Category Archives: Islam

UPDATED: In Libya & Loving It (The Massacre That Never Was)

Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, Reason, Terrorism, UN, War

“NATO is deprived of all morals and all civilisation.” So said the Libyan government spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim, with whom I wholeheartedly agree. Two weeks ago the US and allies killed Col Gaddafi’s son and a couple of his grandchildren. Today we were licking our chops for more blood. Via BBC:

Nato air strikes have again hit the compound of Col Muammar Gaddafi, hours after Libyan state TV showed footage purportedly of the leader in Tripoli.
Libyan government officials said the attack in the early hours of Thursday killed three people, although this cannot be independently verified.
Correspondents said three rockets hit the base and caused extensive damage.
A video of Col Gaddafi aired Wednesday was the leader’s first appearance since his son was killed two weeks ago. Smoke rose from the Gaddafi compound, Bab al-Azaziya, and ambulances raced through the city as the last missile struck early on Thursday, reports said.

UPDATE (May 13): To “Compassionate Fascist”: There is nothing like asserting that the massacre that never happened would have happened had you not killed-off the people whom you claim were about to kill had you not killed them.

Is this not what is called a negative proof? RationalWiki explains: “A logical fallacy which takes the structure of:

X is true because there is no proof that X is false.

“If the only evidence for something’s existence is a lack of evidence for it not existing, then the default position is one of skepticism and not credulity. This type of negative proof is common in proofs of God’s existence or in pseudosciences where it is used to attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the skeptic rather than the proponent of the idea. The burden of proof is on the individual proposing existence, not the one questioning existence.”

UPDATE II: McMussolini Has Spoken (Succors Terrorists)

Foreign Policy, Islam, Jihad, John McCain, Middle East, Military, Republicans, Terrorism, War

He landed in Libya, checked into the local Benghazi hotel, looked around, and saw that the war was good, and then he spoketh:

“The [rebels] are my heroes,” exclaimed John McCain, senator for Arizona. And a hero deserves “every appropriate means of assistance,” including “command and control support, battlefield intelligence, training and weapons.”

Only a bit more thoughtful than his notoriously mindless daughter, McCain, joined by “Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.),” has shown no awareness of the intelligence. (Thank you, WikiLeaks) Fighting Qaddafi are “[f]ormer jihadi fighters who underwent ‘religious and ideological training’ in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank…”

From the pollution he has left along his political path McCain can run but cannot hide. Republicans once wisely rejected war in Kosovo. McCain, back then, jettisoned party loyalty to call for bombs from above and “more boots on the ground.” Not so long ago it was “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran,” and the promise of a 100 year war in Iraq, which was bound to break the bank that McCain once vowed to make solvent.

Under the loving gaze of the media, McCain’s jingoism is ever evolving.

UPDATE I: You want to watch former CIA Counterterrorism analyst Michael Scheuer tell the teletwits of CNN that they are “carrying water for Obama.” Scheuer shone on Freedom Watch too, telling the Judge’s viewers that drones give you nothing but a body count, but no progress on the ground. “Why are we there; why do we care?” he asked, while pointing to “confusion, ignorance and even arrogance in the way the U.S. has handled the unrest in the Middle East so far.” I’ll say!

The sentiments expressed in “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn”…

UPDATE II (April 26): McCain Gives Succor To Terrorists. Jack Hunter at the American Conservative:

“Who says there is evidence of a link between the Libyan rebels and Al-Qaeda? US and British intelligence, NATO leaders, and the Libyan rebels themselves. Who says there is not a link? John McCain, who calls the rebels ‘heroes.'” MORE...

Future Easters In Jerusalem? Don’t Bet On It

Foreign Policy, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Judaism & Jews, Nationhood

If Christians value celebrating the Easter Holy Week in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem’s Old City—and it is majestic, believe me—they ought to pay more attention to the plans the Middle East Quartet is hatching for Israel. The United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia may push Israel to “withdraw to the [indefensible] armistice lines drawn up between the Jewish state and Jordan in 1949.” For the time being, the US has postponed a Quartet meeting, probably because Obama is already in bad odor with American on so many other issues.

