards the creeping Islamification of Britain. Contrary to what Islam’s cheerleaders say, Muslims – far from being victims – are now dictating public policy. At a school in
Stoke-on-Trent, several pupils were punished for failing to fall to their knees and worship Allah during a religious education lesson.

But it is unthinkable that any state teacher who has been through the sheep-dip of politically correct training would dare even to ask any Muslim child to make the sign of the cross. Such outrageous double standards can be seen everywhere in our society.

TWO Christian preachers, for example, were threatened with arrest for hate crimes when they were distributing evangelical leaflets in a part of Birmingham. “This is a Muslim area,” police told them. Imagine the outcry if police told an imam to clear off because he was in a “Christian area”. It would never happen.

Abject apology towards Islamists has become the default mode of the British state. It pays shedloads of benefits to Muslim terror suspects and restricts the use of sniffer dogs for fear of causing offence.

When Channel 4 made a programme about hate preachers in Britain’s mosques, the TV station ended up being investigated by West Midlands police for undermining “community cohesion” and “feelings of public reassurance”.

The political elite might blather about “rich cultural diversity” but this is only a recipe for the destruction of our civilisation. In practice, its capitulation to Islam is a form of national suicide.

After two decades of calm in large-scale popular movements, Indian-administered Kashmir recently witnessed mass demonstrations and protests against the state government's decision to transfer forest land to facilitate a Hindu pilgrimage.

The decision of the Jammu and Kashmir authorities to grant 40 hectares of uninhabited jungle tract to the Amarnath Shrine Board triggered a furor in the Kashmir Valley and brought life to a standstill for nearly two weeks, a throwback to the 1988-1989 insurrection against Indian rule. So forceful was the clamor that the state government had to eventually rescind the transfer order.

The anti-land transfer agitation fed on important new trends in
Jammu and Kashmir. Firstly, the state has been enjoying a rare respite from terrorist violence initiated by Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Muhammad. The internal political turmoil in Pakistan, pitting a military presidency against a democratically elected parliament, and the challenge posed to Pakistan's security by the US war on the Taliban, left the jihadis in Kashmir confused and rudderless.

The capability of terrorists to attack Indian military personnel and pro-India civilians in Kashmir was intact, but the power struggle in Islamabad created uncertainty about whether or not the jihadis could rely on Pakistan's undying support to wrest Kashmir from India.

The anti-land transfer movement can be seen as filling the "liberation" space that had sunk into a vacuum due to the gradual rusting of the jihadi guns. The alienation of ordinary Muslim Kashmiris from the Indian government did not subside with the decline of terrorist violence by "freedom fighters". It was waiting for an opportune symbolic issue to explode, and the Amarnath land transfer issue emerged as the perfect cause.

It is worth recalling that symbolism playing on the religious fears of Kashmiri Muslims has a history of inciting unrest. In 1963, the disappearance of a strand of hair believed to belong to the head of the Prophet Mohammad kicked off a major storm in the Kashmir Valley. Likewise, the razing of the shrine of Kashmir's patron saint in 1995 by the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen stirred a massive commotion among Kashmiri Muslims suspicious of the shenanigans of "Hindu India".

A second way of analyzing the upsurge in Jammu and Kashmir is to run it through the prism of democratic politics in the state. The decision to grant the land to the Hindu shrine was made by the Congress party-run state government in the run-up to provincial elections scheduled for October. Since the territory of Jammu & Kashmir includes Hindu-majority, Buddhist-majority and Muslim-majority areas, the land transfer decision could have been aimed at winning Hindu votes from the Jammu area for the Congress.

The vehement reaction to the transfer by the People's Democratic Party and the National Conference was, in turn, geared towards beefing up their own electoral prospects among the valley's Muslims. These parties are, in theory, wedded to the Indian constitution and its democratic processes, but they have to show their "pro-Islam" credentials to be electorally relevant in the Kashmir Valley. The land transfer issue was ripe for exploitation by these political opportunists who benefit from perks and privileges as people's representatives within the Indian polity but commiserate with jihadi secessionists.

