Everything you need to understand about Barack Obama can be gleaned from watching any episode of Pinky and The Brain. All the elements are there, the quest for world domination, the Byzantine plots, a brilliant and dreadfully persistent mind hatching schemes of impossible complexity on a daily basis.

The punchline of course is that President Obama is not The Brain, he is Pinky — or, perhaps more properly, Pinko. Whoever The Brain is — singular or plural — is still a matter for conjecture, but nobody watching this man’s performance over the last 18 months can possibly still believe that Obama is the super competent, coolly analytical, near genius the media continues to try to sell us.

That the media persist in this narrative, and the Kool-Aid drinkers continue to buy it, is a testament to cognitive dissonance. Better to stay the course and risk ridicule than admit the guy you put in the White House is at best a charming mediocrity with little more than a talent for reading a teleprompter and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of self-confidence. These are qualifications for a TV pitchman (or worse yet a news anchor) not president of the United States which, again, invites uncomfortable questions as to who exactly is architecting our transformation into Venezuela while Obama scampers on his treadmill in front of the cameras.

Whoever occupies the mother ship it’s clear there is no one among them who has ever built or fixed anything real, which goes a long way towards explaining Obama’s response — or lack of same — to the recent BP oil spill. Apart from offering the default mantra of “demonize and usurp” it’s obvious the people who feed Obama’s teleprompter and Blackberry have no better idea than he does as to what to do about all of this.  We are thus left with Obama unplugged, doing what anyone hopelessly out of his depth would do — blustering, finger-pointing, dithering, and obsessing on “process”. Anyone who’s ever had a boss who couldn’t run his department but always had sharp pencils on his desk will recognize the phenomenon immediately.

It is a measure of how obvious this has become that sources as disparate as Peggy Noonan and Chris Matthews have broken out of their somnambulance long enough to pronounce on it. (One has to assume in Matthews case some mistake in his meds adjustment was responsible.)

Even that right-wing stalwart James Carville — presumably in the spirit of “not in my back bayou” — has decided the survival of his state trumps following Obama off a cliff and is exhorting the president to take charge.

As inept as Pinko and his handlers are at solving actual problems they continue to excel at inventing imaginary ones and exploiting crises for political gain. Thus it is that Obama can say with a straight face that the solution to the problem of oil spills — created in large part by over-regulation that has driven drilling and exploration to riskier and more remote locations — is to make all drilling and exploration more difficult by taking away oil companies tax credits and “redistributing” them to whatever hamster-cage energy alternatives can be most easily converted into government slush funds .

This and much more in a speech yesterday in Pittsburgh. To his credit Obama made it all the way through without once saying “narf!”

If anyone had any lingering doubts as to this administration’s position towards Israel — and it would take a narcoleptic not to have figured it out at this point — it was made painfully obvious a few days ago in, of all places, the UN.

On Friday the United Nations adopted a resolution for a nuclear free Middle East, specifically singling out Israel but curiously making no mention of nuclear powers-in-waiting such as Iran.

From Marius Schattner (AFP):

The resolution adopted by the United Nations on Friday calls on Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and urges it to open its facilities to inspection.

It also calls for a regional conference in 2012 to advance the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East.

[…]

The document, which singles out Israel but makes no mention of Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, drew a furious reaction from the Jewish state who decried it as “deeply flawed and hypocritical.”

(Full article here.)

That last quote is a masterpiece of understatement. It doesn’t take Count Metternich to read beyond the language and figure out the true intent, which is to further weaken Israel, seriously compromise its greatest and possibly final deterrent, and generally make it more pliable to acceptance of “peace plans” which amount to capitulation and a  slow path to extinction.

The resolution itself is unremarkable. The UN is basically a Third World kleptocracy long since hijacked by a loose coalition of mullahs, commissars and tin pot dictators. There are no surprises when they trash Israel — that’s what they do. Israel for its part is giving the resolution the weight it deserves and has already indicated it won’t participate in the 2012 conference laid out in the resolution.

What is remarkable is the United States supported this resolution.

But it was US backing for the resolution which has caused the most consternation among Israeli officials and commentators, who interpreted the move as “a resounding slap around the face” which has dealt a very public blow to Israel’s long-accepted policy of nuclear ambiguity.

[…]

According to the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “furious with the Obama administration for having failed to prevent the resolution from passing… and for choosing to support it.”

[…]

“In the secret talks that Netanyahu held with Obama’s men… Israel was promised that the resolution would not focus on Israel and that if it did, the Americans would vote against.”

Short of publicly kicking Benjamin Netanyahu in the groin I can’t think of any clearer signal the Obama White House could have sent regarding their attitude towards, and plans for, Israel. In the alternate universe of Obama’s mind Israel is the problem, its national interests nothing more than one more impediment on the road to “peace in the Middle East,” which ultimately equates to Arab hegemony.

Others have stated that for the first time the United States is on the wrong side of history. Unfortunately, as this administration continues to embrace its enemies and vilify friends, it’s becoming a habit.

Dhimmitude at Apple: "Report: Apple Removes iSlam Muhammad App From Store," by Brian Heater for PCMag.com, May 21 (thanks to Karl):

Thursday was "International Draw Muhammad Day," a day of protest fueled by a Facebook page that encouraged followers to post images of the Muslim prophet. Fallout from the protest included the banning of Facebook and YouTube in Pakistan.

Yesterday also marked the removal of an app called iSlam Muhammad from the iPhone App Store, according to TUAW. A description of the $.99 app encourages users to "enjoy violent and hateful passages from The Qur'an that support and encourage Muslims to attack and behead anyone who does not agree with them. See how Allah directs his followers to treat men and women."

The app revolves around parchment images featuring controversial images from the holy text. The app was in the store for a day before it was pulled. Below is audio from the developer's conversation with Apple, which among other things, points out that a similar app targeting Christians called BibleThumper still exists in the store.

Not for long, I'm betting.

I wouldn't take that bet, Brian.

Phew! Now I feel so much better about my extorted tax dollars being wasted on leftwing propaganda, Israel bashing and anti-Americanism! (Not to mention masturbatory “investigations.”)

