CAIR Attacks a Muslim!

When will our favorite fellow-travelers for Islamofascism at CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) finally attack a foreign Muslim for not respecting American culture and democratic norms?

Why, when the offending Muslim says that the Islamic faith needs to be reformed to purge out its violence, misogyny, and primitive tribalism, that's when.

A few days ago, one of America's great talk-show hosts, Glenn Beck, interviewed CAIR's Tampa boss, Ahmed Bedeir, alongside Dr. Tawfiq Hamid, a man who years ago was a jihadi in Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood, then freed himself from Islamofascist brainwashing and is now trying to encourage reform and freedom of thought within Islam.

Well, what person with a brain and a soul could find fault with that?

CAIR's Bedeir could:

"You're coming to my town. I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, and nobody's engaging the Muslim leadership that's already organized. You're not from this country. When you come to a country and you want to have dialogue about Islam, guess what, you're gonna have to join and engage the Muslim community, because that is the community you're trying to reform."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUJErMA4d9Q&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ecair%2Ecom%2Fdefault%2Easp%3FPage%3DarticleView%26id%3D43476%26theType%3DNB

Wow. Imagine if some patriotic pale-faced American deigned to tell an uppity Muslim migrant that "You're not from America. You're coming to my country. If you think you have something to add here, you have to dress like us, and you have to talk like us, and you have no right to criticize us in an open forum..." What do you think would happen? Every fax machine across the fruited plain would be spewing out CAIR's condemnations of this "xenophobia...insensitivity...hate speech...cultural chauvinism...islamophobia...[and hey, what the hell]...RACISM!!"

But CAIR's Ahmed Bedeir feels safe to go on the airwaves and tell an escapee from Islamic terror that he has no legitimacy because: "You're not from this country."

We old Cold Warriors recall that for decades the Kremlin used legal "front groups" (e.g., the "US Peace Council") here in the US to build up public support for The Cause, while Moscow actually called the shots. We also recall that those front groups reserved their most vicious attacks for those refugees from the belly of the beast, who possessed unusual inside knowledge of Communist strategy and the real conditions inside the Workers' Paradise. People like Vladimir Bukovsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Zdzisław Rurarz, and Anatoly Sharansky.

Dr. Hamid is in good company, while CAIR walks in the disgraceful and disgraced footsteps of those who enjoyed the benefits of a free society while working overtime to destroy it.

[Thanks to the comrades at American Thinker, who published this last week]

STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE TRAITORS

From Politico.com:
"Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition's goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself."

Funny, usually a person stabbed in the back will bleed quite fast, and profusely.

Had a GOP group planned such a vile tactic to sabotage Clinton's efforts in the Balkans, it would have been a national story until the next election, when the "unbelievably irresponsible" pols would have been targeted for righteous electoral annihilation.

But today's MSM just swallows it right up, and smiles dreamingly at Murtha, Pelosi, Obama, et. al.

Too bad for them The Blogosphere, like an elephant, never forgets. And like The Party, The Blogosphere has a thousand eyes.

THE 100% GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD

As I sit here in central Florida, less than 2 weeks from March, trying to keep warm by the fire, looking forward to a morning in the 30's, airports snowed in all across Texas, Nevada and Oklahoma, I keep hearing about the Global Warming Fraud (GWF). A few nights ago I watched ABC's Charlie Gibson solemnly report on this fraud, uhhhhhh, STORY...and the funny thing is, he was standing outdoors, bundled up in a heavy winter coat, sweater vest, AND SCARF...as he lectured the nation on the seriousness of the GLOBAL WARMING that is confronting us.

How he did it w/a straight face, I'll never know.

Very few people ever point out that the GWF industry is based on a total perversion of "the scientific method..." You know, the concept that has allowed us to create these amazing machines we're comunicating on right now, heart transplants, place men on the moon and satellites in orbit,and an endless cornucopia of scientific creations.

Science is supposed to proceed from data, right? So let's just review the basic data of the climate on this earth:

1--Planet is ~4 billion years old

2--Life has existed ~ 1 billion years.

3--Land-dwelling life has existed here ~400 million years.

4--Mammals have existed for ~200 million years

5--Extremely large vertebrate land animals existed continuously for ~200 million years (both dinosaurs and mammals). During this entire period, the earth was MUCH warmer than it is today, and the warmer areas had a greater diversity and density of life forms.

6--Human-type creatures have existed for ~2 million years.

7--Recognizable social humans have existed for ~50,000 years.

8--Human history has been tracked for ~8,000 years

9--Human writing has existed for ~6,000 years

10--Human recorded scientific observation of the globe has existed for ~100 years.