The irony of the anti-land transfer movement is that its very raison d'etre is spurious. The forest land was clearly given to the Amarnath temple for erecting temporary shelters and conveniences for Hindu pilgrims who flock annually to the Himalayan abode of Lord Shiva. It was in no way a violation of the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir, which blocks citizens of the rest of India from acquiring property in the state. The makeshift structures planned by the Amarnath temple staff on the transferred land were meant purely for the pilgrimage season.

That a temporary land transfer for a Hindu pilgrimage could be painted by separatist politicians as a devious plot of the Indian government to alter the demography of Kashmir shows how communalized Islam has become in the valley. This is the third and most potent explanation for the movement that rocked Jammu and Kashmir. While alienation of Muslims amid a lull in terrorist violence and machinations of democratic politics partially account for the crisis, neither of these could galvanize the public without the wholesale Islamization of Kashmir, a land ironically mythologized as a cradle of eclectic Sufism. The same drivers of Taliban-style enforcement of strict moral codes on Kashmiris, especially women, are at the forefront in the anti-land transfer movement.

So mainstreamed is the influence of intolerant Islamist ideology in Kashmir that there is barely a squeal of anguish regarding restoration of properties of nearly half-a-million Kashmiri Hindus ("Pandits"), who were hounded out of the valley by terrorists in 1988-1989. The restitution of Hindu properties that were destroyed and taken over is a genuine grievance for which Islamists show no sympathy. Islamists have also never condemned terrorist attacks that, over the years, have killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims whose simple ambition in life was to pay their respects to a supernatural phenomenon in Amarnath.

While the reality on the ground is that the demography of the Kashmir Valley has been forcibly redrawn through the killing of Hindus, the mass movement that erupted in June was based on fictitious claims of the land transfer being a diabolical conspiracy for Hindus to deluge the valley. There is little evidence to prove that India's Kashmir policy mimics Chinese internal colonization solutions that have changed the population profile of Tibet in favor of Han Chinese. While the Tibetan upheavals this year against Chinese high-handedness had a legitimate basis, the anti-land transfer ruckus in Kashmir rests on concocted charges.

The most perverse sign of bigoted Islamism running the roost in the Kashmir Valley is a report that shrines are being built to glorify jihadi groups as a retort to the Amarnath temple imbroglio. The first-ever shrine to the Lashkar-e-Toiba has just been inaugurated in a village near the town of Ganderbal in memory of two Pakistani holy warriors who died fighting the Indian army. According to The Hindu, local businesspersons who erected this monument declared, "Here was India conspiring to seize our land and hand it over to infidels [Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath temple], and here were these two foreigners who had given their lives to save Islam in Kashmir."

The agenda of "saving Islam" from alleged threats is growing stronger in Jammu and Kashmir, even though its Muslims enjoy constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. Terrorist violence in Kashmir may wax and wane and state-level elections may come and go every five years, but the seeds of Islamist hatred continue to sprout and augur ill for peace. The liberation of Kashmir from jihadi mentality remains an uphill task.

Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University, New York.

In Teheran scheint die Botschaft angekommen zu sein, dass eine Fortsetzung des iranischen Atomprogramms höchstwahrscheinlich militärische Konsequenzen haben wird. Zumindest gibt es aus Teheran beachtenswerte Signale, die auf eine verstärkte Verhandlungsbereitschaft hindeuten.

Die Drohung mit militärischen Konsequenzen (eine nette Umschreibung für einen völkerrechtlich nicht autorisierten Angriffskrieg) erzwingt Verhandlungsbereitschaft? Ja, welch finsterem NeoCon hat die ZEIT denn da eine Bühne geboten, um seine kranken Ideen von einer „heißen Abrüstung“ zu verbreiten. Wer ist der kriegstreiberische Dunkelmann, der hier das Appeasement-Credo der rot-grünen Ära in die Mülltonne der Geschichte tritt? Ist es der umtriebige Paul Wolfowitz? Der geheimnisvolle Richard Perle? Vielleicht der strippenziehende Bibi Netanyahu? Oder am Ende gar der Leibhaftige, also George W. Bush, höchstpersönlich? Weit gefehlt: Niemand geringeres als unser aller Ex-Bundesjoschka dreht hier der Friedensbewegung rhetorisch den Hals um.