Remember that media bias “study” being conducted by (and, ever so conveniently, about) the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation I told you about a while back?

Seems the results are already in, and the CBC’s conclusions are, er, fascinating:

Stephen Harper’s chief election strategist deliberately used the CBC complaints process and “paranoia-tinged” language to raise money for the Conservatives and to “overwhelm” and “intimidate” the office, the public broadcaster’s ombudsman says in a report that completely exonerates EKOS pollster Frank Graves.

Mr. Graves is one of four national pollsters who provide semi-regular surveys to the public broadcaster. He recently touched off a firestorm after he was quoted in a Globe and Mail column  suggesting Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals launch a “culture war” against the Tories.  (…)

If Mr. Graves is guilty of anything, the ombudsman says, it is being too open in explaining his data – so open, in fact, that if he were actually working for the Liberals they would probably fire him for blabbing about strategy.

“Ordinary citizens might not know this, but anyone who has worked in the ‘hot house’ of Ottawa politics would know that pollsters are much in love with their data and many will expound on it to virtually anyone, unless, of course, the pollster were working for a party. They would then keep that data very close,” Mr. Carlin says.

In other words: “We can’t believe you crazy, stupid conservatives made us answer our damn phones to deal with your crazy, stupid questions and complaints. What do you think we’re running here? An impartial ombud’s office or something?! Go back to paying our salaries in obedient silence, plebians!”

This week Noam Chomsky, the famed MIT linguist and radical political writer and activist, was denied entry into Israel. The Israeli Left is up in arms.

Boaz Okon, legal commentator for left-leaning Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest daily, called the barring of Chomsky “a foolish act in a…series of recent follies” that “may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion.” Going on to call Chomsky a “globally recognized intellectual,” Okon claimed “it would not be exaggerated to say that the decision to silence Professor Noam Chomsky is an attempt to put an end to freedom in the State of Israel.”

For his efforts, Okon made it to the New York Times where he was quoted by its Israel correspondent Ethan Bronner. Bronner called Chomsky “an outspoken critic both of American and Israeli policy.” Bronner was also able to quote Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, that “The idea that Israel is preventing people from entering whose opinions are critical of the state is ludicrous; it is not happening. This was a mishap. A guy at the border overstepped his authority.”

In Bronner’s telling, “Mr. Regev suggested that if Professor Chomsky tried to enter again, he would succeed.”

If it wasn’t paranoid, one might suspect that even the “right-wing” Netanyahu government has a special department for tripping up people who are loyal to Israel and want to defend it. In 2008—under the left-of-center Olmert government—Israel barred two other virulent enemies, Richard Falk and Chomsky’s disciple Norman Finkelstein, from entering. Regev—in the name of his boss—should either explain that those, too, were mistakes and Israel should gladly welcome all of its worst slanderers, or not speak until he and his boss work out some sort of coherent policy.

But to get back to the Israeli Left’s reactions, Bradley Burston of the far-Left daily Haaretz also quoted Okon on the barring of Chomsky. In doing so, Burston kicked off an 1100-word diatribe against Israel as a “state headed for fascism” that uses the words fascism, fascist, and fascistic a total of twelve times, including calling Chomsky’s exclusion “fascism by rubber stamp.” Another Haaretz commentator, Gideon Levy, was more precise, asserting that “When Israel closes its gates to anyone who doesn’t fall in line with our official positions, we are quickly becoming similar to North Korea.”

But the honors went to Haaretz’s editorial on the issue, haughtily titled “Declaring War on the Intellect: Israel and Noam Chomsky.”

“By stopping the illustrious American scholar Prof. Noam Chomsky at the Allenby Bridge,” Haaretz wrote,

and barring his entry into Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the government’s outrageous treatment of those with the audacity to criticize its policies has reached new heights. Israel looks like a bully who has been insulted by a superior intellect and is now trying to fight it, arrest it and expel it.

Going on to call Chomsky “a controversial and bold intellectual” who “bluntly and acerbically attacks any government that he thinks deserves it,” Haaretz said it would be

hard to imagine any country that would not feel honored to be visited by Chomsky, apart from Israel, which has its own accounts to settle with him…. Chomsky has roundly condemned the occupation and displayed sympathy for the Palestinian struggle against it.… Israel, however, has lost its last remnants of tolerance for anyone who does not join its shrinking chorus of supporters.

So there you have it. Chomsky, according to Okon, Bronner, Regev (speaking for Netanyahu), Burston, Levy, and Haaretz is at most a “critic,” but more significantly, for some of them, an “illustrious scholar,” a “superior intellect,” and a “bold intellectual” whose presence should honor anyone including the state of Israel, which could only have barred him in an act of careless folly or fascistic madness.

Who, actually, is Noam Chomsky? This useful overview notes, among much else, his admiration and apologetics, sustained over a decade and a half, for the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Closer to Israeli concerns, Chomsky—an American Jew who lived briefly in Israel during the 1960s and knows Hebrew—has made the following statements (again, among many others) over the years, each of them documented on this site:

* “I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.”

* “I objected to the founding of Israel as a Jewish state. I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.”

* “The Hebrew press is much more open than the English language press, and there’s a very obvious reason: Hebrew is a secret language, you only read it if you’re inside the tribe.”

* “Of course [suicide bombers are] terrorists and there’s been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it….But it’s very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism.”

Robert Wistrich, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, notes in A Lethal Obsession, a widely praised overview of contemporary anti-Semitism published in January, that Chomsky “stooped to the level of offering support to [notorious French] Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and defending his credentials.” Chomsky, who contributed a preface to a 1980 Holocaust-denial book by Faurisson,

told Le Monde on January 19, 1981, that he was personally “agnostic” about the Nazi massacres. He did not want people “to have religious or dogmatic positions about the existence of the Holocaust.” This, too, was grist to the mill of many Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis, who eagerly promote Chomsky’s books and speeches condemning American and Israeli imperialism on their websites. They understand that Chomsky’s backing for Faurisson and such left-wing libertarian Holocaust deniers as Pierre Guillaume has considerably bolstered the “revisionist” cause. (Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, Random House, 2010, p. 532)

Two and a half decades later, in May 2006, Chomsky’s enthusiasm for Jew-hatred was again on display when he paid a fawning visit to Hezbollah in Lebanon and said “Hezbollah’s insistence on keeping its arms is justified.” Chomsky was also quoted (see the video) as telling his hosts that “the victory achieved by the resistance is a victory for all the peoples that fight injustice and oppression,” and had himself filmed standing beside a destroyed Israeli vehicle.

