History gets rewritten over and over these days. Many attempted rewrites and their “proofs” are sometimes laughable, most often tragic. In all cases they are despicable lies. Occasionally they are the result of woeful misinformation (read: miseducation). Bolivarian politics, like Bolivarian econmics, lead to educational bankruptcy.

[…]

Venezuelan Bonilla-Molina - a leading proponent of Bolivarian educational reforms interviewed one of Chavez political heroes, Bill Ayers. Where Hugo Chávez “Bolivarian Revolution” is heading is unfortunate, it is obvious that Simón Bolívar - the great Libertador of Latin America - must repulsed at the misuse of his name and turning in his grave. Unfortunately, for us in the USA, one of Professor Ayers indoctrinates is currently running for President. Think about it, gentle reader… think about it!

For the whole post, please go to: Freedom’s Cost

There’s a very interesting and significant development taking place in Iraq: radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ‘intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization.’ (more…)

Islamists have threatened a Christian Bishop in the Philippines… (H/T: UP Pompeii)

Philippine bishop reports receiving threat to convert to Islam

MANILA, Philippines (CNS) — A bishop in the southern Philippines reported receiving a letter threatening him with harm if he does not convert to Islam or pay “Islamic taxes.”

Such brazenness in a country where over 86% of the population is Christian, 9% is Muslim and the remaining 5% is divided among various groups such as: Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, animists and non-believers.

Even if those who sent these letters are no more than common criminals who use religion as a mere tool, the fact that they chose to represent themselves as Muslims is in itself significant. But Muslim brazenness does not stop there, unfortunately, this one is far from an isolated case! Remember the kidnapped and murdered Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Mgr Faraj Rahho? What about the plight of Assyrian Christians in Iraq? What about the Sabian Mandaeans? Or the plight of Christians girls kidnapped in Nigeria by practitioners of the Religion of Peace? What about the treatment of Christian Copts in Egypt? Ot the threats against Western politicians like Geert Wilders or Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi? The list, gentle reader, goes on and on ad nauseum…

You may read the rest at: Freedom’s Cost

Yes, gentle reader, believe it or not the Joo has no horns, no tail. We are as human as the rest of you, we bleed, we cry, we laugh, we suffer, we sing and we too can have our hearts shuttered… But… if you look at Jewish history… we were attacked by the greatest empires, they all even held us under their individual yoke for a while and then… they disappeared! Yet… while we Jooz were decimated by the millions, while the hatred of the world at our stubbornness never abated we cried, we prayed, we hoped and died with the word “Jerusalem” on our lips! And so in 1948 of the Current Era - symbolically, Abraham was born in 1948 in the Hebrew calendar - we once again got our own independent Jerusalem.

We will survive the MSM and their hypocrisy, even though the UN’s Human Rights Council will never bring itself to discuss the Jews’ cause. We will survive the IslamoFascists hatred as they will eventually burn up in the pyre of their own poison. Yes, gentle reader, if you prick us we do bleed, if you poison us we do die… but, like the mythical phoenix, we always rise from our ashes and accomplish the impossible! Look at Israel today, a prosperous garden in the desert, a center of science and technology where there was only sand and poverty!!!

You may read the rest on: Freedom’s Cost

I was away this past week I barely had any internet access, the week however was filled with disgrace!

Israel, has shown a new facet to the world… This is how the German perceived it according to Spiegel OnLine (H/T: IMRA):

The center-left daily Suddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“The macabre Israeli-Lebanese deal, which saw living Lebanese prisoners being swapped for the bodies of Israeli soldiers, is a major success for the Shiite militia.. The prisoner exchange shows who really has the power in Lebanon and who can force archenemy Israel to make concessions: It is Hezbollah, it is Nasrallah. That elevates the radicals’ image in Lebanon, inthe Arab world and in the Muslim world.”

[…]The new and obvious reality is that Israel has in fact rewarded and strengthened Hizbullah. Some in Lebanon refuse to cheer for Samir Kuntar,, since they perceive him as nothing more than the ruthless murderer he truly is. There is nothing heroic about killing an unarmed father and bludgeoning his 4 year old daughter to death with a rifle butt, after she witnessed her father savagely assassinated. And yet, Kuntar returned mostly as a hero, as someone worthy of admiration rather than contempt. I do not blame Hizbullah on this as much as I blame Allmerde and his entourage.