[…]Das jüngste Angebot der "5+1", also der fünf ständigen Sicherheitsratsmitglieder und Deutschlands, wurde in Teheran begrüßt. Dieses Angebot sieht neben einer weitreichenden Zusammenarbeit in politischen und wirtschaftlichen Fragen auch eine Zusammenarbeit mit Iran in nuklearen Fragen vor.

[…] Sollte es Iran ernst meinen, wird es um nichts Geringeres gehen, als um einen großen regionalen Interessenausgleich zwischen Iran und den USA, sowie Europa und den regionalen Verbündeten der USA, ein sogenannter „Grand Bargain“ also.

[…] Sollte in der obersten Führung in Teheran die Einsicht um sich gegriffen haben, dass es vernünftiger ist und eher den Interessen des Landes entspricht, die außenpolitischen Erfolge der letzten Jahre und die Existenz des Regimes zu konsolidieren, als nun alles in einer militärischen Konfrontation mit unabsehbaren Folgen zu riskieren, dann besteht eine echte Chance für eine diplomatische Lösung.

OK, Joschka Fischer wäre nicht Joschka Fischer, wenn er eine kluge Erkenntnis nicht durch einen dazu passenden Trugschluß zu entwerten verstünde. So auch hier, denn mit dem Bad des Pazifismus hat er dummerweise auch das Kind der Menschenrechte ausgeschüttet, und so träumt er denn allen Ernstes davon, daß sich die Mullahs im optimalen Fall mit der Atombombe das Recht erkaufen, hinfort ohne Angst vor einem Umsturz auf unbestimmte Zeit und völlig legal Ehebrecherinnen zu steinigen, Homosexuelle aufzuhängen und Oppositionelle - also z.B. grüne Bürgerrechtler - im Kerker verschwinden oder am besten gleich ermorden zu lassen. So wie es aussieht, ist es von verantwortungsloser Gesinnungsethik zu menschenverachtender Realpolitik eben doch nur ein kleiner Schritt.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has instructed his ministers not to use the word "Muslim" in connection with the recent terrorist incidents in Glasgow and London, the Daily Express reports.

The phrase "War on Terror" has also been dropped in an effort to improve community relations with the nation's Islamic community, the paper reported.

Click here to read the Daily Express report.

“There is clearly a need to strike a consensual tone in relation to all communities across the UK,” a spokesman told the paper. “It is important that the country remains united.”

The move has drawn some criticism from Brown's opponents in the Tory Party. “I don’t know what purpose is served by this," Tory member Philip Davies told the paper. "I don’t think we need (to) pussyfoot around when talking about ­terrorism.”

If one goes to all the following links they will see that those plotting, planning and scheming the mass murder of non-Islamic people in countries around the world are tied to radical Islamic groups and have Islamic names. How is it that you can't call them Muslims in the UK?

If Prime Minister Brown wants to issue guns and a bullet to the entire population of the UK with instructions for all citizens "to lock and load and put it to their heads and pull the trigger", I think it would have pretty much the same effect in the end. I feel like I'm watching one of my ancestral "mother countries" commit national suicide.

CELEVELAND — An Islamic religious leader convicted of concealing ties to terrorist groups remains jailed in Michigan seven months after he reached a deal with the U.S. government to be deported.

MANILA, Philippines — Clashes between troops and suspected Al Qaeda-linked militants have killed at least 57 people and wounded 42 others on volatile southern Jolo island this week, the Philippine military said Friday.

A car thief on Thursday night found a bomb-laden van wired to detonate by remote control that likely had been sitting there for more than five months, sources said.

ROME — Operating in a nondescript mosque in Perugia, the central hill town known for its Renaissance architecture and idyllic countryside, a small extremist cell allegedly ran what Italian police say was a "terror school" that trained in hand-to-hand combat, bomb making and airplane piloting.