Folks, given this data, here is the key question: when these idiots claim the world is getting "warmer," I ask: WARMER THAN WHEN?

OUR ENTIRE DATABASE IS ABOUT 1/20,000TH OF ONE-PERCENT OF THE PERIOD OF LARGE LAND-DWELLING LIFE ON THIS PLANET (one hundred years out of 200 million).

HOW CAN ANYONE PLAUSIBLY OFFER ANY "SCIENTIFIC OPINION" GIVEN THE ALMOST COMPLETE LACK OF DATA?

I imagine these frauds, uhhhhh, "scientists" would feel justified in watching a 90-year-old man taking a 2-second sip of a beer with a pizza, and thereby predicting that the man would die of acute alcohol poisoning in about 24 hours, SINCE THAT SIP OBVIOUSLY WOULD CONTINUE WITHOUT LETUP UNTIL THE ALCOHOL KILLED THE OLD CODGER.

RIGHT??!!

Of, course, I'm a little confused, because when I was in school these same brilliant scientists told us that the world was getting much COLDER. That New England was going to be covered by glaciers AGAIN.

We know that a single volcanic eruption can have a substantial effect on the earth's weather, right? So tell me: how many volcanoes are going to erupt next year? The year after that?

Exactly.

The Good Old Days, when a "Show Trial" was REALLY A SHOW TRIAL!!

Some observers who really should know better are condemning the Iraqi government or the US for conducting "a show trial" of Saddam Hussein. What a load of hooey.

The essence of the REAL show trial is that the machinery of the prosecution is relentlessly directed to obtain a result wherein THE DEFENDANT CONFESSES AND APOLOGIZES FOR HIS CRIMES, AND EFFECTIVELY BEGS FOR HIS OWN PUNISHMENT.

Submitted for your approval--some proceedings from A REAL SHOW TRIAL. The show was produced and directed by the famous maestro, Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvilli, and it was dubbed, "THE CASE OF THE TROTSKYITE-ZINOVIEVITE TERRORIST CENTRE," as staged before "the MILITARY COLLEGIUM OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE U.S.S.R., Moscow, August 19-24, 1936," and the whole spooky thing can be found at: http://art-bin.com/art/omosc20m.html#1

Notice the lack of complaints from the Defendant about rude guards, insufficient time with his defense counsel, lukewarm mint tea...no, it appears the Defendants had only one devout wish: "FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF COMRADE STALIN, SHOOT ME NOW!!":

Vyshinsky: What appraisal should be given of the articles and statements you wrote in 1933, in which you expressed loyalty to the Party? Deception?

Kamenev: No, worse than deception.

Vyshinsky: Perfidy?

Kamenev: Worse.

Vyshinsky: Worse than deception, worse than perfidy - find the word. Treason?

Kamenev: You have found it.

Vyshinsky: Accused Zinoviev, do you confirm this?

Zinoviev: Yes.

Vyshinsky: Treason, perfidy, double-dealing?

Zinoviev: Yes.

Proceeding to explain the motives of his conduct, the accused Kamenev declares:

"I can admit only one thing: that having set ourselves the monstrously criminal aim of disorganizing the government of the land of socialism, we resorted to methods of struggle which in our opinion suited this aim and which are as low and as vile as the aim which we set before ourselves."

in the further process of the examination the accused Kamenev still more clearly and definitely speaks of that which guided the Zinovievites in their activities.

Vyshinsky: Consequently, your struggle against the leaders of the Party and the government was guided by motives of a personal base character - by the thirst for personal power?

Kamenev: Yes, by the thirst for power of our group.

Vyshinsky: Don't you think that this has nothing in common with social ideals?

Kamenev: It has as much in common as revolution has with counter-revolution.

Vyshinsky: That is, you are on the side of counter-revolution?

Kamenev: Yes.

Vyshinsky: Consequently, you clearly perceive that you are flighting against socialism?

Kamenev: We clearly perseive that we are fighting against the leaders of the Party and of the government who are leading the country to socialism.

Vyshinsky: Thereby you are fighting socialism as well, aren't you?

Kamenev: You are drawing the conclusion of an historian and prosecutor.
******************************

Now THAT'S a show trial.

Ohhh, the humanity!!

Regarding the "controversy" about Saddam Hussein's hanging...

The guy was a mass-murdering thug. He was held in comfortable custody for 3 years by the US, who caught him (and who evinced no rush to kill him, but could have at any time) until, after a long elaborate trial an Iraqi court sentenced him, and the Iraqi Prime Minister ordered the sentence to be carried out forthwith. Considering Hussein's hundreds of loyal lunatic gunmen and bombers out in the country, who thought nothing of shooting up a bakery or incinerating a market in a "gesture of support" for the noble prisoner, that decision not to delay was not irrational.

