Will the the 21st Century See The Dismantling Of Centralized Power?

“The story of the 21st Century will be the dismantling of centralized power.“ : Richard Bledsoe

I can’t think of any evidence for this. Are there any governments on earth which are smaller than they were ten years ago? Is Google’s power shrinking? Amazon’s? Big banks? Has Giant Faceless MegaCorp decided to break itself up into independent twenty employee segments?

We have seen in the last couple decades the creation of a global surveillance state of intertwined governments and private businesses which not even the Stasi could have dreamed of in their wildest drug induced fantasies.

We in the US have evolved from a nation of independent small business owners aka farmers and artisans, into a nation of employees trained to take orders. Our fundamental mindset has changed from that of owners into obedient order takers.

I see no evidence whatsoever that anyone in either major American political party would even consider overturning the foundation of the modern regulatory state -Wickard vs Filburn (look it up)- much less return our government to only those activities authorized by the Constitution.

The UN and leading politicians around the world are working openly to end national sovereignty, criminalize free speech including criticism of Islam and of immigration. Merkel may lose her office, but she has succeeded beyond the dreams of the mullahs in Islamizing Germany, and those people are not going to leave. Nor are those in France, Britain, Holland, Spain, or Italy.

Islam is hardly a force for decentralization, nor is the wave of socialism sweeping Americans who have been taught to despise individualism, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie.

Quite the contrary to decentralization: I think we are far more likely to see the complete politicization of economic activity coupled with a surveillance state like the world has never seen.

On Recognizing Jerusalem As The Capital Of Israel

I see the Arabs and Europeans are denouncing our recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, claiming it will affect peace negotiations. A problem I have with that assertion is that I don’t think the Arabs have ever negotiated in good faith, nor do they intend to do so. Ever.

If you haven’t read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, still in effect, doing so may enlighten you. The Covenant states that Hamas exists for the purpose of wiping Israel from the face of the earth and exterminating the Jews. Their founding document says so in as many words. They also plan on retaking all the lands once taken by the sword. Read Spain and Eastern Europe. They also plan on extending sharia to the rest of the world: again, they say so in as many words, Angela Merkel, et al.

Quote: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"

Quote: “This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews...is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.”

Quote: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine”. Doesn’t sound like they intend to leave a lot of room for Israel. At least not to me it doesn’t.

Quote: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” So kill the Jews or else.

Quote: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. ...

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.”

I hope you’ll pardon me for thinking that Hamas has no intention whatsoever of leaving Israel in existence. Nor the Iberian Peninsula as a non-Muslim land. Nor Eastern Europe. Hi Angela Merkel, et al.

Quote: “Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.” No negotiating in good faith for the continued existence of Israel. Or Europe.

Quote: “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the cse when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female.” Remember: Spain and Eastern Europe are Muslim land, folks. Once conquered, always consecrated. Just like Israel.

Quote: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”

Aka negotiating in good faith is a waste of time.

Quote: “The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”

Moslem land: all of Israel, all of Iberia, all of Eastern Europe, and eventually all of the world, Angela Merkel.

There is lots more, but if you read this far you probably get the idea: there never was and never will be any negotiating in good faith. They intend to not merely exterminate Israel but retake all parts of Europe once under their control, and to extend that control to the entire world.

So the assertion that our recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will impede negotiation is a joke upon the credulous, Angela et al.

You can find the entire Hamas Covenant at the site of the Yale Law School Library. HERE.

Our Responsibility: Preparing for Low Probability/High Consequences Events

Juliette Kayyem, in The Atlantic magazine :

The “never again” standard is as absurd as it is simplistic. It is as vague as it is damaging. It tried to convince Americans, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that invulnerability was a possibility. This has hindered homeland-security planners for a decade and a half: Knowing that no security apparatus can stop all forms of harm, including “lone wolfs,” progress is better measured in how well people prepare and educate themselves for the inevitable. What if the United States simply accepted, as a nation, that bad things happen and get ready for that possibility?

I agree with Juliette Kayyem about preparedness rather than a hopeless focus on prevention, but what does this really involve at the personal level?

With the exceptions of hurricanes in hurricane zones, major earthquakes in earthquake zones, and the like, most threats are individually highly dispersed and/or low probability/high consequences events.

Just as we reasonably expect our home to never burn down, but have insurance anyway, should we consider these individually improbable events like terrorism against us personally something we should individually insure against? If so, what to do?