LONDON — Police searching for clues in three car bomb plots investigated a rented house near Glasgow, where media reports speculated Thursday that bombs had been made.

Nightclubs across Britain were warned they could be terrorist targets just days before yesterday’s attempted double car-bomb attack in London, according to a report in the Times of London... The discovery of the bombs confirmed the fears of counterterrorism chiefs, that Al Qaeda would bring Iraq-style tactics to Britain. The article goes on to say...The incident also appeared to be foreshadowed by a posting on an Internet forum used by terrorists, saying: “Today I say: Rejoice, by Allah. London will be bombed.”

But Prime Minister Brown is worried about appeasing the Muslims in GB that are planning the attacks and want to force GB into becoming an Islamic state under Sharia Law. There are many more links to stories about the progress of our enemies, in their efforts to make their jihad against all of us infidels. I am just not up to posting all of them. It just amazes me that so many choose to put their heads in the sand. The explosive packed van in NYC is just the tip of the iceberg. How many of the abandoned houses across America hold the ominous surprises our enemies want to unleash on us? How many jihadists have come across our unsecured borders carrying with them the weapons that Al Qaeda has said will be unleashed on us in the near future. Bin Laden sent a message a few months before 9/11 telling us what he would do and it was ignored. Now his new second in command has said that the "plan" is to launch continuous terror attacks across our country and the world so we infidels don't know a day without terror. The one thing that is inappropriate is to try to remove the term "Muslim" from the equation. Not all Muslims are part of extremist Islam, but almost all terrorists are tied to Islam. Think about it.

Anyway, the lead loudmouth in the race for criminalizing critique on 7th century backwater desert dogmatism is Zakaria Al-Sheikh from Jordan. Yes, he's from Jordan and he wants to tell us in Europe what laws we should make. Ain't that a hoot? On a side-note, this man is the leading figure in an undertaking to get Geert Wilders in front of an (international) judge for making Fitna and thus because of insulting the prophet Mohammed, Islam and Muslims. Let's be honest guys; it doesn't take a who lot to insult any of these three. Any critical note is sufficient to make a few hundred Pakistanis go out into the street, burning flags and holding up signs. So it's clear Muslims don't want some guy with silly hair making a shitty movie that tells people Islam sucks. And Islam does suck. There, I quickly said it before posting something like that on the Internet will allow the police to come and arrest me in the middle of the night. Won't be long before that is a reality if Al-Sheikh gets his way.

He was interviewed by Dutch journalist Pieter van der Akker, and here's a translation. I'm running through this Bing McGhandi style.

Isn't it unjust to hold a country responsible for the actions of a politician or a cartoonist??

"Wilders and Westergaard justify their attacks on Islam by pointing out their right to Freedom of Speech. That is why we need to take the necessary precautions in those countries to protect Muslims from these sort of attacks on their character and dignity. European countries have legislation that make it punishable by law to deny the Holocaust. If denying the Holocaust is a crime, why isn't insulting Islam also a crime?"

Because, dipshit, denying the Holocaust has nothing to do with the Jewish religion, but the Jews as a ethnic group. Hitler never asked a single Jew if they believed in God, being in the ethnic group was enough to be put onto a train towards almost certain death. These laws exist to make it possible to discourage and/or prosecute Hitler-fans and other right wing scum who feel the need to point out that Hitler had plenty of nice ideas in his day. It is also to prevent people from trying to rewrite history. You know, like the Turks are trying to do with the Armenian Holocaust (which you probably deny, you cheeky little devil you). Also, as I stated above the quote, it does not take a lot to insult Islam. Nowadays Islam is pretty much in a state of constant insult. By your standard, this blog is a crime and I should be put in jail... for having an opinion. Then again, in most countries where Islam is King and they don't even know how to spell 'secular state', and having an opinion that is not the same as the State thinks you should have, is enough to make you disappear into thin air forever, along with most of your loved ones. Human rights are for pussies and fags.

But it is not Dutch and Danish companies who are critical of Islam. Isn't a boycott a bit of out of proportion?