Less than two months later, when Hezbollah used its arms to mount the murderous cross-border attack against Israel that triggered the Second Lebanon War, Chomsky told a radio interviewer that he hoped Hezbollah’s actions could yield results.

Okon’s and Haaretz’s reactions, then, to Israel denying entry to Chomsky—an apologist for genocide, exponent and promoter of Holocaust denial, and terror groupie—can at best be ascribed to gross, inexcusable ignorance. Or, if it is not ignorance, one does not like to think what else could drive them to verbally pommel their government and country and extol Chomsky in this episode.

And, to repeat, the Prime Minister’s Office has acquitted itself miserably in this affair as well.

Last Friday I had the pleasure and honor of giving an all-morning seminar to a top-secret group of superspooks at an undisclosed location somewhere on the West Coast.

Among the people to whom I was speaking were heroes who have been under fire from Islamic jihadis and have fought them all over -- but so unused is anyone to the idea of going on the offensive against the Islamic supremacists that when I told them about our SIOA Freedom Bus Ads, there was a collective gasp.

Visit NewsRealBlog

The New York Times has hit a new low today in its lead editorial, entitled “Stopping Arizona.”  The Times maliciously misrepresented Arizona’s new law , intended to combat the ravages within its borders caused by illegal immigration.  The Times‘ lies are typical of the race-baiting tactics employed by the progressive left.

For example, the Times falsely claimed:

The statute requires police officers to stop and question anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant.

The truth is precisely the opposite.  The new law does not empower local law enforcement officers to pick up anyone they wish who looks like he or she doesn’t belong in this country.  It requires first that the officer have a separate legal basis for coming into “lawful contact” with the individual, such as a speeding violation.  Then – and only if the officer has “reasonable suspicion” that this individual may be in the country illegally –  can the officer ask to see the individual’s documents which federal law requires aliens residing in this country to carry with them at all times.

“Reasonable suspicion” is a court-defined standard, not a broad mandate for police harassment based on a person’s appearance.  The Arizona statute provides specific guidelines to govern law enforcement officers, including a list of documents such as an Arizona driver’s license which an officer must presume is sufficient proof that someone producing such a document is legally in the country.

Maybe the Times and other critics of the “reasonable suspicion” standard – including President Obama for that matter – should read the federal law stating that if an alien is encountered and they are not carrying ID they are in fact in violation of the law (8 USC 1304 (e)) and subject to fine or imprisonment.  The Arizona law is designed to aid in enforcement of this federal requirement, including requiring police officers to contact the federal government as soon as practicable when they suspect a person is an illegal alien.

To make sure that the new law will not be used as a justification for racial profiling, it provides that a law enforcement official, in making any stops and subsequent inquiries into immigration status:

may not solely consider race, color or national origin

The Arizona law also requires that it

be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.

The New York Times shares an underlying progressive agenda of open borders with a coalition of radical groups spearheaded by such entities as the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

For example, the Times goes so far as to criticize another Arizona law, now before the Supreme Court, that revokes the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  The Times evidently does not care about the near slave labor conditions that some illegal aliens are trapped in by exploitative employers.  Anything that might get in the way of the open borders philosophy is a no-no to the progressive crowd.

At the end of its editorial, the Times asks rhetorically:

Is our core belief still the welcome and assimimilation of newcomers?

The answer can still be yes while maintaining the rule of law.  It has never been the core belief of this country that anyone from anywhere in the world is entitled as a matter of right to enter this country whenever and however they want without following the rules for lawful entry and residence.

1. A certain writer claims that I plagiarized his work. He presents no direct evidence (i.e., textual comparison) to support his claim, and that is because he cannot do so: I have not plagiarized his work, or anyone else's.

2. A certain blogger claims that Pamela Geller and I were responsible for the removal of a video taken at our FDI event at CPAC in February and appropriated by another blogger for his own use. The latter blogger's entire video channel was taken down, an unfortunate event he attributes to our alleged complaint. There is just one problem with this scenario: neither Pamela Geller nor I ever complained about his use of the video, or ever asked anyone to take it down from anywhere.

Members......BEWARE! As our movement grows rapidly, as our support grows rapidly, we need to address some concerns with regard to the infiltration of National Socialists.

National Socialism is Fascism, let's make no apologies for a violent racist ideology much akin to I...slamism. This white supremacist cancer only seeks to destroy the EDL, people who follow such an ideology can't consider themselves to be EDL members, the EDL have made it plain and clear time and time again that we support Israel's right to exist, we have made it plain and clear that we welcome anyone, regardless of race, religion, colour or creed into our ranks as long as they support our aims and objectives. Nazis have no place in the EDL, the EDL want Nazis exposed and ejected from our demonstrations, we want no part in their sickening schemes, we do not want them attaching themselves to the EDL movement, there is no place for racism in the EDL, our diversity and our integrity is our strength. We ask that all members be vigilant, as we know that extreme far right groups are out to destroy the EDL; they want to recruit our members into their own fascist cause, the EDL will not tolerate fascism in any form.

My grandparents fought a long and hard war against the Nazis so we can enjoy the freedoms we have today, were it not for the blood sacrifice of our ancestors we would be speaking German and Britain as we know it would not exist today. How can anyone in their right mind support an ideology that caused the deaths of millions upon millions of white, black, and asian peoples? These are just a few examples many more "ethnic groups" were killed because of their beliefs, because of their skin colour, because they were deemed "inferior" to the white man, they were treated like animals and slaughtered like animals simply because fascists wanted to install a new world order based off of racial supremacy. I am PROUD that my ancestors fought against such tyranny, they fought long and hard to free the world from a regime of oppression and ethnic hatred.

Nazism and Islamism are opposite sides of the same coin, both are supremacist in nature, both are ideologically intolerable of "others" who don't conform. Both have an inherent hatred of Jews.