I suspect that government in a relatively free society cannot deal easily with highly dispersed threats like terrorism or even random crime: police cannot be everywhere at all times, nor should we want them to be.

Several million Americans have gotten concealed carry licenses, while millions more have gotten their state legislatures to do away with the need for CCW licenses entirely. So far as I can tell, there have been no great negative consequences to either of those events. If there have been, the news media, no friend of law-abiding private citizens carrying handguns, has done a lousy job of covering them.

Imagine what might have been different in Orlando or Paris if if even a few people had been carrying guns. Given the US experience with legal concealed carry, background crime would not have been 'blood in the streets', while one or two people shooting back might have saved dozens of lives.

Even a strong defensive mindset might have made huge differences in the kill counts: apparently no one in Orlando or Paris counter-attacked even though the murderers had to pause multiple times to reload. Imagine if someone had the defensive mindset to attack, either with a chair, a bottle, or even barehanded. Instead they got out their cell phones and shot videos.

Wrong mind set.

The less radical preppers may be on to something: personal responsibility for one's self and family. I'm not talking about the quasi-millenarianist End Of The World As We Know It people, but those who take preparing for disasters quite seriously, with food, water, medical supplies, defensive weaponry, communication equipment -at least battery powered receivers so one can hear news reports- a ready reserve of cash (actual cash in small bills, in case the ATMs and cash registers are down for a few days or weeks), sanitation, and the like, sufficient for a few weeks.

It seems outright foolish not to have such preps if one lives in a hurricane or earthquake zone, but perhaps people in the rest of the country might do well by considering their own circumstances and prepare for the more likely disasters.

An interesting aspect to preparing for 'normal' short term disasters is that the preparations are pretty much the same: preparing well for the more probable issues also prepares one for the less probable.

Kayyem:

I have come to believe—as a security expert but also as a mother of three—that among all of its flaws, the worst aspect of “never again” was that it let experts like me run the show. We have failed to show that the conflicts and choices inherent in protecting the homeland are really not that different from those Americans and people around the world encounter every day. In our day-to-day lives, people try to protect those closest to them, but they also plan for the bad things that will happen. The essential aspects of those two priorities—preparedness, planning, flexibility, communication, back-up systems, learning from mistakes—are essentially the same. By too easily separating the homeland from the home, experts have failed to nurture the vigor and resiliency which is the greatest strength of a nation that was built on vulnerability: the American public.

And if the United States could build resiliency one home at a time, maybe, in another 15 years, the country will have stopped asking the question to some anonymous bureaucracy with strange acronyms and esoteric risk assessments: “Are we safer?” Instead, people should start embracing, “Am I ready?”

Taking personal responsibility is self-empowering. What is right about that?

8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens

Yes, President Trump DOES have the legal authority to stop people coming in from other countries. Any people, all people, any country, all countries.

That pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
"(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President.
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline."
This is not a new law: It was enacted in 1952. IIRC, Jimmy Carter used pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (f) to prohibit the entry of certain Iranians aka "any class of aliens", and to track down some lranians aka "any class of aliens" already here legally and deport them.

Source

“Less Hamas, more hummus”

It was ‘very poorly received’ in Beirut, he concludes.

Some people don't have much of a sense of humor, I guess, unless they think burning people alive, raping them, or cutting off their heads is just plain funny.

The rest is predictable, from the Muslim faction known as the Religion of Peace or I'll Kill You:

A French street artist was severely beaten up in Paris after refusing to remove a work of art calling for coexistence between Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Street artist Combo was physically assaulted in eastern Paris on Saturday after refusing to take down one of his artworks, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

On a wall in the Porte Dorée neighbourhood, the 28-year-old put up a picture of himself wearing a djellaba (a full bodied outer robe common in Arabic-speaking countries) and then painted the word “co-exist” next to it, replacing the “c” with the Islamic crescent, the “x” with the Star of David, and the “t” with the Christian cross.

Four men approached the artist and insulted him, demanding that he remove the painting. The artist wrote on his Facebook page that when he refused to comply, all four of them beat him up severely, leaving him with a dislocated shoulder and bruises.

More here.

BTW: Making it illegal to carry weapons, for practical purposes puts the government -any government which does so- squarely on the side of the criminals. Disarming the victims while being unable or unwilling to arrest and lock up criminals who attack the decent members of society is unequivocally pro-criminal.