"We know they are not the ones attacking Islam, that is clear. But you do know that even the United Nations imposes sanctions on countries where a dictator or tiranant is in power. Do you also call that out of proportion?"

No, we do not. But I do call this argument out of proportion. Or simply asinine. You are comparing Wilders or Westergaard to Saddam or Kim Jong Il. You are comparing present day Denmark and the Netherlands to Nazi Germany or North Korea. Need I explain how fucking stupid and flawed that argument is? Simply admit you are a bigoted asshole who (with his many fundy Islamic buddies) is trying to pressure Europe into more appeasement then we are already guilty of.

What are you trying to achieve with this boycott?

"We want to signal the European countries who are insulting Islam and other religions. We have received many messages from people from the Netherlands and Denmark who say they now understand why Muslims are so offended when their prophet or their faith is insulted. This campaign has taught them what is really important to Muslims. The ultimate goal of this boycott is that demonizing the followers of Islam will become punishable by law."

First of all; how many messages? I can imagine at least some, because even before Fitna was released, our politically correct citizens - I call them appeasing dhimmi brown-noses myself - where stumbling over each other to apologize to Muslims for a film no one had ever seen at that time. It seems clear by the words of Al-Sheikh, Muslims do care a great deal about being insulted. But I already knew that. It is their biggest concern these days. Of course, they could not care less about, oh... human rights, equality for women, equal rights for homosexuals, bigotry, antisemitism, freedom of religion, a secular state, the separation of powers, free elections and other principles we value dearly in the more civilized parts of the world. Just to name a few little things.

Do you think the trade boycott will spread to other countries in the Gulf region?

"There is great interest for our campaign in the entire Muslim world. I've been told that we have motivated other groups and organizations in other countries to follow our example. There is a good chance they will launch their own campaigns."

Hearsay. What groups? What organizations? What countries? A statement typically made to either scare those targeted by it, or to try to convince others they need to start a campaign like this so not to look silly in the eyes of the numerous others who have started a campaign like this. Or better yet; both.

Let me make something very clear about Islam. The basic goal of Islam - as instructed to them by their prophet in their sacred texts - is to conquer the entire world and make the entire world Islamic. Muslims are ordered to kill all non-Muslims. Sure, some of the more moderate Muslims are either not in a hurry, unaware of this duty or are like a some Christians; part of a religion because it is part of their culture, not because they actually believe in a deity. But the hardcore boys - you know, the ones with the big mouths - are dead serious. Serious enough to blow up people, boycott, protest, conquer and pressure anyone anywhere.

If you honestly believe that Islam is a religion of peace, you obviously know nothing about Islam or its history. And before you keep repeating to others the lie that "Islam is a religion of peace", you need to look at the news coverage on Islamic countries the past few years, read about the history of Islam, the history of the countries in the Gulf region, read the Quran, read the Hadith and then make the same claim in all honesty. I'm willing to bet you can't.

Putting religion above Freedom of Speech will completely kill this basic human right. We will no longer be able to be critical about anything remotely religious. Once Freedom of Speech goes, Western civilization as we know and enjoy it will go as well. Once a law like this has been passed, it will be virtually impossible to get rid of it. And you know Muslims will exploit it more effectively than any Christian ever could. The fundies want Europe, and our appeasers are getting ready to hand the entire continent over on a silver platter.

As long as religion has the special privileges it now has, this sort of bullshit from both Muslims and Christians will continue. Religion needs to be bumped from this socket to prevent any religion to get power. If you wish to see what a society with religion at the helm is like, simply look at Europe during the Dark Ages (which were called that for a bloody good reason) or present day countries where sharia law is in place. Would you like to live in a place like that? I don't.

