Category Archives: Terrorism

Updated: Nelson At Ninety

Celebrity, Crime, Hollywood, South-Africa, Terrorism

“Moody models, desperate divas and priapic ex-Presidents rubbed shoulders with politicians and pop stars. … They came, ostensibly, to pay homage to Nelson Mandela. Instead, the luvvies (as usual) seemed more in love with themselves.”

The British press, in this case the Daily Mail, has, at least, both the inclination and the ability to mock this repulsive event into meaning: give it the context it deserves. Here in the US there’d be only adulation, sans the edge you get in this piece.

British writers still have bite.

Indeed, Nelson has reached a ripe old age, which is more than many of his “subjects” can hope for.

Here are the latest, likely finessed, murder statistics from the South African Police Service:

From 2006 to 2007, 19,202 South African lives were lost (population 43,786,115). By comparison, the United States had 16,574 murders (population 303,824,646).

Update: “Medal of Honor for a Terrorist.”

Looking for Love in the All the Wrong Places

Africa, Bush, Constitution, Foreign Aid, Terrorism

As if you needed more proof of Bush’s worth:

Africans love him—and not only because he is a Strongman, a real tribal chief—but because he has been more generous with his tribe’s money that his predecessors.

The idea that Bush has saved African lives is idiotic—any government-to-government transfer, which is all foreign aid is—goes to maintaining the mandarins that man the aid bureaucracies in the US, and straight into the Swiss bank accounts of the recipient African heads of country. The latter don’t even conceal their cupidity.

American individuals, estates, foundations, and corporations gave $241 billion to charity in 2003. Foreign aid through the state amounts to only $15 billion per year, most of which is squandered.

If we are to help Mr. Shabalala, who has practically screwed himself to death (and infected his wife with HIV, private, voluntary charity is the mightiest, most moral, and most efficient way to do so.

Bush’s legacy on this front is to have gone from preaching “trade not aid,” to instituting trade tariffs, and increasing U.S. foreign aid during his unfortunate tenure many times over. Where Bush has certainly innovated is by tying new spending to his terrorism-fighting strategy, thus ending for good the debate on the corrupting effects of foreign welfare, since anything that ostensibly fights terrorism is sacrosanct.

John Quincy Adams on Islam

America, Feminism, Islam, Terrorism

“John Quincy Adams, founding father, sixth president of the United States, looks over your shoulder at the morning newspaper and contrasts the two opposing spiritual forces between which war must rage for yet another generation. While his language may offend today’s postmodern sensibilities, it is the vernacular of the men who loved Christ and cherished freedom—the mighty men who secured our liberty.”

John Quincy Adams on Islam:

“In the seventh century of the Christian era a wandering Arab, of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius with the preternatural energy of a fanatic and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting, from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God, he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting, from the new revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust; to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.
Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of more than twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extincture of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute are encouraged to furnish motives to human action, there never can be peace on earth and good will toward men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”

As I am praising the prescient and the politically incorrect, here’s a shout out to a group of Muslim apostates, or ex-Muslims, that runs the website Islam Watch, heroes all.

A Mighty Ego

Celebrity, Film, Hollywood, Islam, Terrorism

Back when she had just lost her husband, Mariane Pearl declared superciliously that “revenge would be easy, but it is far more valuable … to address this problem of terrorism with enough honesty to question our own responsibility as nations and as individuals for the rise of terrorism.” She called on “our governments to work hand in hand,” and for “love, compassion, friendship and citizenship” to transcend the so-called “clash of civilizations.”

Yawn. The woman is a walking cliché. As is Angelina Jolie, who plays Mariane in “A Mighty Heart,” for which the media are conducting a blitzkrieg of publicity. Time and again, Jolie has appeared to tediously intone about this effort, puncturing every sentence with whispers about forgiveness and reconciliation.

The Muslim age-old Jew hatred played a large part in Daniel Pearl’s beheading. He was accused of being a spy and agent of the Mossad and made to recite a humiliating confession to that effect, before his head was lopped off. The jihadis released a video of his butchering titled, “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl.”

So obviously aimed at consolidating Jolie and Mariane Pearl’s sainthood, the film shifts the focus away from such salient aspects. It concentrated instead on the heroism of journalists. Mariane calls herself a journalist. Like most, she is eager to celebrate herself (or, alternately, the Islamic hajj).

Such is Mariane’s ego that a colleague of Pearl has already lamented that the Daniel Pearl she knew was nowhere to be found in the film. A rather dashing man, Daniel is played by some unknown, Dan Futterman, whom Salon.com’s, no-doubt, feminist reviewer described approvingly as “grave and elfin.” That’s not good, believe me. Basically, the hero dwarfs alongside Mariane Pearl/Jolie.

In any event, to watch Angelina with an afro and an accent play a pregnant saint is not my idea of fun. Ever since she began to believe she was on earth to die for everyone else’s sins toward the poor “brown babies” of the world (in the words of the inimitable Ingrid Bergman, in “Murder On The Orient Express”), Jolie has lost whatever meager acting abilities she had. All I can see is an annoying, emoting activist.