For the rest of this post, check out: Freedom’s Cost

Three years ago on this day, in London and within 50 seconds of each other, there were bombings at three subway stations and an hour later, at 9:47am, there was a fourth one on a bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty two innocent people died that day while 700 were injured. Has Britain learned any lessons?

Last year there was a failed terrorist plot by Muslim doctors, also in Britain, has their government learned any lessons? Rather than putting restrictions on the preachings of extremist Imams, rather than kick them out of the country, they are allowed to freely continue preaching their hatred… all in the spirit of free speech and… multiculturalism. Freedom of Speech is one of the cardinal principles of a free society, it is in fact what keeps that society free. However, another - and at least - as important a principle also says that the right to move one’s fist stops where the other’s cheek starts. What does that mean? It means that when freedom of speech is abused by preaching violence against any other segment of society it must proscribed!

Read the rest of this post at: Freedom’s Cost

Amir Taheri wrote an interesting article for the New York Post about Al Qaeda’s new strategy. One of AQ’s main intellectuals (if one can use this word to describe these people) argues in his new book that Islamists have to ‘turn the world into a series of “wildernesses” where only those under jihadi rule enjoy security.’ (more…)

The NY Times has a fascinating - and frightening - story up about one Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Moroccan now living in Belgium where she spending her time authoring incendiary pro-jihad writings on the Internet. Seems there’s a place for women in Islam after all. Read it all and be afraid.

(more…)

At Power Line, John Hinderaker says that, contrary to Barack Obama’s repeated statements that the free world is less safe because of the Bush administration’s national security policies, the evidence indicates otherwise.  Likewise, Fareed Zakaria writes at Newsweek that terrorist attacks are down by nearly two-thirds in the last 4 years.  Are we in fact safer than Mr. Obama would have us believe?

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In today’s NYT, A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging

And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph - blond and smiling - is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.”The worst of her many offenses is her dogged campaign on behalf of a Yemeni journalist, Abdul Karim al-Khaiwani, who incurred his government’s wrath by writing about a bloody rebellion in the far north of the country. He is on trial on sedition charges that could bring the death penalty, with a verdict expected Wednesday.

I have the honor of having met Jane and regard her as a friend.

(more…)

Politics is exactly what Barack Obama and others on the left are playing at when they protest, overmuch, that President Bush attacked the presumptive Democratic nominee when he delivered a much-needed slap in the face to those who would look away from terrorism rather than face the threat directly.

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 Andrew Sullivan on America’s slippery torture slope:

And so abuse and torture are entirely dependent, we are told, on the apparent motives of the abusers and torturers. But torture is actually defined in the law as an illegal tool devised not for sadism’s sake but as a means to extract information. And notice the extremely slippery slope. We no longer have torture as an extreme last resort in the face of a ticking time-bomb; we have authorized it simply “to prevent a threatened terrorist attack.” That means any time anywhere by anyone authorized by the government after 9/11, no? And if a foreign government were to use such a standard? What do we say then?

Not only do such practices stand in stark defiance of the values we espouse in this war, but they ultimately prove counterproductive in a war that transcends bullets and bombs.  If we’re to fight a war on ideology–one chock-full of caliphates, Jihads and insurgents–than we need to remember that maintaining our own ideals is part of such a war.  When pressed on closing Guantanamo, or the extreme (if not illegal) tactics being used by Americans there, the Right often responds incredulously.  To them, this unacceptable measure would be like the offering of quarter to those who’d likely deny us the very same.    

And I think that’s precisely the idea.

Cross posted at Independent Liberal

Fox News reports that former US President Jimmy “Israel is an Apartheid state” Carter may meet with the leadership of terrorist organization Hamas. Carter is reportedly planning to meet with Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the Palestinian terror group, on April 18 of this year, during a trip to Syria. (more…)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described Fitna as "offensively anti-Islamic" and issued the press release that follows (via memeorandum):

I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film.  There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence.  The right of free expression is not at stake here.  I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it.  Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.

