Friday Afternoon Roundup - All Around Death to America

AND NOW A BRIEF UPDATE

Some readers may have noticed fewer articles went up this week, and there was no roundup last Friday, this was due to a medical emergency in the family, there will also be fewer articles this week but that will be due to Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, that will take place on Monday and Tuesday.

But there should be more than enough articles here to make up the absent wordspace.



OF DEAD HORSES AND DEAD AMBASSADORS

Obama condemned unilateral war in his speech, but it did not occur to him that if war can be unilateral, then a cessation of hostilities cannot be. You can stop your horse in the middle of the track and tell the other riders that horse races need not be exclusive or competitive, that all riders can learn techniques from each other and skip the racing and just exchange trophies congratulating each other on making a good effort. And that is a good way to lose the race.

Islamists would not be Islamists if they did not believe that their way is in competition with all other ways. The principle, accepted by so many Christians and Jews in the West, that religions and nations are interchangeable and only individuals matter, is flipped upside down in a region where individuals are so interchangeable that they blow themselves up to make a point about the supremacy of their identification with the nation and the religion.

...from my article "The American Dead Horse"




THE NAMELESS WAR

As the sun sets over Manhattan, the cladding on the crown of the Chrysler building bursts into a reddish flame that quickly dies out. Lights wink on across the panorama of office buildings and condominiums to the north of the island. In the south there is an island within the island, a space of darkness hardly filled by the naked structure of the new Freedom Tower. Out of that darkness two beams of blue light rise into the sky.

September 11 is a broken moment in American history. Unlike December 7, 1941, there can be no closure for it. It is a loose end dangling in the sky. Time has passed and the tides of the river that flows both ways have washed against the banks of the lower western end of the island built out of earth lifted from the foundations of the World Trade Center. And still the day hangs in the air like moths within the blue light. A question waiting for an answer.

...and that is from my article, The Still Unnamed War

Eleven years later the number of Islamic phobias has proliferated as wildly as rabbits on a warm summer day or Al-Awlaki tapes at a London mosque. Any concerns about Islam can be dismissed as illegitimate by attaching a "phobia" at the end of it, and the power of the "phobia" is not just limited to killing debate about the famously moderate religion, but any "extreme" versions of it as well.

While the Muslim world has been criticized for a lack of mental health treatment options, Islamists, to their credit, have already discovered more phobias than Sigmund Freud. Dr. Freud however would have commented on the psyches of people who insist on uncovering phobias in others while neglecting to analyze their own faults. Not to mention the mental state of mass murderers who insist that fear of them is an irrational phobia almost as serious as the severe case of Acrophobia that gripped dying office workers in the World Trade Center on September 11.

...and that would be from my article, All the Islamophobia You Can Shake a Stick At




THE END OF A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP?

The Israeli problem has become more urgent for the United States after September 11 when winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim world became a diplomatic and military obsession. But for Israel, the American problem is that the "Special Relationship" has shifted from a strategic alliance based on mutual interests to a single issue. The only thing that Washington wants to hear about from Jerusalem is progress in the peace process.

Under the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian tanks in the Sinai are likely to eventually show up in Gaza and they may not stop there. And that prospect may achieve what two decades of bus bombings could not. If Egypt shifts into the enemy camp, then an autonomous Gaza run by the Muslim Brotherhood's local arm may be a political luxury that Israel can no longer afford. And what is true for Gaza will eventually be true for the West Bank as well.

The time may be approaching when the United States will be forced to decide whether it is willing to accept a relationship with an Israel that is no longer committed to a peace process with its enemies.

...and that is from my article, The End of the American-Israeli Affair



I could go on doing this all day, but at some point the page would stop loading and some angry people in Google jumpsuits would come over to my house and scrawl an abstract version of their logo on my door. So here are two more before we move on.


Imagining a Post-Israel Middle East

As the last El Al plane takes off, circles over Ben Gurion Airport and heads to the South Pole, the one place on earth where there are no mosques, no suicide bombers and no cartoon riots, which is to become the new Jewish homeland, all the passionate Keffiyah-wearers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, can finally breathe a sigh of relief at having managed to make another spot on earth Judenrein before wondering what comes next. And what does come next in the Post-Israel Middle East?

Christopher Stevens Feeds the Crocodile

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of Christopher Stevens that he “made other people’s hopes his own” and that may serve as a fitting eulogy both for Stevens and for the disastrous foreign policy of making “other people’s hopes” our own that brought on the Arab Spring.