Why Americans Have Weapons Instead of Guns

I just read a review of a new variant of the AR-15 rifle, which was designed to be legal in all fifty states. It sounds like an interesting response to a bewildering thicket of state level regulations, all of which I believe are prohibited by the Constitution. Big deal: my opinion won't change things.

One of the commentors objected to another's use of the term 'weapon' rather than calling it a gun.

My response:

"should NEVER ever be referred to as weapons(.) they are guns or firearms(,) weapons are what police and military use....we cause problems on ourselves by referring to our gun as weapons"

You have a legitimate point, but I do disagree with it.

My guns are weapons. Every last one of them, from a Belgian Browning 20 gauge A-5, through a Remington pump .22 Model 12A to Mini14s and S&W J-frames, and 1911s.

The Constitution protects arms. Not goose guns, not air rifles, not deer guns, not target pistols, except at they contribute to use and familiarity with military grade weapons or can substitute for them. The Constitution protects militia grade arms precisely for the purpose of killing people. That is demonstrated without any doubt by the 2nd Amendment's explicit tying of the right to keep and bear arms to a well trained militia. The writings of the Founders, published concurrently with the ratification debates and available today, make explicit the role of arms which are protected: they are explicitly for killing tyrants, foreign or domestic.

Anti-gunners freak at the idea, especially at the 'domestic' aspects as they inaccurately associate 'tyrants' with 'politicians', but weapons ownership, use, and the bearing of them should not be controversial in an age where domestic terrorists and ordinary criminals alike can strike anywhere, any time, and the police are incapable of being everywhere, all the time, to protect us.

That it is controversial is in part our fault: For decades we let the anti-gunners frame the debate. It is time to frame that debate ourselves, and force them to respond to us instead of us to them. We can do so only by using terms like 'weapons' and 'shooting people who need shooting right now', and defending those concepts as good and proper. If more people than the LEO at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris had been armed, more might well have survived: Killing murderous assailants is exactly what weapons are for, and that is a good thing. If the observer who videod the killing of the Paris LEO on the sidewalk had had a Mini-14 or AKM at hand instead of a video camera, the LEO might well have been killed anyway, but the murderers might have been stopped right there. They are exactly the kind of domestic tyrants the unorganized militia has a chance of stopping. By shooting them with weapons.

The 2nd Amendment protects 'arms', not just guns, but arms, for the purpose of arming the militia, including the 'unorganized militia', which means us: civilians such as those brave passengers aboard United Flight 93, who gave their lives defending us against the Islamists on 9-11. That means that not only are guns protected, but so are all other militia usable weapons: knives, including bowies, bayonets, and switchblades, cudgels, including billy clubs, and metal or plastic knuckles. Laws prohibiting them are explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. That such laws exist and are widespread today is only evidence of our refusal to submit to the Constitution. Rather than submit, even by amending it, we have preferred to pretend that it does not mean what it clearly says. That is our shame.

The Constitution protects weapons which carry a single round, like the Liberator .45 of the Second World War, and it protects AKMs, AR-15s, and M-16s and their 20 & 30 round magazines. It protects sniper rifles and target rifles which may be used by the unorganized militia as sniper rifles. It protects submachine guns and full auto rifles ie actual assault rifles. The Constitution protects all of them for the explicit purpose of shooting those who would do us and our country harm.

Given that a number of the Founders owned ships with cannons, and given that the Constitution explicitly provides for issuing letters of marque and reprisal to privately owned ships, I expect that a plausible argument could be made that the Constitution also protects crew served weapons such as belt fed machine guns and at least light artillery.

We are on firm ground when we say that the Constitution protects military grade arms, and great big scary ones at that. If we refuse to make that point, the other side is on the way to victory.

Instead of allowing the anti-weapons crowd to cow us into refusing to defend weapons ownership, I prefer to make them confront our issue head on: The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect our ability to arm ourselves against tyrants, foreign and domestic. Those tyrants may be common criminals or politically/religiously inspired criminals such as disciples of al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, AQAP, and others. In any case, when they strike, the police are almost sure not to be there. The victims are always there, and only armed victims, willing to shoot them with weapons they bear, are capable of shooting people who desperately need to be shot.

The original article, "50 STATE LEGAL AR-15 – ARES DEFENSE SCR" by Sam Trisler in'Guns America', is here.

Marine Le Pen, in the New York Times

Pigs Soar: The New York Times published an opinion piece by Marine Le Pen.