We as an inclusive movement have to be on guard against such evil forces, we have a duty to uphold our beliefs, we have a duty to protect, encourage and embrace anyone regardless of their ancestry into the fold of the English Defence League. Patriotism is not confined to Nationalism, nor is it confined to skin colour, patriotism transcends such things. If you want to fight for this country we don't care who you are, where you are from or what beliefs you hold because you are prepared to fight for this country, a patriot stands up for freedom loving people, a patriot stands against fascism in any form whether it be far right or far left.

If there is ever a picture of complete traitorous stupidity, this is it....

How can anyone of sound mind burn an Anti-Nazi flag? It beggars belief! This is what the EDL stand for......

Ever since we have burnt the Nazi flag in the presence of our Black friends, the extreme far right nutjobs of the National Front, Blood And Honour, Combat 18, British Freedom Fighters and other affiliated yet "autonomous" Nationalistic racist groups have come out to cause us trouble. So draconian and out of touch are these Anti-Semites, these racist Nazis have need to prey upon other pro nationalistic/pro patriotic groups to try and turn the heads of the uninformed, to bring them in and actively recruit off the back of EDL success.

If you want to see just how upset white supremacists are with the EDL, then look here....

For further information on these new "autonomous" racist Nationalistic groups popping up actively recruiting the young and impressionable then look here....

The EDL have a duty to inform our members and in particular our young more impressionable members and warn them of the dangers of such groups, they are in no way patriotic or loyal to our cause, they too are the enemy. Again, for clarity the EDL DO NOT SUPPORT OR CONDONE TRAITOROUS NAZIS!!!!

In Luton we have many Islamist troubles that are well documented by the press and by the police, is it no surprise that very little was reported on us running the National Front out of town when they tied to recruit on the back of our demonstrations as the United People Of Luton? Please take time to read this article.....

We will not be hijacked by oppressive forces, we will never surrender our cause or our aims for the racist supremacist fascist minority.

Nazi groups like to use numerical symbolism to represent their aims, for example 14/88, which usually refers to 14 words written by David Lane, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." 88 representing David Lane's 88 precepts, or sometimes the eighth letter in the alphabet (h), to represent Heil Hitler. Others say that "88" refers to 88 words from Mein Kampf (author Adolph Hitler) about the supremacy of the white race. Combat 18 use this numerical symbolism to define the 1st and the 8th letter in the alphabet, this refers to Adolph Hitler, a murderous tyrant who was defeated by patriotic Brits and their allies. The EDL do not venerate such an evil man, we despise him and his legacy, we WILL continue to fight against such tyranny.

We advise and implore EDL members to keep away from such groups as they only attract trouble, they only want to cause trouble, and of course they will only get trouble if they continue to threaten our very existence as a social group defending the sovereignty of our lands from the forces of Islamism. We will never surrender ourselves to a Nazi ideology.

As any real member of the EDL will know, it is imperative that Nazis are identified to our stewards, so we can eject traitorous scum from our ranks and from our demos. The EDL stand for freedom; we don't stand for Nazism.

Long live the free!

E E EDL.....E E EDL.......E E EDL.....E E EDL!!!!!

'Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite." Thus did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seek to reassure the crowd at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee two weeks ago about the Obama Administration's resolve on Iran. Three days later, this newspaper reported on its front page that "the U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran" in order to win Russian and Chinese support for one more U.N. sanctions resolution.

This fits the pattern we have seen across the 14 months of the Obama Presidency. Mrs. Clinton called a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable" no fewer than four times in a single paragraph in her AIPAC speech. But why should the Iranians believe her? President Obama set a number of deadlines last year for a negotiated settlement of Iran's nuclear file, all of which Tehran ignored, and then Mr. Obama ignored them too.

In his latest Persian New Year message to Iran, Mr. Obama made the deadline-waiver permanent, saying "our offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue stands." Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a quick rejoinder. "They say they have extended a hand to Iran," the Iranian President said Saturday, "but the Iranian government and nation declined to welcome that."

The Iranians have good reason to think they have little to lose from continued defiance. Tehran's nuclear negotiator emerged from two days of talks in Beijing on Friday saying, "We agreed, sanctions as a tool have already lost their effectiveness." He has a point....

Rubber-gloved workers pulled ever-smaller bodies from the dump truck and tossed them into the mass grave on Monday. A crowd began singing a hymn with the refrain, "Jesus said I am the way to heaven." As the grave filled, the grieving crowd sang: "Jesus, show me the way." - from a news account of the mass-murdering by Muslims, of Christians sleeping in their beds, attacked in the middle of the night, on all sides, by Muslim Fulanis.

And you can read more here.

You've already forgotten just a bit, haven't you? That is, forgotten the details? You remember that about 600 people were killed in north-central Nigeria - was it a week ago? Or two weeks? Or three weeks? It's hard to remember -- when Muslims of the Fulani tribe surrounded Christian villages at night, where there were mostly women and children, and set fire to their houses, and then with machetes killed them, while the Muslim-officered army and police did nothing to prevent it. And you may remember, or not, how in January there was the same story, when Muslims attacked Christians, on a Sunday, burning them alive in a church. But on that occasion, since the Christians around included men, they did fight back, and so that January story's details have been forgotten, and the BBC, and NPR, and everyone else had a high old time, in describing the six hundred Christians murdered last week, in glibly (and wrongly) calling it a "revenge" for the attacks in January -- as if the attacks in January had not been instigated by the Muslims in the first place, and the Christians only inflicting casualties because they were defending themselves.

And you have forgotten, haven't you - you who go to Jihad Watch, and are among the very best-informed people about Muslim depredations all over the world - that Christian pastors on the spot were always careful not to call for revenge attacks, but that if attacked, that naturally they should defend themselves:

The Rev. Pandang Yamsat, the president of a local Christian group, said he has urged his congregation not to respond violently to Muslims. However, he said he believes Muslims in the area want to control the region and that any peace talks would only give Muslims "time to conquer territory with swords."