By now, surely PUMA has heard the Clayton Williams comment from about June 13th when he compared rape to being like the weather, correct? If not here it is from JedReport:

"As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

Wow. I feel sad for whoever is married to this fool. Surely, rape is a vicious and traumatizing crime about control, and not at all about sex. So why would John McCain condone such vitriol? Well, he surely didn't want to be seen with him, that's for certain. The day after the statements were made John McCain canceled his attendance at a fundraiser to portray himself as doing the noble and right thing. He even cited Clayton's remarks for his reason to cancel. What he DIDN'T tell the cameras was that McCain had already suckered Clayton for $300,000.00 so why should John McCain show up and get bad press when he had already siphoned Clayton's bank account dry? And guess what else? He kept the money! Why not take that jerk's money and give every penny to an organization working to combat sexual assault, Johnny? No. That would take integrity. Unlike Senator Obama who gave all the money that Tony Rezko, a slum lord, donated to the Obama campaign, McCain kept every cent that this rape appeaser gave him.

RAINN a REAL coalition had a few words to say about it from crooks and liars:

A man who has such a disgustingly cavalier attitude towards something as horrific, violating and criminal as the rape of a woman has no place in politics, let alone polite society. This is a man who should be shunned by anyone with a conscience. That includes Senator McCain.

It’s not enough that Senator McCain cancels an event because the media got wind of it.

It’s not enough.

Senator McCain should publicly reject and denounce this man.

PUMA doesn't talk about McCain turning the other cheek on Clayton or McCain's acceptance of donations from those who joke about rape. Why? Because PUMA likes to pretend like they are in the right by going against Senator Hillary Clinton and voting for John McCain. Can anyone in good conscience donate money OR vote for a man who behind closed doors condones such disgusting things?

I don't think any Democrat would.

Nor would any self-respecting Republican.

DIGG THIS

Imagine having a President that is interested in controlling illegal immigration, understands that the EU's euro currency is overvalued, hurting European economic competitiveness in global trade.

Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirety of his first term in office, not (ever) with Brezhnev, not (ever) with Andropov, not (ever) with Chernenko. He met only with Gorbachev, and after he was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of Soviet leader — and after Perestroika, not before.

Perhaps someone has a counter-rebut? And, doesn't it feel like conservatives were so scarred by America's cold war victory, that moving feels, I don't know, too healthy?

Despite appearances, this is not an uncontemplated act. In fact, it is the smart choice to appease China's request for censorship. Let's be blunt. If Google partially self-censors, China will have much freer access compared to if the "People's Republic" there does the censoring for them. And allowing Google in China without censorship is out of the question, knowing China. So if you think we're doing the world any good by not giving China a censored version, you're wrong.

Google gives us some insight into the company's logic:

We ultimately reached our decision by asking ourselves which course would most effectively further Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible. Or, put simply: how can we provide the greatest access to information to the greatest number of people?

......

Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. ... By launching Google.cn and making a major ongoing investment in people and infrastructure within China, we intend to change that.

......

Our continued engagement with China is the best (perhaps only) way for Google to help bring the tremendous benefits of universal information access to all our users there.

We're in this for the long haul. In the years to come, we'll be making significant and growing investments in China. Our launch of google.cn, though filtered, is a necessary first step toward achieving a productive presence in a rapidly changing country that will be one of the world's most important and dynamic for decades to come. To some people, a hard compromise may not feel as satisfying as a withdrawal on principle, but we believe it's the best way to work toward the results we all desire.

Not too shabby, huh? And to be honest, it's a bit ambiguous, perhaps even untruthful, to say that Google is filtering its content. The unfiltered Chinese-language version of Google still exists, and is open to China if they are willing, but Google made the .cn version to supplement that for the benefit of users. Furthermore, whenever something is censored, the users in China are told that information was taken out by their government. And finally, proving that Google really does care, Google will not host anything with private information on Chinese users (like Gmail or Blogger) because it would pose huge dangers to dissenters there. Beyond this, Google is looking for more steps towards bettering the world, like the internet industry's support and involvement of the United States government.

(Google has their own testimony on the issue, of which I am in effect summarizing.)

Google has the right idea, and is making the best decision in regard to China's current state. If Google keeps this up, it will have a great impact on the entire world.