So, at the time of his execution, his guards taunted him. Awwwwwwwwwwwww, the injustice, the pain of it all!! Can't we get a better quality of hangman nowadays? What has happened to the hangman labor-market, where we're reduced to hiring talkative teasers who can't resist poking fun at their client? And one of them even had the gall to record the proceedings on his cellphone! Where has the professionalism of this great calling gone? Where can we find some hangmen of good old-fashioned solemnity and menace?

Good grief.

Let's recall what WASN'T done with Hussein: He wasn't forced to watch videos of his children tortured to death. He wasn't tortured to force him to confess to imaginary crimes. He wasn't shot a few minutes after capture and hung upside down alongside his [also shot] girlfriend. He wasn't shot in the snow, next to his wife, after a 2-hour military tribunal. He wasn't shoved into an industrial shredder, or an acid vat, or molten steel. He wasn't cut into small pieces, placed in a box, and delivered to his surviving family. He didn't have his ears, hands, or other appendages lopped off in public spectacles. Those were just a few of the grim outcomes that awaited several other comparable modern despots, or were ordered BY HIM to be carried out against those he SUSPECTED of disloyalty...and none after public trials replete with defense lawyers, challenges to the court, public statements, and witnesses under oath. Oh, and the mint tea every afternoon.

My, my, just before his trapdoor fell and his neck snapped, his guards teased him and one of them photographed the proceedings. Oh, well.

Is this really a news story?

Thinking the (Little) Unthinkable

As we are confronted by the literally diabolical violence and aggression that Islamofascism inflicts upon us every day and every night--bombings, beheadings, kidnappings, hijackings, assassinations, robberies, extortions, etc.-- it's so tempting to react with a maximum response. Particularly as we witness the incredible ravings of the Iranian president, and perhaps much more troubling, the pathetic "Free World" responses to him. There is no doubt that the bulk of the European countries believe it is MUCH more important to prove that George W. Bush is a misguided, failed cowboy than it is to stop Iran from launching the 2d Holocaust against the Jews in 65 years, not to mention seizing control of the Persian Gulf.

Bush is pursuing a difficult, risky, and slow strategy: build up a free Iraq, bristling with US bases and intelligence posts, and Iran will be forced to abandon its plans. Surrounded by Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran will be indefensible to about anything the US wants to do to it. But if the US can be chased out of Iraq, then Iran's position will be enormously strengthened, rather similar to Hitler's position once he seized the Sudetenland.

What if Bush's strategy is simply, maybe unavoidably, working too slowly to be completed before Americans choose some "cut-and-runner" as President? That is what a lot of intelligent people are sensing may be in the cards. In that case, don't we need to think the "unthinkable?" Given the plans and capabilities of our enemies, isn't some kind of multi-targeted Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dresden thermo-nuclear attack on them called for?

That would certainly be the BIG Unthinkable. But perhaps we need to consider a much smaller Unthinkable. Rather than targeting the cities of Iran, or even its military installations, why not obliterate Iran's oil production? Simply pulverize all of its petroleum infrastructure with conventional, redundant strikes?

In one stroke, the Iranian government would lose approximately 1.5 billion dollars a week--currently a huge windfall for a third world theocracy governing 70 million people. That money would no longer be available for Iran's nuclear program, or for its little-noticed but highly important conventional military upgrade. As the weeks and months tick by and Iran's military degrades, it would likely panic and lash out in a hurried and ineffective way, making it easier for us to neutralize them, and thus push the regime faster into a political death spiral.

The Euro-cowards would suddenly lose their real motivation for coddling Tehran--the fear that its oil production would be lost (once that production truly is lost, then there is nothing left to fear). The Tehran-leaning politicians in Iraq, who lean that way either sincerely or from fear of assassination, will see the Eternal Persian Next Door suddenly bloodied, impoverished, and stunned. That can only improve their calculations as to whether to continue to cooperate with the US or not.

There is no doubt such an attack would be a shock to the world's oil and financial markets, but it pales next to the shock that would come from a nuclear attack (from either the US or Israel) on Iran, or from an Iranian anschluss with southern Iraq, or from a suicidal US withdrawal from a splitting Iraq. For that matter, it pales next to the shocks the markets have suffered since Iran's lunatic President came to power last year, or those from Hurrican Katrina. Yet somehow we all survived those shocks, the stock markets and job numbers are way up and inflation is low.