I continue to be baffled by the use of the term Right Wing, both here and in Europe. It is applied to Nazis, who were socialists, and to Libertarians, who are Classical Liberals. A term which includes both genocidal proponents of big government and proponents of small government which protects people's rights hardly seems like a useful term, except as one of abuse for "people with whom I disagree".

Any thoughts on that?

Jimmy Carter On The Charlie Hebdo Slaughter

Mr. Carter was on Jon Stewart's comedy show:

...former President Jimmy Carter asserted that the recent violence in France could be attributed to the failure to reach a solution to the Palestinian problem and the terror attacks are a reflection of and a reaction to how Arabs are treated in Israel. He also blamed unemployment in Islamic countries....

His formula, he said, is for Israel to give up the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem and for the Palestinians to promise Israel security.t (sic) should be noted that the terrorists who perpetrated both of the attacks had absolutely no connection with Palestinian organizations, nor did they express any outrage towards Israel.

In light of Mr. Carter’s comments, it might also be noteworthy that he turned ninety-years old last October.

Of course, Jimmy Carter also has said Hamas should be recognized as 'legitimate': :

Former president and international peace activist Jimmy Carter is urging the U.S. government to recognize Hamas as a “legitimate political actor”

Just why is such a position an obscenity? Why does his position put Jimmy Carter squarely on the side of anti-Jewish genocide? Because the genocide of the Jews is exactly the stated purpose for the existence of Hamas.

Think I'm a nut case? Of course you do. How could Hamas be in favor, much less dedicated to, genocide? How could Jimmy Carter call them 'legitimate'?

Read the Hamas Covenant, available at the web site of the Yale University Law School Library, and then tell me I'm a nut. Until you have read Hamas' founding document, which is still in effect, you might think they are legitimate.

And that is exactly what genocidal anti-Semites want you to think.

Hi, Jimmy.

PS: My comments on excerpts from the Hamas Covenant are here.

Islamic State hands out rules for sex slaves in Iraq

We clearly need more tolerance for slave rapers. Their culture is just as good as any others. Especially ours. Our professors tell us so. We must believe it.

ISIL Infiltrating The US Across The Southern Border?

Thanks to the federal government, it would soooooo difficult.

A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border.

A bit more here.

I have trouble believing they are not already here.

Historian William Forstchen, author of "One Second After" has a new novella out about the consequences of ISIL infiltrating the country. "Day of Wrath" is all too believable.

Obama's ISIS Strategy

It is impressive. Too impressive to excerpt. John Merline did it at Investors.com.

Clik here.

American Responses Which Islamists Would Respect

I sent a link to the Romney column in the post below, and got a link back to a Peter Beinart column in The Atlantic magazine in return. In 'Pursuing ISIS to the Gates Of Hell', Beinart discusses Walter Russell Mead's analysis of American foreign policy, which argues that America has four foreign-policy traditions.

Ignoring the issue of four camps, I disagree with a couple things Beinart said.

>>These aren’t policy prescriptions. They are cries for revenge.<< The entire Arab world accepts revenge as an ideal policy prescription. If Beinart doesn't understand that, he is not very knowledgeable about that which he writes. The Islamist plan to take over the West is based on the so far correct belief that the West will never adopt the Islamists' strategy of terror and revenge. If we were to do so, much of Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza, and now Egypt, Somalia, and Libya would no longer exist. Also the suburbs of London, Paris, Marseille, and Rome would be cleansed of Muslims. The Islamists would rage, but they would respect us for not only our strength, but our willingness to use that strength without mercy. In our position it is exactly what they would do. It is, in fact, exactly what they are doing now where they can: Kill all the Yazidy men, sell their daughters into sexual slavery. Slaughter the Christians in Syria. Bomb Jewish temples. Slaughter the infidel in Africa, sell their daughters into sexual slavery. Take 1700 prisoners in Iraq, and slaughter them in front of video cameras, distribute the video to the world. Pol Pot didn't have the guts to do that, nor Mao, nor Stalin, nor Hitler. This is what they value. What would the Islamists respect if Islamists held hostage an American soldier and demanded the release of prisoners from Guantanamo? They would respect Obama bringing those prisoners to the lawn of the White House, forcing them to kneel, then personally blowing their brains out on world wide television. When he was done, the bodies would be shown being sewn into pig skins filled with pig manure, then buried in unmarked graves. That is what the Islamists would respect. Instead, ISIS slaughters 1700 prisoners, and Obama calls for "better political inclusion".