"We have done our best to tell our members, 'don't go and attack Muslims, they are your brother,"' Yamsat said. However, "'if they come to dislodge you in your place, stand to defend yourself."'

Can you imagine any imam, any Muslim cleric, anywhere in the world, in peacetime as in wartime, telling Muslims "don't go and attack Christians [Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians], they are your brother"? Could Muhammad ever have said that? Did Muhammad ever say anything like that? Would or did the Qur'an ever say anything like that? You know the answer.

And if you remember anything at all about the attacks in early March, and how they were covered by the BBC, NPR, and almost all the of the most celebrated news reporting services and newspapers in the Western world, you remember this: That the "attacks by the Muslims" in March - the ones where they surrounded villages of sleeping Christians, mostly women and children, and then attacked them in the middle of the night with machetes, killing six hundred, including babies whose mutilated bodies have been described in ghastly detail - were done "in revenge" for the "killings of last January." And if you are a normal reader or listener, you nod, you say "ah, yes, I remember, there was some trouble in Nigeria in January, and there were killings, and I don't remember exactly what happened but I guess it was a case of the Christians starting it, and the Muslims perhaps not getting their revenge so that they felt they had to get their revenge this March." And that's how you leave it, in your own mind, and that is not your fault, that is how most of us would normally react. We don't go rummaging around trying to check against those whom, we assume, would not misinform us. And so when NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, tutti quanti, tell us the Muslims were attacking "in revenge" for January, we assume:

1) that in January the Christians started the attacks;
2) the Christians did most of the killing;
3) the Muslims must surely have suffered far more, because they still apparently felt the need to get their "revenge" in March.

But in Nigeria, this past January, that's not what happened.

This past January, as Baronness Cox of the House of Lords was one of the very few in the West to note, on a Sunday, as Christians in Jos were going to church, they were attacked by Muslims, who then set a church afire with all the congregants inside, burning them alive. They then proceeded to attack other Christians outside the church, and the killings went on and on. The Christians in Jos did fight back. Some of them, having survived the unprovoked Muslim attacks, went out searching for Muslims to kill. Does that surprise you? Did you expect them to do nothing? Did you expect them to behave as people in London or New York might behave, doing nothing but waiting for the course of "justice" to work itself out in the courts? They are not that silly. In Nigeria it is well understood that neither the Muslim-dominated police in central Nigeria, nor the Muslim-officered army anywhere in Nigeria, would come to the rescue of Christians. And if those Christians do physically defend themselves, and fight back, and even bring the fight to the Muslims, they will simply be massacred, again and again, with impunity. Do you dislike how the Christians in Nigeria behave? Would you wish them to behave, say, as the natives of Western Europe do when set upon by Muslims, which is wait for the forces of order, and then for the long slow spokes of the law to turn the wheels of justice, and finally for some kind of most limited justice to be done? Do you approve of their fighting back? Disapprove? No opinion? What do you think, to move to another continent, of how the Chinese deal with Uighurs who riot and kill Han people? Think they are too tough, or do you secretly wish that in the Western world we could, in dealing with the Muslim threat, emulate the Chinese government?

Now many in the Western world have wanted to minimize the religious prompting - and the prompting comes from the texts of Islam, not from the Christian Bible. For example, a Vatican spokesman wanted to make clear that in the Vatican's view, this was not a religious war:

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, condemned the violence and said Monday that the conflict must be interpreted in the light of social, economic, ethnic and cultural factors rather than religious hatred.

No? Not "religious hatred"? Why then, if it is all about other factors - social, economic, ethnic, and cultural - the sheepmen vs. the cattlemen, and the poor vs. the rich, and the rich vs. the poor, and the town vs. the country, and this people or tribe against that people or tribe, does it turn out, whatever else might be going on, that on the side that starts things the people are entirely Muslim, and those they target are always entirely Christian?

But what about the "ethnic argument"? One could say: Oh, this is just a case of Fulani shepherds trying to fight back against non-Fulani farmers? Wouldn't that be a comforting thought, in some ways, if we could keep Islam out of it?

Here's part of a report that someone inclined to such an analysis could rely on:

The killings in Dogo Nahawa, three miles south of the region's main city of Jos, began early Sunday.

Chuwanga Gyang, 30, said he heard a gunshot and left his house through the back door but stopped when he realized that the attackers were shooting to herd fleeing villagers toward another group of attackers carrying machetes.

He recalled climbing into a tree and watching as villagers were killed and the attackers set homes alight over the course of 90 minutes.

The attackers asked people "Who are you?" in Fulani, a language used mostly by Muslims, and killed those who did not answer back in Fulani, he said.

Plateau State spokesman Gregory Yenlong said police are seeking to arrest Saleh Bayari, the regional leader of the Fulanis, alleging Bayari had made comments that incited the slaughter. He gave no details.

And this business is not merely between Muslim Fulanis and non-Muslim non-Fulanis. There have been other attacks, always beginning with Muslims, and by no means only Fulani Muslims, against Christians, by no means all of them of the Bolem people (the victims of the latest massacres in and near Jos), and never the reverse, in Nigeria in the last few years:

The killings [in March] add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa's most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

Though others outside Nigeria may wish to believe, and to convince others to believe, that this is not a war of Muslims against Christians, all of these attacks evoke the most important event in the history of the state of Nigeria, an event that is never mentioned in any of coverage, on the BBC, or NPR, nor in any of the television and press accounts of the killings in and around Jos in January and March. And that Great Unmentionable Event is the Biafra War, the name we give to that campaign by the Nigerian military, Muslim-led and largely Muslim-manned, to crush the attempt, born of desperation, by Nigeria's Christians to declare a separate state in the south, a place where, it was hoped, the Christians of Nigeria would no longer be subject to the persecutions, humiliations and, above all, physical insecurity that they had long experienced in central and northern Nigeria. A series of large-scale murders by Muslims of non-Muslims living in the north led Christians in southern Nigeria to finally form and announce to the world, in 1967, the independent State of Biafra.