Stevens, like Clinton and Obama, made the hopes of Islamists his own and they repaid him for it, just as Afghans repaid America for supporting them against the Soviet Union, as Lebanon and Somalia repaid America’s peacekeeping efforts by killing American troops and on down the litany of gratitude in bombs and bullets that have come America’s way from the Muslim world.

THE LIBYAN ROUNDUP

Copts are worried for their safety in California, two American universities have been evacuated and there are cries of "We Are All Osama" across the Muslim world. The media is sticking to the movie narrative even when it makes no sense, as in a Sudanese attack on the German embassy or an Islamist attack on Colombian peacekeepers in the Sinai.

Muslims are showing their usual respect for religion by tearing down posters of the Pope in Lebanon and throwing stones on the Temple Mount. The UK's Channel 4 has pulled a documentary on Islam over security fears, the Muslim Brotherhood called for Friday protests before it retracted them and Obama declared Egypt was no longer an ally before he retracted that.

And so the Arab Spring becomes the Osama Spring.

NO WAR FOR BLOOD

Forget all those warships and soldiers you’re seeing on the news. They’re an empty show being put on by Obama to avoid looking weak in front of the American people. Despite all the tough talk on the front covers of every newspaper, it’s still absolutely business as usual and instead of the US military taking action in Libya, the investigation will be headed up by Attorney General Eric Holder and the FBI.

BETTER TAKE DOWN THAT VIDEO

The Obama administration, meanwhile, has also asked YouTube to take another look at the video to determine whether it violates site content guidelines, although YouTube earlier this week reported that the video was within those guidelines.

The reason why this is plausible is that this kind of niggling legalism is all too typical of the Obamanoids. Rather than asking YouTube to take it down, they suggested that YouTube find a reason within the site guidelines to take it down.

If this actually happened, then the precedent is troubling. This isn’t quite an order by the government to remove the trailer, but it’s a strong hint that it should be removed. And it is not the business of the government to tell private companies what content they should be displaying.

AND GO TO JAIL

What do you expect when Eric Holder gets assigned to a case of Muslims murdering Americans?

    US probation officials are looking into potential violations of prison release terms by a California man linked to an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests in Muslim countries, a court spokeswoman said on Friday.

    “The US probation office in the central district of California is reviewing the case,” said Karen Redmond, spokeswoman for the administrative office of the US Courts.

No doubt and no doubt if the gentleman had made a movie about how Israel has always been a part of America, no doubt no one would be investigating his parole status.


AND A FEW OTHER TIDBITS

Romney is coming close to matching Reagan's numbers among Catholics, which is impressive considering the population shift.

Foreign Muslims commemorate 9/11 by killing America.s Domestic Muslims commemorate it by whining about how they are the real victims of 9/11.

But some domestic Muslims are still killing Americans, like the Springfield Church shooter whose murder of two American senor citizens was mostly overlooked.

Some tidbits from his rants include

For your information, arrogant sparrow, I had dinner with King Hussein in August 1975.

We, humans, stemmed out of one origin, Adam peace be upon him. Read in the holy Qur’an. If you ever to have the honor of sitting before the glorious words of our almighty god- ALLAH and recite verse 13, chapter 49: “oh people we have created you from one couple and made you into different nations and tribes so you need to get to know one another and deal/patronize among you. Let it be known the best amongst you are those (Muslims) who fear god (Allah) the most.”

“Do you know why stupid Anglo-Saxons adopted Darwin’s obsolete theory and still teach it in schools? They think it serves their wicked evil endeavors. By denying god’s (Allah’s) creation, they can deceive naive assholes. They have convinced themselves they’re superior and other races, Black, Brown, Wheatish, Olive… etc were still evolving from monkeys.”

I will see to it Carolynn will never preside, I will establish my own True Spring Creek Home Owners Organization and carry out legal elections, I will rib their gate apart and trash it out of property… Cowboys only care for green dollars. They are thinking of their house appraisal when they will see it. Where is loyalty to Spring Creek, Hippocrates!… For your surprise I have seven kids, three of them are still under age. I will never hesitate to die for them.

AND NOW

Obama calls on Jews to repent of divisive partisanships

Hamas may be planning on using the protests that most aren't paying attention to as the gateway to a coup

And good news for those of you planning to have money...

It’s an old saying that if your only tool is a hammer everything begins to look like a nail. Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, has now decided to take a third whack at unemployment by another round of “quantitative easing,” using “open market operations” to manipulate interest rates...