(more…)

How can people be so heartless

How can people be so cruel

Easy to be hard

Easy to be cold…

…And especially people

Who care about strangers

Who care about evil

and social injustice…

Easy to Be Hard

Hair, 1968

James Rado and Gerome Ragni

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My, my, it looks like Germany has its very own ’shaheed’ or ‘martyr’: “A young German-born Turk could possibly have carried out an attack in Afghanistan that killed two US soldiers. The Islamic Jihad Union claims 28-year-old Cüneyt C. from Bavaria was responsible for the March 3 attack, now the German authorities are desperately trying to find out the bomber’s identity.” (more…)

I’m sure most of our dear readers are unaware that other countries are also in the midst of elections. Here in Spain, the presidential election is just two days away, we vote on Sunday. I had meant to do a post contrasting the years long elections in the US to our two month elections here. I wanted to talk about the difference in political coverage, in campaigning and negative advertising. But there is another difference in the political games that Spain has to face.

The Basque terrorist group ETA killed again today. A retired councilman from a small town. He was murdered in front of his wife and daughter.

Suddenly negative advertising doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Kevin Sullivan is right to resist jumping into the blog-storm about the “bombing” of a Times Square military recruitment station. My first inclination upon hearing this story was not either terrorism or a Code Pink wacko. Rather, there have always been some military veterans who felt that their recruiters lied to them. It really might be something that trivial, especially given the extremely small size of the explosive.

Yes, there is a disturbing reprise of anti-military bigotry among some segments of the far left, especially those who have for decades eagerly sought after “another Vietnam” through which they could relive their salad days. But for the most part, the anti-war movement in this country has resisted the temptation to conflate the soldiers as persons with their assigned mission. And terrorists have bigger fish to fry than a single recruiting office.

The Turkish military has announced on its website that it has withdrawn all its troops from Iraq. According to the military, the decision to withdraw the troops wasn’t forced on the Turks by outside forces: they had simply accomplished their goals. According to Turkey, the threat the PKK posed to Turkish citizens has now been removed. (more…)

Thanks, Michelle.

Update

Per CNN, newspapers in Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands have reprinted this and other Mohammed cartoons today.

(more…)

All terrorist movements either begin with or develop a messianic belief system.  Call it the Paradox of Extreme Virtue: having ascended to a higher moral plane, the terrorists are now entitled- no, enjoined- to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice among us lower beings.  It becomes their priestly calling.  They don’t consult other people to see if they agree with their definition of Virtue; Virtue does not consult.  Virtue exists for itself and is so obviously superior that it compels obedience.

So the Virtuous Terrorist begins to make decisions.  Selective ones.  This should be smashed.  That should burn.  Like herding cattle, the terrorist seeks to shape the path of society with clear and forceful examples.  Ideally, after much careful correction, just the snap of a whip next to an ear should be enough to direct the herd.

Deafening Silence, August 23, 2007 (more…)

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been reduced to forcing mentally handicapped women to carry bombs for them. This indicates not only the moral depravity of our enemy, but also their strategic plight. If it were true, as many from the anti-war camp continue to desperately claim, that the U.S. effort is bearing little fruit, why would al-Qaeda find it necessary to violate the religious and cultural taboos that are the very basis of their legitimacy anyway? It seems more likely that al-Qaeda is scraping the bottom of their strategic barrel. (more…)

Leave the word female out of the title and you have a truism that every person who has the least bit of love for their life - or someone else’s - should be able to agree on.

The AFP:

Explosives strapped to two mentally impaired women were triggered by remote control in co-ordinated attacks that devastated two Baghdad pet markets on Friday and killed at least 64 people, an Iraqi official said.

(more…)

From ABC: On Monday, the police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said police had not turned up any new information about the kidnapping.

“All of our security forces and intelligence agents are trying to find them,” he said… (more…)

Gunmen have stormed an elementary school near Peshawar, in Pakistan, taking children and teachers hostage. There are conflicting accounts as to how many children are being held, with police reporting around 25, but others raising that number to 250. Apparently, the militants originally planned to kidnap a local health official, but were thwarted and in the process of escaping, went into the school and took the children.

Here’s hoping there isn’t a repeat of the Beslan tragedy, and all the children, and their teachers are safely released.

Update: The gunmen have released the children (final number around 200) and surrendered to tribal authorities. A happy ending, thank goodness.

There is a direct connection between the legal machinations some call “lawfare” that have ensnared high-profile Canadian writers Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn and the violence perpetrated around the world on a daily basis. That connection is, of course, the religion of Islam, which either has been co-opted into a vehicle for terrorism or has simply rejuvenated its plans to inflict itself on the rest of the world, depending to whom one listens. (more…)