The American and British governments did nothing to help, gave no aid, extended no diplomatic recognition. Only Ghana and Israel gave useful moral and other kinds of support. The Western powers were not interested in the welfare of black African Christians. They were interested only in the uninterrupted supply of oil, and also, so they convinced themselves, in the need - but why? - to keep intact the "most populous state in Black Africa." One wonders, if the Christians and animists in the southern Sudan, who over many decades have been murdered and enslaved in large numbers by the Muslim Arabs of the northern Sudan, dare to vote for independence and then to declare an independent state (with all of the Sudan's oil) in the south, will the West behave as it did with Biafra? Will it refuse to recognize that state, and do so on the grounds that this might "interfere with the supply of oil" (in this case meaning: if we allow the black Africans to break off from the north, the Arabs might reduce the flow of oil to punish us) and because "the largest state in Africa should not be split up"? Such idiocies are entirely possible.
While the West abandoned Nigerian Chrstians in Biafra, the Muslim Arabs provided every assistance to the Muslim side. Why, Nasser sent Egyptian Migs, flown by Egyptian pilots.

Those pilots cheerfully strafed - what fun! - helpless Ibo villagers, who ran around trying to escape the bombs, and the machine-gunning by those Egyptians in their invulnerable planes above. Tens of thousands of Ibo died as a result. The war went on for three years. There were many reports, but the only two worth reading were those of Renata Adler (serialized in Mr. Shawn's New Yorker) and by Frederick Forsyth. From 1967 to 1969 the Biafrans managed to hold on. Their leader, Colonel Ojukwu, issued the Ahaira Declaration (which you might read online), in which he spoke about white racism (in the indifference to the mass murder of black Africans, as long as the oil flow was not interrupted) and, especially, about the "Jihad" that was being waged against Biafra. I wonder, and you may wonder too, if in the chanceries of the West, did anyone take note or think to inquire as to the meaning of that word "Jihad"? Was anyone prompted to start looking into the Qur'an and Sunnah at that point, back in 1969, and at what Muslims were doing in sub-Saharan Africa even then, before the OPEC trillions and the entry of millions of Muslims into Europe, using many different weapons, in their natural Jihad against the Infidels? Did Biafra mean anything, leave any mental residue in their brains, or was it simply something that happened, and had no meaning they could discern, because neither then, nor in the years since, have they figured out what Islam inculcates, and how that explains the behavior of Muslims?

When the Serbs, disastrously, and to their own great misfortune, turned to someone like Milosevic, it was because the West did not listen to them, did not take to heart their worries about such a man as the Bosnian leader Izetbegovic, who openly declared his desire to reimpose Shari'a law. For the Serbs, the mere mention of such a thing evoked tribal memories of Ottoman rule, and the devshirme (the forced levy, by the Turks, of every tenth Christian child, then taken back to Turkey to serve in the Sultan's armies), and provoked other historical memories of what Muslim Turkish rule had meant for the cultural level of the Serbs - a subject treated in the doctoral dissertation of Ivo Andric, the most famous Serbian writer, back in 1924. But the West was unsympathetic, because uncomprehending. Had it shown a little comprehension, it is possible that the Serbs would not have supported Milosevic, and things in the Balkans might have gone more smoothly.

And in 1967, and until the end of the Biafran War, and in the forty years that have followed, the West seems to have no comprehension of the Muslim campaigns against non-Muslims in Africa. It does not understand, it does not listen, to the Nigerian Christians. It does not understand what really happened, does not even have a good grasp of the number of victims of the Jihad in the southern Sudan. It pays no attention to what has been happening in Niger as a result of Saudi money, where the wahabization of the formerly syncretistic Muslims is proceeding at a terrifying pace. It has no idea of what so alarms Laurent Gbagbo and the Christians in the Ivory Coast. It has no idea of what Khaddafy's money has done to spread Islam and fill with anxiety the Christians in Lome and the rest of Togo.

Forty-one years have passed since Biafra was crushed. Why did not, in the State Department, anyone, any group of people, take it upon themselves to study the onslaught of aggressive Islam in sub-Saharan Africa? Why is there no coordinated and cunning policy to support the Christians, to make sure that they do not lose heart, either in Nigeria or in Sudan or anywhere else on the Continent? Why has nothing been said, no plans made, to protect the southern Sudanese so that they may vote without fear in the referendum on independence, and to assure them that their expressed wishes will be honored? Do you have the feeling that this is being discussed, that anyone in the Obama Administration has a policy to deal with the Jihad anywhere, except insofar as the main lineaments of the policy appear to consist of appeasement, the kind of which that Cairo Speech was the purest expression, along with the shabby treatment, both cruel and stupid, which the Israelis had to endure recently and may have to endure in the future? And what American or European officials have tried to understand what the memory of Usman Dan Fodio does to Christians in West Africa, or for that matter, does to Muslims in West Africa? Having made the decision to oppose the attempt by the Christian Nigerians to create a state of their own, the American and British governments did nothing, knew nothing, and did not want to find out anything more. And that determination to know noting, and to continue to know nothing, about the role of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, continues right to this day.

It is now 2010. Eight-and-a-half years have passed since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One might have thought something about Islam would begin to be learned by those who deal with Africa, or Asia, or Western Europe. Terrorist attacks did not stop. There have been over 15,000 separate attacks by Muslims all over the world. So one might have thought that if Muslim killings of Christians in Nigeria came back into the news, at this point, after so much else related to Muslim war being made on Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists all over the place, that this time the Western world would report things more accurately, more fully and with greater intelligent attention to history.

But it didn't happen.

Over the past weeks, I have listened to dozens of radio news programs, and seen television news shows in English, Italian, French. I have read the reporters, the columnists, the writers of editorials. And after the initial few days of reporting, the whole story died down. And never, not once, not on the BBC, not on NPR, not on RFI, not on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, nowhere have I seen mention of any context beyond that which goes back two months. And then we are told, inaccurately, that "this was a revenge attack" for "Christian attacks on Muslims." What happened in Jos in January, however, was not, as so many believe, simply a case of Christians killing Muslims, but of Muslims killing Christians and Christians fighting back. Nigerian Christians are not like Western Christians, and are perfectly willing to fight back. In the popular imagination, since more Muslims appear to have been killed than Christians, it has become simply "Christians killing Muslims."