>>The Iran hostage crisis did not lend itself to a simple policy response either.<<

Rubbish. Utter, pure, unadulterated rubbish.

The people who took the Americans hostage expected that Jimmy Carter, the most powerful man on the entire planet, would unquestionably tell them that if the hostages were not released unharmed within 24 hours, that America would commence bombing Iranian cities. They planned on doing so, having made their point. End of crisis.

Instead, Jimmy Carter, the most powerful man of all, wailed and whimpered and sobbed about having supported the wicked, wicked, evil Shah, and opened talks to determine the wants and needs and concerns and just complaints of the Iranian revolutionaries.

The Iranians, as well as the Arabs, were stunned by Carter's refusal, his cowardice, in not using America's power to get the hostages back immediately. That is why they were also stunned when George Bush invaded Afghanistan: They expected another Jimmy Carter response.

Arabs and Persians have little respect for those without power, but the person lower still is the person with great power who is afraid to use it ruthlessly. For him they hold utter contempt. The purpose of power is to use it to subjugate your enemies. Carter had the power but he didn't use it. Except, of course, when swinging his canoe paddle at a vicious swimming bunny.

If we want to respond to challenges from the Islamists which they will respect on their own terms, we are going to have to shut up with the fantasies of "bringing democracy" and stomp our enemies flat. Then go home, with a warning to their successors that anyone who tries peeing on America's foot will get the same treatment. No nation building, no voting, no democracy, no mercy. We will just stomp them flat and go home, leaving any survivors to rebuild the rubble.

That is what they would respect. That is what they are doing wherever they can. That is why they have no respect for the British or the French, who allow them to operate openly in their capital cities, burning hundreds of cars a night, raping those they want to rape, not merely with impunity, but with the protection of the national governments which are afraid of offending their delicate sensibilities.

Since we are not going to use our power ruthlessly, I think the Islamists are going to win.

Mitt Romney On The Disruption Of Trade Routes

Mitt Romney has an opinion column in the Washington Post, in which he advocates for a stong US military force, in part because:

The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers — to use former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s phrase, we would be paying the cannibals to eat us last. And in the meantime, our economy would be devastated by the disruption of trade routes, the turmoil in global markets and the tumult of conflict across the world.

Funny that disrupting trade routes is a point I hardly ever see, but it has been an issue ever since the Muslims cut off European trade routes to the East, leading to Europeans exploring both the west coast of Africa to find a new route to the Indies, and Columbus searching for new routes by sailing west. The Soviets targeted specific places for revolution, like South Africa because it controlled the trade and naval route around the Horn of Africa, and Kenya and others which could close the Suez Canal route and the Persian Gulf.

The great farm houses designed by Andrea Palladio in the 16th century were built for Venetian merchants who saw their trade routes through Turkey about to be cut off, so they bought swamp land, drained it, and replaced their trading income with agricultural income. The rise of European power and agriculture in Malta and later in the West Indies and Brazil were a direct response to the Muslim conquest of the Middle East, where Europeans had had huge sugar plantations.

Funny how disrupting trade routes can have world wide effects which last for centuries.

ISIS Slaughters Hundreds Of Prisoners, Obama Calls For "Better Political Inclusion"

The New York Times has video and a story on the ISIS slaughter of hundreds of bound prisoners in Tikrit:

DIWANIYA, Iraq — Ali Hussein Kadhim, an Iraqi soldier and a Shiite, was captured with hundreds of other soldiers by Sunni militants...

The militants, with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, separated the men by sect. The Sunnis were allowed to repent for their service to the government. The Shiites were marked for death, and lined up in groups.

Then they were shot in the back of the head. At least 560 of them, possibly the claimed-by-ISIS 1700, or more.

In its campaign of blatantly sectarian- or ethnic-driven massacres like the one in Tikrit, ISIS has been tearing open Iraq’s wounds, creating a new wave of factionalism that has sent American officials scrambling to call for better political inclusion and reconciliation.

That's a joke, right? ISIS slaughters perhaps 1700 unarmed, cuffed prisoners, and President Obama calls for "better political inclusion". Obama actually thinks ISIS mass murderers should be "better included"?

Why doesn't the New York Times highlight that?

David Cameron On MultiCulturalism

OK, can any of you who are not doing serious mind-altering drugs imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like this?:

We cannot stand by and allow our openness to be confused with a tolerance of extremism, or one that encourages different cultures to live separate lives and allows people to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values. Adhering to British values is not an option or a choice, it is a duty for those who live in these islands, and in the end, it is only by standing up for these values that we will defeat this extremism, protect our way of life, and keep all our people safe.