...anything that tends to lower interest rates and increase the money supply sends investors out of bonds and dollars and into commodities and stocks. The theory is that higher stock prices will have a “wealth effect,” making people think they’re richer and therefore more willing to spend money.

a reminder from Victor Davis Hanson where all these brilliant plans to convince Americans to mismanage their private finances as badly as their government does, is headed.

Few seem to note that those who receive nothing on their retirement savings don’t retire so easily. And when they don’t retire, jobs don’t open up — which brings us to my next observation: the lost generation of those between 21 and 30, who at various ages and periods came into the workplace the last four years. Many have 8% plus student loans. I doubt half of those will ever be paid off, given the epidemic of unemployment in this cohort.

At American Digest there are some moving recollections of the day. And no one has to ask what day.

Selecting a few images from a very bad year takes you back into that time. Because you fear opening the wound, you work at some remove from what the images return to you. Until you come to one that takes you back and you find yourself there, in that time, in those weeks and months after 'The Day.'

Mine was a picture of a flyer posted around the city. One of the thousands of flyers posted everywhere. I'd hardly noted it at the time, but kept it in a folder called "September." It shows three pictures of Simon Dedvukaj. He's in a tuxedo with the jacket tossed over his shoulder in one shot. Another shows him wearing the cap and gown of a high school graduate. The third is a candid snap taken, I imagine, in his room with some out of focus possessions in the background. There's a prayer at the bottom and at the top the information: "February 15, 1975 -- September 11, 2001.

And still more

It seemed to come out of the streets that opened onto the South Street Seaport like some Titan's grime clotted fingers, and roiled across the river as if the distance was a few hundred feet rather than a few thousand yards. You saw what was coming and you turned to flee from this black wind with no storm, but there were thousands of others who had come to watch and they too were turning to run out of the exits from the Promenade that had, moments before seemed broad, but now impossibly narrow.

As the wind-driven cloud came over us and things became murky then dark, panic began and shouts and screams could be heard inside the dense smoke. Through some miracle, the crowd ordered itself and those who had brought children with them were eased out in the sudden darkness and others followed in a rapid order. The cloud lightened and then darkened again and the wind rose and fell away and came back. It rippled your clothing, and the smoke must have had a smell to it because it hurt the lungs when you breathed, but I don't remember the smell only the sensation of small needles in my lungs and the gray mucus that came up when I coughed.

The wind pummeled my back for the five minutes it took me to make my way to my apartment, get inside and shut the windows. I stood there at the windows and watched the others rush by, blurs in the smoke, and noticed when, as suddenly as it had come up, the wind died away and the air was almost still. The smoke and the ash still moved in the street outside and high overhead. The day was still darkened but the initial violence of the blast and the wind had passed. 

and finally of the America that did not come but may come yet

But there is - and always has been - another America, and it is this America that I hope will emerge from this day, and remind all those who seek to harm us that we can be a nation that is as terrible as it seems foolish; that we are a country of deep resolve, capable of striking back in cold anger. Striking without compassion or regret; that we are, as the Japanese knew and were to discover, a sleeping giant. You wake us at your own risk. And once woken we will destroy you, and then rebuild you. The Japanese had their lesson and have learned. Germany had its lesson and has learned. Now it is the turn of a number of nations in the middle east.

In DC and the Post-American America, Obama is on the case with Beyonce and FresnoZionism has a snapshot of Obama's New Beginning with the Muslim World and more from Bare Naked Islam.

Some thoughts on the nature of fools and here's the censored documentary that Channel 4 did not run.

I'll let the Atheist Conservative have the closing statement

The film is very badly made and acted, but at least it denigrates Islam. And neither its quality nor intention are important. Everyone in America is free to make a good or bad film with any intention whatsoever. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula the film-maker, Steve Klein the “spokesman for the film”, and Morris Sadek who translated the dialogue into Arabic and sent the thing to Egyptian journalists are very small fry indeed in the drama of chaos and destruction that is unfolding.

It is the use of the film by Islamic leaders to arouse Muslim mobs to riot, burn, wreck, assault and murder that is evil. Those leaders are guilty of the havoc, the fire and the spilt blood, but they could only do what they’re doing because the present American leadership prepared the way for them.

The events that are shaking the pillars of the world would have happened anyway, because Obama and his administration have over and over again by actions and by words, from his first speech abroad as president in Cairo in 2009 to Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday, impressed on Muslims the world over that they have been injured by America. And this despite the fact that Islam initiated war on America and is relentlessly pursuing it.