But the one thing no one, no one at all, mentions is the word "Biafra." No one has mentioned, that is, the war -- as mentioned above -- that lasted from 1967 to 1969, in which over one million southern Christians were slaughtered by a Nigerian military machine that was completely controlled by Muslims, as it is today. (And that is why the Muslims who crept up on those three villages, through supposedly secure roadblocks, managed to do so. That is why, once the attacks began, no help came from the army -- because the army is Muslim-officered and largely Muslim-staffed.) No one mentioned that the Biafra War was fought by Christians who were determined to finally become independent of the Muslim north, and who declared their independence only after years and years of every conceivable Muslim provocation, including attack after murderous attack on Christians who happened to be in northern (i.e., Muslim-ruled) cities. No one mentioned the word "Jihad" that Colonel Ojukwu used in his speech to the people of Biafra -- the Ibo and other Christian peoples -- in his Ahiara Declaration.

And besides the Biafra War, the failure to mention the history of Islam in West Africa, which would require doing a little study, has meant the context of no context (to quote the late George Trow): no context in space, and no context in time. The reporting is always merely reporting, and there is no way to make proper sense of any event without some larger context. You have to know things. You have to be instructed. And if those who have the responsibility to instruct know nothing themselves, or so very little, then you cannot, by the reports of such people, ever be adequately informed. This is true of the reporters, of the columnists (think of Tom Friedman, think of the level of his mind), and the editorial writers who presume to instruct us on matters having to do with Islam, and yet who repeatedly show they know nothing, and do not wish to find out, about Islam.

This goes far beyond coverage of Nigeria. In the Sudan, for four decades or more, the Muslim Africans have been pushing southward, killing, enslaving, starving to death, those black African Christians and animists who do not submit, do not convert. Sudanese tell me that about 3.5 million black Sudanese have been killed or deliberately starved to death, almost all of them Christians. In Darfur, what seems to have nothing to do with Islam does indeed have to do with it, for the Arab Muslims killing the non-Arab Muslims are demonstrating, by their attitudes, the Arab supremacism that is encouraged by Islam, an Arab supremacism or which Islam serves as a vehicle. In Nigeria, pushing ever downwards, the Muslims are doing exactly what they did in the Sudan, taking more land from the Christian farmers, and attacking Christian tradesmen and small shopkeepers and workers where those can be found. And in both Nigeria and the Sudan, the country's main wealth is in oil. That oil lies under Christian lands, though the oil revenues are seized by the Muslim rulers and supplied mostly to fellow Muslims. The Christians are helpless to claim their fair share.

I didn't expect the BBC to tell us about Usman Dan Fodio and the Jihad he declared in West Africa in 1804, or to explain that he was Fulani, like those who did the killing last month in Nigeria. But I did think the Biafran War might have been mentioned. It took place not two hundred years ago, but within living memory - or is there nothing within the "living memory" of the media? Is that memory now always moribund?

When things happen, there is no attempt to instruct listeners or readers as to how the events of today fit into, connect with, other events. Take, for example, the series of dreadful attacks - rapes, tortures, killings - of Christians by Muslims in Pakistan. Few of these get reported fully. And there is never any indication that this might be part of a long pattern, part of a long history. You never hear, for example, about the martyrdom of Bishop John Joseph, who nearly ten years ago killed himself, in public, to protest the cruelty of Pakistani laws, and their use by Muslims as an excuse to kill Christians. You hear nothing about the history of the persecution of Muslims, going back to the earliest days of Pakistan. Nor do you hear about the persecution of Hindus in Pakistan, or of Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists in Bangladesh. Why not? Why are we never told? Why are we never given the figures on the non-Muslim percentage of the total population of Pakistan, or Bangladesh, at the time of Partition and today, and also given figures on the Muslim percentage of the population of India? Why is there never any attempt to make us understand men and events? Have you ever heard the words "Jizyah" and "dhimmi" used on the BBC? On NPR? Used in a story in the New York Times? The Washington Post? No? Never? In the thousands of stories, in the millions and millions of words, on matters related to Islam and Muslims, not a single appearance of such words. Why not?

It is not too much to ask that the Biafra War, those Egyptian Migs, that Western pusillanimity demonstrated in the abandonment then of Nigeria's Christians, should now be noted in reporting from Nigeria, that a larger context be given, that deep anxieties within the Christian communities be relayed to the outside world. It is not too much to ask that the same fears among Sudanese Christians, fears that have only deepened with every decade since independence in 1956, be reported to the outside world. Some may not know that in order to avoid sanctions, the Sudanese government pretended to commit itself to a referendum, on independence, to be held in the south. The time for that referendum approaches, and the Arabs of the north have been spreading money and weapons around in the south so as to encourage attacks of tribe against tribe. By increasing the level of local violence, the northern Arabs hope to use that violence as an excuse to delay or to cancel that vote on independence, or to use that violence in order to appeal to the southerners to vote for them as the only force capable of keeping the peace in the south - precisely because they are from outside, from the north. Such maneuvering is not sufficiently monitored, and Western audiences not being adequately prepared to understand what is happening now, and what is to come.

Wouldn't it be amazing if we had reporters, columnists, writers of editorials who actually recognized their own ignorance, and felt the need to rectify it, and then decided that by god, they were going to study the texts of Islam, the tenets of Islam, were going to read Schacht and Lammens and Snouck Hurgronje and Jeffrey, were going to read what the defectors -- the apostates -- from the Army of Islam had written (just as, in an earlier day, they would not have relied on TASS but have read what defectors from the Soviet Union said and wrote about it). Then they would no longer keep repeating the baseless banalities about this "religion" that is also a Total Belief-System, with its effects, in those places where Muslims believe themselves powerful enough to act with impunity (i.e., in Dar al-Islam, where Muslims rule) on the actual behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims.