• Housing foreclosure and FISA legislation delayed by Senate until after July 4th weekend recess.
• In a shocking development, the AFL-CIO endorses the Democratic nominee.
• WaPo Uncovers McCain Sleaze Factor. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, made his fortune lobbying on behalf of clients that needed McCain's help in the Senate. There's also an issue of self-dealing by Davis because he gave a 7-figure campaign contract to an IT company in which he is an investor.
• New Poll Shows Spike for Obama in Four Key States. A new Quinnipiac/WaPo.com/WSJ poll shows Obama leading by double-digits among likely voters in Wisconsin and Minnesota, effectively removing them from the "swing states" category (unlike 2004 when Kerry won them narrowly), and leading by smaller margins in Colorado and Michigan. Once again, McCain's own numbers in the polls must be deeply demoralizing for Camp McCain: 37% (MN), 39% (WI), 42% (MI), and 44% (CO) (an average of 40.5%). For the candidate representing the incumbent party controlling the White House who has had his nomination wrapped up since March while his challenger was tied up in a nasty primary fight until the end of May, McCain's ongoing struggle to eclipse 40% in key states is horrible news. How horrible? How about this nugget: among white men in Wisconsin, Obama leads by double-digits. Factors behind Obama's support include the unification of the Democratic Party behind Obama, the growth in voters identifying themselves as Democrats, Bush's sustained unpopularity, and Obama's popularity among independent voters (which as a block seems to be a growing force in places like Colorado, to the detriment of the GOP). Poll also found that Hillary would be a divisive figure if selected as Obama's Veep, and that Bill Clinton is now viewed fairly negatively by voters.

These results may influence McCain's Veep pick. There's been a lot of chatter about Governor Pawlenty as McCain's Veep. The CW has been that by adding him, together with the presumed positive effect of having the GOP convention in St. Paul this year, McCain might be able to pick-off Minnesota. But this poll gives Obama a 17-point lead in MN, with McCain on life support at 37%. If the situation doesn't improve in Minnesota for McCain, Pawlenty might get eliminated as a wasted pick. By contrast, with Michigan more hospitable territory for McCain than most Midwestern swing states, and with Romney's political ties to the state, I wonder if McCain is already leaning towards Romney. Romney seemed to be auditioning while appearing on all the morning shows today bashing Obama.

• Novak: McCain campaign panicked over a possible Colin Powell endorsement of Obama (among other Obamacans).
• Bush Appeases Terrorist State - Part of the "Axis of Evil". Bush announced this morning that he will remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism because, after direct negotiations with the terrorist state, North Korea agreed to provide the Bush Administration with some requested information. This change is a significant step towards liberalizing international trade and commerce with North Korea and would make North Korea eligible for aid and assistance, which it desperately needs. So North Korea is getting everything it wanted and needs, and we're getting ... some data about its plutonium on hand. The limited data is not expected to include any details on the nuclear bombs the North has already produced; its alleged attempts to produce nuclear arms by secretly enriching uranium, which triggered the ongoing crisis in 2002; and accusations that the North helped Syria build a nuclear plant. Look, I'm happy some progress has been made to bring this country into the global community -- it's basically a large, oppressive cult. But the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration is impossible to ignore. They've cut a deal with a country they labeled as one of the three worst terrorist nations in the world (by its own definition), after criticizing diplomacy with rogue states on the campaign trail. They essentially appeased the state, if you define the term as giving something up of value in return for a modest concession. Bush cannot start a domestic political fight in incendiary terms of "Nazi appeasement" and then immediately engage in such behavior himself without paying a political price. UPDATE: Many in the GOP are already bashing Bush for cutting the deal.
• Can't Miss the Early Bird Smorgasboard. John McCain has only worked one weekend since early February.
• WaPo's Buried Lede on Gordon Smith Campaign Ad. WaPo's front page story about Senator Smith trying to use Obama's image to help his reelection chances in a campaign ad was old news. What was newsworthy was the GOP insider's admission that the Republicans prior attempts to use Obama as a negative in Congressional races backfired (i.e., the special elections in Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana where the Democrats won seats held by the GOP in conservative districts) and is "dead" as a strategy to use in the future. That's an admission that the Obama wave is just too big, so their choice is grab a surfboard or drown.
• How Not to Get a Job. Obama and Hillary are working with same DC lawyer to discuss variety of integration issues, such as whether Hillary can use a campaign jet when she travels on behalf of the Obama campaign as she sees fit and getting more of her staff hired by the Obama campaign. The article, and the leaks that gave rise to it, is yet another remarkable example of the sense of entitlement among some of the Hillaryland insiders. It's a reminder of how disciplined and "anti-drama" the Obama camp is by comparison.
• Obama's Power Point presentation outlining his campaign strategy.
• McCain is confounded by the Internets!