Last Friday, Glenn Beck infuriated FoxNews’s Saudi shareholders by taking a symbolic, if unequivocal, stand for the Jew among the nations (yeah, yeah, I oppose foreign aid); for the civilized society (instead of the adjacent savage society). For “in Israel—foibles and frailties notwithstanding—the West has reclaimed a small spot of sanity in a sea of savagery, where enlightened western law prevails, and where Christians and Jews and their holy places are safe. (Muslims are always secure in western societies, Arab-Israelis too.).

When Jews commenced what must be the most remarkable modern-day national revival, Israel was a wasteland. Palestinians had done precious little for the land they purport to so love. As Ludwig von Mises (a utilitarian classical liberal), observed: For centuries the Near East has been a cultural backwater. “The Mohammedans”—to quote the delightfully archaic Mises—have for hundreds of years failed to produce so much as a “book of significance,” much less any scientific or other advancement.

Is there any wonder? The catalysts for creativity and prosperity are the ideas of individual freedom and freedom from the state. As Mises noted, these ideas are inimical to the cultures of the Near East, and the Islamic world in particular. Yet the “civilized” world is working diligently to shrink the civilized sphere that is Israel and expand the barbaric Palestinian Authority. (Question: What does unoccupied Palestinian land look like? Answer: Like Gaza.)

I must say that the rabbi Glenn entertained for his hour long “In Defense of Israel” show instantiated everything that is wrong with the American rabbinate, in particular, and American Jews, in general. Let me explain.

A woman in Beck’s audience asked the perspicacious question about the divide between American and Israeli Jews. Israelis and diaspora Jews: never the twain shall meet. But Rabbi Joseph Potasnik (a real “tembel”) gave her some tribal reply. Where does Glenn find these people? The rabbi was as ghettoized as any representative of CAIR.. Contrast that with the concision with which Dore Gold (a former Israeli ambassador) made his points.

American Jews are left-liberals, for the most, when it comes to the concerns of their fellow Americans, but rightist on matters Israel. In other words, hypocrites. They advocate a multicultural, immigration free-for-all, pluralist pottage for America. But when it comes to Israel, that’s another matter entirely.

As most left-liberal Jews who support Israel see it, Israel has the right to retain its creedal and cultural distinctiveness and its Jewish majority, but not so America. Israel should control immigration and guards its borders, but not the US. Ask this kind of Jew if he supports a “Right of Return” for every self-styled Palestinian refugee, and he’ll say, “Never. Are you insane? That’s a euphemism for Israel’s demise.”

The very thing he opposes for Israel, the left-liberal Jew champions for America: a global right of return to the US for the citizens of the world. When it comes to “returning” to America (but not Israel), humankind has a positive, manufactured right to venture wherever, whenever.

UPDATED: An Egyptian Revolutionary Tribunal?

Democracy, Economy, Islam, Justice, Law, Middle East, Welfare

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak suffered a heart attack in the course of an inquisition “investigating graft and abuse allegations.” Also on the public prosecutor’s docket: “violence against protesters.” (Link)

Expect Egyptian freedom fighters, many of whom are of the once-thwarted Muslim Brotherhood, to grow more restive as it becomes clear that “freedom” will not make manna fall from the heavens—especially since most Egyptians are not, as far as I know, demanding a liberalization of their economy.

The Egyptian court judging Mubarak will oblige the masses. It’ll masquerade as a court of law, but I suspect that this tribunal will more closely resemble the French Revolutionary Tribunal, meting justice by popular demand.

UPDATE: A “Day of Cleansing” is what the rebels are, ominously, calling the next stage of the Egyptian revolution.

During “the early days of the movement … Egyptians showered the Army with flowers and saw them as defenders of the people after tanks rolled into the streets to restore order after violent clashes with police.” It was not as though “hundreds to thousands of people have [not] been detained by the Army and tried in military courts without access to civilian lawyers. Yet until recently, such criticism of the Army had not been widespread.”

The people, it would seem, have changed their fickle minds.

The blood will flow, and still something will be amiss.

Why do you think that, bar the likes of the tea party, is it never real liberty that the majority wants?

Here’s why: Radicals, libertarians among them, believe that because all people seek safety and sustenance for themselves, they’ll allow those they dislike to peacefully pursue the same. These radicals are oblivious to reality. People are not naturally good. They want what is not theirs. Free up the Egyptian economy. Some will rise, others will fall.

A cry will then go out for a third party (the new government) to take from those who rose and give to those who fell.