Unless, of course, President Obama were to be referring to Republicans or Tea Partiers.

Prime Minister David Cameron: War With Islamists May Take Generations

This is the first I have heard of a head of state admitting so in public: Our war with the Islamists may last generations.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Friday during a pointed press conference that U.K. authorities will soon begin revoking the passports of citizens traveling to Syria.

The move is part of a series of new security measures being taken by the country after raising the terror threat level to "severe" as Cameron admitted the fight to end Islamist extremism may take decades, or even generations.

"We are in the middle of a generational struggle against a poisonous & extremist ideology," Cameron declared.

Decent next steps should include ending Muslim immigration, and expelling radical mullahs and anyone who attends their rants. If that means armed forces fighting in the streets of London, or Dearborn, fine. It is better to take the war to them than let them bring the war to us again.

Did any Allied countries allow Nazi advocates to immigrate or proselytize in 1942? Lock them up or throw them out.

Matti Friedman on News Coverage of Israel

Matti Friedman has a long essay on news coverage of the Jewish/Muslim conflict.

The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.

News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000)

The numbers are odd compared to the relative amount of coverage. Maybe something else is going on.

The Hamas charter, for example, calls not just for Israel’s destruction but for the murder of Jews and blames Jews for engineering the French and Russian revolutions and both world wars; the charter was never mentioned in print when I was at the AP, though Hamas won a Palestinian national election and had become one of the region’s most important players.

Friedman is here referring to Article Seven of the Hamas Covenant, which says that the Day of Judgement shall not occur until the Muslims kill the Jews.

There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters....as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is Israeli.

So, reporters know that Hamas is committing war crimes by dressing as civilians, but the AP and other "news" organizations refuse to report those crimes, preferring instead to describe them when killed as dead civilians. How charming.

The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story.

Is that properly described as reporting, or creating propaganda for an organization openly dedicated to genocide?

White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans.

One must expiate one's sins by condemning others for the same ones.

Understanding what happened in Gaza this summer...requires us to understand what is clear to nearly everyone in the Middle East: The ascendant force in our part of the world is...an empowered strain of Islam that assumes different and sometimes conflicting forms, and that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region under its control and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots.

Islamists see themselves as on the rise, and that gives them strength. The West sees itself as failing, as it well should, and that weakens us. Those of the far left, who have worked so long and so effectively to destroy western self-confidence are still ascendent. Hence the election of an utterly un-vetted leftist hack to the presidency of the United States, and European inability to even contemplate the possibility of halting Muslim immigration lest they be called racist. Islamists have openly declared their intention of re-taking the once conquered lands of Europe, and of doing so by conquest.

When the Night of the Long Knives finally arrives, it will be the people with confidence in their own righteousness who are likely to triumph. You could not pay me enough to live in Europe when that day comes.

The Hamas Covenant: Exterminate the Jews

Ron Rosenbaum has a column in Slate on the people who are actually intent on genocide in the conflict between Israel and Hamas: Hamas. They said so in their founding document of 1988, and have never renounced it. Genocide against the Jews is their reason for existence. What more does one need to know?

What it represents is Hamas’ own self-definition. Its articulation of its sacred mission...which reads:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory)."

There is no equivocation. There is just "obliteration." Not explicitly genocidal, it could be argued that it's just metaphorical—that the destruction of Israel will somehow not involve any harm to the vast majority of 5 million Jews there

There is more, of course:

OK, let's concede that metaphoric possibility. But then we must contend with the...explicitly genocidal—element of the Hamas Covenant: Article 7. The article that is an explicit call for the extermination of all Jews. An explicit call for genocide.

Here is how it reads in English:

"… [T]he Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

...The language calls for the mission of Hamas to be to seek out and find every Jew wherever they may be hiding and kill him or her. No Day of Judgment until that is done.

It continues to shock me that a group with an overtly genocidal mission written into its covenant for a quarter century now, is somehow treated as a legitimate participant in the world’s diplomatic processes. A potential “partner for peace.” Talk about a flawed moral equivalence.

I guess some people just prefer to ignore the obvious, even when the murders declare their intentions in writing.