Great little piece of reporting by Fareed, h/t to Matthew Yglesias, who tips the hat to Andrew Sullivan).

Ygelsias' comment:

One thing I say in my book and that I've especially tried to emphasize in book talks I've given is that the country was basically fortunate during the Cold War years in that at key moments Republican Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan wound up rejecting the advice of the conservative movement that brought them to power -- Ike in rejecting "rollback," Nixon in pursuing détente, and Reagan in sitting down with Gorbachev -- whereas George W. Bush has come much closer to hewing to the straight conservative ideal and the results have been disastrous.

While Ron Paul reminded us of the peace/isolationist wing of the Republican Party (e.g. Robert Taft), it is also important to remember this black/white good/evil strain runs straight through Conservative Foreign Policy well before the neoconservatives (though they arguably the most vociferous and undoubtedly the most powerful).

The book on that subject is Peter Scoblic's, Us vs. Them persuasively showing that this strain of conservatism (mythic meme) is bound to a black/white us/them dangerously naive view of the world.  The proof of course is Newt Gingrich railing against Reagan for meeting with Gorby as being 1938 all over again.  So looks Obama could be in good company.

The obvious point is when you recall this, you realize these dudes can't be taken seriously.  Not all conservatives and Republicans mind you (again Yglesias' point), just the ones from this strain.  And while Reagan appropriate the language when he needed to he was not that dumb (at least when it came to a nuclear power, as opposed to say Central American Civil Wars), but McCain is not.  McCain wants to rattle sabers with Russia and China (both nuclear powers), is against the deal with North Korea (another holder of a nuke).  That is it's not just talk with McCain, he actually believes it.

Bruce Bawer: The Times, It Ain’t a-Changin’

Ref: Pajamas Media, June 25, 2008

“The Times should have learned a valuable lesson or two from its past. But it’s making exactly the same mistakes today with Islam in the West that it did with Stalinism and Hitlerism, ignoring and discrediting the testimony of honest observers while giving legitimacy to tyranny’s sympathizers and apologists.” ]]> http://peaceblog.wordpress.com/?p=197 Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:12:26 +0000 Lee http://peaceblog.wordpress.com/?p=197

Fareed Zakaria comments on appeasement by comparing Reagan's diplomacy during the Cold War with the Iran issue.

Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International and hosts a weekly show call GPS(Global Public Square). He is also on the boards of Yale University and the Council on Foreign Relations.

You have to love people who are so adamant about issues that they don't really have any clue about.  Most people don't get appeasement, because most people try to pigeonhole the term into today's standards.  What they don't get is that when Chamberlain went to Munich he went there in a position of weakness.  The west was still reeling from World War I economically and militarily.  Germany was already more powerful militarily than the West.  While it is generally considered that giving away half of Czechoslovakia was his big mistake, it was one of the main issues that Churchill used to become PM, there is an argument that it was the right choice.  Many historians will say that Chamberlain was right to have done what he did, in order to, give England enough time to ramp up their industrial military complex.

So how does this fit into today's argument about appeasement. Very simply today America doesn't have to meet with anyone from any country from a position of weakness.  We always have other options, whether that is political, diplomatic, or military options.  Invariably we will be meeting on our terms and in a position of strength.  If we have someone who understands this then we will never have to capitulate completely on an issue. Instead we can meet with leaders of other nations from a position of strength ie. Ronald Regan during the Cold War with the U.S.S.R.  Now watch this video and the next time the GOP starts throwing around appeasement you can just laugh it off.