This table shows the current world oil production, country-by-country:



(Source: http://www.worldoil.com/INFOCENTER/STATISTICS_DETAIL.asp?Statfile=_worldoilproduction )


As we can see, the Islamofascist Republic of Iran produces 4.4% of the total, a significant amount, but hardly an amount that is essential for the world's economies to avoid grinding to a halt. If a US President carefully prepares for such a strike, he can ensure that the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve will be topped off appropriately, and then release it so as to lessen the shock.

Perhaps most appealing about this plan is it turns on its head the Islamofascist mythology that the US/West is willing to sacrifice the lives or freedom of untold millions of Muslims on a pyre of burning petroleum. (No-one has yet detailed the measurable oil benefits we received by rescuing Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, or other Muslim states not called Kuwait). This plan explicitly minimizes any human casualties--indeed, there would appear to be the risk of a few hundred at most-- while accepting an economic cost for ourselves.

We hear a lot of talk from certain experts on the MidEast that many Gulf potentates are terrified: events have placed Iran and its Shi'a cousins in Iraq, Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Saudia's Eastern Province in a position to surround and intimidate, if not conquer, the Sunni regimes around the Arabian heartland of Islam. If this is true, then a smashing strike of Iran's oil facilities would have both the benefit of reassuring these frightened sheikhs that America has not lost its will to counter Islamofascist (and "Shi'a enemy") Iran, and a built-in insurance policy that these regimes would increase their own oil production so as to mitigate the economic and political cost to the US President who orders the strike.

If the "frightened Gulf Sunnis" theory is unfounded, then the strike will at least have the salutory effect of demonstrating that post 9/11, we are truly in a New Era. For decades, the policy of any major country towards the Persian Gulf has always been focused on oil. Recall that Iran and Iraq fought a full-scale war from 1980-88, but judicious diplomacy and the US Navy ensured that oil shipments were barely effected, and the real price of oil plummeted during the war. After the US liberated Iraq, many critics seized upon the fact that the US had made it a priority to secure and preserve Iraq's oilfields--a self-evident objective considering the long-term plan to rebuild Iraq-- to argue that the operation's real goal was precisely to seize those oil fields, as laid out in the Bush/Texas/Cheney/ Halliburton/Big Oil World Hegemony MasterPlan. This conpiracy theory was preposterous, but it has fed into a general perception that the US has NOT changed its focus from securing oil supplies: if the War on Terror conflicts with Secure Oil Supplies, then we'll just have to eat a little terror.

After 9/11, there has been an explicit societal and political demand that our concern for the oil flow must have a limit, that smashing and choking off terror must take top priority. So far we haven't really been forced to choose between oil (short term) and security, but that day is coming, without a doubt. What would we do if/when a Bin Ladenite faction seizes Saudia and its oil facilities? Business as usual?

By destroying Iran's petroleum potential today, we will send a message that we are serious about fighting Islamofascism, to the point of absorbing economic pain in order to inflict much greater and more effectual pain upon them. And we will both stun and surprise our enemies, who have always planned under the operational assumption that, because they have oil, and the West needs oil, they will always have plenty of money to underwrite their bloody mayhem. The sight of US bombers making repeated runs as they incinerate the refineries at Bandar Abbas will go a long way towards shaking this smug assumption.

RESCUING GEN. PINOCHET FROM THE MEMORY-HOLE

THANK YOU, PROF. GEORGE REISMAN, for writing 100 times better than I had hoped to, about the career and meaning of the late Gen. Augosto Pinochet, former President of Chile. Gen. Pinochet's death on Dec. 10 was covered by the MSM as if he was some escaped Nazi war-criminal who evaded justice, rather than a modern Cincinnatus who stood up to save millions of his countrymen from slavery, torture, and death. He held power for 15 years, then offered his countrymen a referendum on whether he should stay in power or resign. He got 45% of the vote--how many elected Western leaders would get 45% if they had been in power for 15 years?--AND THEN QUIT. His country went from an economic basketcase at the time he moved to arrest Castro-puppet Salvador Allende in 1973, to the best economy in Latin America by a country-mile, by the early 80's. And it has STAYED strong since he left, attesting to the wisdom of his policies.

Before I turn it over to Prof. Reisman, let me say: Had Augosto Pinochet been a socialist or communist military leader, and done THE EXACT SAME THINGS he actually did, and got THE EXACT SAME RESULTS he actually got, by now the United Nations would be awarding an annual "Augosto Pinochet Prize for National Heroism," and the MSM would treat each annual winner as an icon of humanity.