How To Win A War: Kill Enough People

David P. Goldman in the Asia Times:

In all, one-quarter of military age Southern manhood died in the field, by far the greatest sacrifice ever offered up by a modern nation in war. General W T Sherman, the scourge of the South, explained why this would occur in advance. There existed 300,000 fanatics in the South who knew nothing but hunting, drinking, gambling and dueling, a class who benefited from slavery and would rather die than work for a living. To end the war, Sherman stated on numerous occasions these 300,000 had to be killed. Evidently Sherman was right. For all the wasteful slaughter of the last 18 months of the war, Southern commander Lee barely could persuade his men to surrender in April 1865. The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, called for guerilla war to continue, and Lee's staff wanted to keep fighting. Lee barely avoided a drawn-out irregular war.

If Goldman is right, we have a great deal more killing to do in the Middle East.

Wars do not end when they are won, but when those who want to fight to the death find their wish has been granted. Sherman's 300,000 fanatics could not face the mediocre circumstances of a South without slaves and were willing to die for their way of life.

Three million Palestinians packed into a narrow strip of land one day may accept the modest fate of a small and impecunious people, but their young people do not seem ready to do so. We do not know how many ever will. The killing will continue for some time before we find out.

From the Islamist perspective, the war for a New Caliphate will continue until the fanatic infidels are all dead, and the rest have submitted.

In Their Own Words: Excerpts From The Hamas Covenant of 1988

The Yale Law School has a translation of the Hamas Charter, aka the Hamas Covenant. It's pretty interesting. You can find the complete thing here.

Article Seven:...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

So Hamas aspires to realize Allah's promise that once the Muslims kill all the Jews, the Day of Judgement shall come about? That sounds remarkably like proposing genocide. Or am I missing something here? Hamas did, after all, choose this specific saying to put in their covenant.

Article Eleven:

...This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

So, am I to take it that Spain and all of that part of Eastern Europe once conquered by the Religion of Peace remains consecrated to Islam, and must fall again to the swords of the conquerors?

Article Twelve:

Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission.

Sounds like Spain and Eastern Europe are in trouble...I mean, scheduled for liberation. If I read this correctly, the mere fact of their being non-Muslim in once Muslim lands makes the inhabitants enemies.

Article Thirteen:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."

Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?

"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction...There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

So much for peaceful solutions.

It strikes me that Hamas finds it unacceptable that Jews or Christians will "not be pleased" until all convert, but that these Islamists will not be pleased until Jews and Christians convert to Islam.

Article Fourteen:

... liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem.

That sounds like "Israel Must Be Eliminated."

Article Fifteen:

The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem.

There goes Iberia. And Eastern Europe.

Article Seventeen:...

The enemies (give) these attempts constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.

Freemasons and Rotary Clubs: Lackeys of Zionism. They will be obliterated.

Article Twenty-Two:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained....With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others....They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

...They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

The Joos are always to blame. They instigated World War Two to make a profit. I guess they installed Hitler to turn a profit. How well did that work out for them? Could it be that the Joos aren't so all powerful? Oh, wait: the Holocaust never happened. I do wonder what happened to those 6,000,000 or so who stopped collecting their bank dividends, though.

Article Twenty-Four:

The Islamic Resistance Movement does not allow slandering or speaking ill of individuals or groups, for the believer does not indulge in such malpractices.

Except of course Jews, and Christians, and Hindus, and some others.

Article Twenty-Seven:

The Palestinian Liberation Organization...Because of the situations surrounding the formation of the Organization, of the ideological confusion prevailing in the Arab world as a result of the ideological invasion under whose influence the Arab world has fallen since the defeat of the Crusaders and which was, and still is, intensified through orientalists, missionaries and imperialists, the Organization adopted the idea of the secular state. And that it how we view it.

Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies.

That is why...we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser....

The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers...

So: the PLO: Ideological wimp sell-outs to Western secular infiltrationists. Glad to get that clarified.

Article Twenty-Eight:

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

I had no idea the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs were all Zionist stooges. And drug dealers to boot.

Article Thirty-One:

The Islamic Resistance Movement...care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions....

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other....
It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region

OK, so we can be at peace, if we would only just submit. Sort of like good slaves submitting to the yoke. Accept that Islam is the Master, and the heathens will be accepted. As inferiors.

Article Thirty-two...

The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

The Protocols. Check!

The Zionist plan is limitless, unlike the Islamist plan.

Oh, wait...

But not too long.

I wonder what John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama would say if pressed for their opinions about the Hamas Covenant.