Prof. Reisman, take it away:

Saturday, December 16, 2006
General Augusto Pinochet Is Dead

On Sunday, December 10, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile died, at the age of 91. General Pinochet deserves to be remembered for having rescued his country from becoming the second Soviet satellite in the Western hemisphere, after Castro’s Cuba, and, like the Soviet Union, and Cuba under Castro, a totalitarian dictatorship.

The General is denounced again and again for the death or disappearance of over 3,000 Chilean citizens and the alleged torture of thousands more. It may well be that some substantial number of innocent Chilean citizens did die or disappear or otherwise suffered brutal treatment as the result of his actions. But in a struggle to avoid the establishment of a Communist dictatorship, it is undoubtedly true that many or most of those who died or suffered were preparing to inflict a far greater number of deaths and a vastly larger scale of suffering on their fellow citizens.

Their deaths and suffering should certainly not be mourned, any more than the deaths of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, and their helpers should be mourned. Had there been a General Pinochet in Russia in 1918 or Germany in 1933, the people of those countries and of the rest of the world would have been incomparably better off, precisely by virtue of the death, disappearance, and attendant suffering of vast numbers of Communists and Nazis. Life and liberty are positively helped by the death and disappearance of such mortal enemies. Their absence from the scene means the absence of such things as concentration camps, and is thus ardently to be desired.

As for the innocent victims in Chile, their fate should overwhelmingly be laid at the door of the Communist plotters of totalitarian dictatorship. People have an absolute right to rise up and defend their lives, liberty, and property against a Communist takeover. In the process, they cannot be expected to make the distinctions present in a judicial process. They must act quickly and decisively to remove what threatens them. That is the nature of war. The fate of innocent bystanders, largely those who cannot be readily distinguished from the enemy, is the responsibility of the Communists. Had they not attempted to impose their totalitarian dictatorship, there would not have been any need to use force and violence to prevent them, and thus the innocent would not have suffered.

Contrary to the attitude of so many of today’s intellectuals, Communists do not have a right to murder tens of millions of innocent people and then to complain when their intended victims prevent their takeover and in the process kill some of them.

General Pinochet was undoubtedly no angel. No soldier can be. But he certainly was also no devil. In fact, if any comparison applies, it may well be one drawn from antiquity, namely, that of Cincinnatus, who saved the Roman Republic by temporarily becoming its dictator. Like Cincinnatus, General Pinochet voluntarily relinquished his dictatorship. He did so after both preventing a Communist takeover and imposing major pro-free-market reforms, inspired largely by Milton Friedman (who in large part was himself inspired by Ludwig von Mises). The effect of these reforms was to make Chile's the most prosperous and rapidly progressing economy in Latin America, Thereafter, in the words of his New York Times’—largely hostile—obituary, he used his remaining power to “set limits, for example, on economic policy debates with frequent warnings that he would not tolerate a return to statist measures.”

General Pinochet was thus one of the most extraordinary dictators in history, a dictator who stood for major limits on the power of the state, who imposed such limits, and who sought to maintain such limits after voluntarily giving up his dictatorship.

When General Pinochet stepped down, he did so with a guarantee of immunity from prosecution for his actions while in power. However, the present and previous regime in Chile violated this agreement and sought to ensnare the General in a web of legal actions and law suits, making the last years of his life a period of turmoil. This was a clear violation of contract, comparable to the seizure of property in violation of contract. Not surprisingly the regimes in question were avowedly socialist. As a result of their breach, it is now considerably less likely that the world will soon see any other dictator voluntarily relinquish his power. The Chilean socialists will have taught him that to be secure, he must remain in power until he dies.

*****

Dictatorship, like war, is always an evil. Like war, it can be justified only when it is necessary to prevent a far greater evil, namely, as in this case, the imposition of the far more comprehensive and severe, permanent totalitarian dictatorship of the Communists.

Despite the fact that General Pinochet was able to use his powers as dictator to enact major pro-free-market reforms, dictatorship should never be seen as justified merely as a means of instituting such reforms, however necessary and desirable they may be. Dictatorship is the most dangerous of political institutions and easily produces catastrophic results. This is because a dictator is not restrained by any need for public discussion and debate and thus can easily leap headlong into disasters that would have been avoided had there been the freedom to criticize his proposed actions and to oppose them. And even when his policies may be right, the fact that they are imposed in defiance of public opinion operates greatly to add to their unpopularity and thus to make permanent change all the more difficult.

On the basis of such considerations, when asked many years ago what he would do if he were appointed dictator, von Mises replied, “I would resign.”


This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. George Reisman, who's website is www.capitalism.net, is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.

http://georgereisman.com/blog/2006/12/general-augusto-pinochet-is-dead.html