Wouldn't it be amazing to have reporters who, in giving us the latest news from West Africa, knew about Usman Dan Fodio, and about the Biafra War? And they would be able to provide, then, a deeper understanding of what is going on in the Ivory Coast, with Laurent Gbagbo and the fear of the Christians of infiltration from the north of Muslim immigrants, or what is happening in Togo, where suddenly the mosques are being built everywhere in Lome, thanks to Arab money, and they have state-of-the-art sound systems supplied by Khaddafy (who has bribed the Togolese ruler, apparently with a Lamborghini that ruler enjoys racing up and down the 30 kilometers of paved roads). The Muslims in Lome have cut down all the trees around the churches that once gave shade to worshippers entering and exiting or simply meeting together after a service, while they chase away any Christians who attempt to sit under the "Muslim" trees near mosques. And what have you read in detail about the Wahabification of Islam in Niger, where a friend of mine recently returned after years in France and was horrified to see the complete transformation of the easygoing black-African version of Islam with the real thing that the Saudis had transplanted. But who will connect the Sudan to Togo to Niger to Nigeria? Who will write the articles about Khaddafy as the self-anointed "King of Africa" who is constantly bribing tribal chiefs and constantly distributing funds for the spread of Islam -- even if he, Khaddafy, is hardly orthodox in his own behavior, what with his high-stepping bodyguards consisting of Amazon-like women? Who will help people who naturally do not have the time to study, to connect murders in Nigeria today with the Biafran War of forty years ago?

There are all kinds of fellowships for journalists that provide a year of study. Some spend a year at Harvard, meeting each other at the Lippmann House on Francis Avenue, with nothing more pressing than to take courses to deepen their knowledge of what they specialize in. How many of them are clever enough to see that when it comes to Islam, they are better off studying on their own, rather than with the apologists who are thick on the ground of Harvard Yard and its environs, the diana-ecks and noah-feldmans and roy-mottahedehs (he, at least, has some semblance of humor lacking in the others, as his quoting of Robert Benchley indicates). There is the Stanford Program for journalists, who linger or lounge under the loggias made possible by Leland Stanford's railroad largesse, and everyone has a wonderful time in sunny California. But it is unclear, for those covering world politics - and nowadays that has to include Islam - how many are put on the right path, and how many subjected to the myriad myrmidons of Mesa Nostra (Western Division). Nonetheless, there are individual instructors, and even whole departments, where the real thing is studied, but to mention them here would be to cause trouble for them, and there is no reason to do that.

The failure to report adequately, or sometimes failure to report at all, on the Muslim attacks on non-Muslims, in Nigeria, in the southern Sudan, in southern Thailand, in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, just can't be allowed to continue unremarked. The only way to get papers and radio and television to collectively pull up their socks, or straighten up and fly right or (your colorful and metaphoric message here) is to relentlessly expose the shabbiness of these reports by describing what has not been mentioned. And only thus will those who keep producing or publishing or broadcasting such stuff be shamed, mocked, held up for well-justified criticism and ridicule on the Internet, until word gets back to someone, and someone else discovers that he just has to start giving the context, has to instruct correctly, has to start making sense.

Liberals and the liberal media try awfully hard to portray tea-partiers as racist, violent extremists whose ultimate goal is to usurp the lawful authority of the government of the United States. It’s tough to make those charges stick, since tea-party rallies are inevitably peaceful, thoughtful protests that include people of many races. Tea-partiers and their supporters continually denounce racism and violence as well. Still, the Daily Kos crowd and leftist commentators like Keith Olbermann are sure that bigotry and violence are brewing just beneath the surface of the movement, no matter how much tea-partiers might deny the awful “truth” of the matter.

It’s rather bizarre that members of the tea-party movement and their Republican supporters are called upon to denounce racism and violence, when the foundation of the movement has nothing to do with either. The tea-partiers are campaigning for limited government, fiscal responsibility and the free market. Still, if some unidentified individual supposedly hurls a racial slur at a black congressman, or if another unidentified individual hurls a brick through a congressman’s window, the tea-partiers are called upon to denounce those actions, even though there is no credible evidence that the movement, its principles, or even an actual tea-partier, was involved. Not doing so, the liberal critics say, is tantamount to accepting and encouraging such behavior. Such actions must be condemned and the tea-party movement has a responsibility to make it clear that racists and thugs are not welcome. Tea-partiers and Republicans dutifully say all the right things, that racism is bad and that violence is bad, usually with a rather puzzled expressions on their faces, since it’s 2010 and those points seem rather obvious to anyone this side of Chris “I forgot Obama was black for an hour” Matthews.

The left has established a principle here: if anyone promoting evil or performing evil acts tries to attach himself to an organization or movement, then it is incumbent upon that organization or movement to disassociate themselves from such individuals in the strongest possible terms. Might we apply this principle to another organization, one that features a fringe that embraces violence in a way that makes brick-throwing appear as innocuous as a fifth-grader firing a spitball across the class during study hall? Instead of worrying about some shadowy figure who supposedly shouted racial epithets and whom can’t actually be tied to a movement, might we worry instead about a movement that embraces sexism, not merely along its fringes, but in a huge portion of the mainstream? Such an organization seems ready-made to attract the righteous wrath of liberal America. If such a movement involved fundamentalist Christians or ultra-Orthodox Jews, the liberal media would denounce it, condemn it and expect any co-religionist even remotely connected to the offenders to do the same. There is, of course, one notable exception to this rule: Islam.

If called upon to denounce murderous violence that their co-religionists perpetrate in the name of Allah, the Council on American Islamic Relations inevitably follows the party line: they can not be expected to accept responsibility for the deranged actions of few extremists. That answer satisfies the mainstream media, though it’s not nearly an acceptable response when it comes to the tea-party movement, which doesn’t actually have a death toll even remotely associated with it. From whence does such hypocrisy spring? The answer should be obvious: fear.  The liberal media can offend tea-partiers at every opportunity and the worst that will happen is that reporters might get a few angry e-mails, or editors will receive some rude phone calls. Big deal. Were these reporters and editors to offend Islam, the results might very well include a next-of-kin trying to recall where the dear departed stashed a life insurance policy.

Most Muslims are not violent jihadists, but they support – indirectly, albeit vitally – violent jihad through their silence. Perhaps we should look at this differently. To a jihadist like Osama bin Laden, anyone who doesn’t support jihad isn’t following the dictates of the Quran and is therefore not a real Muslim. For bin Laden and his ilk there is no such thing as the Islamic equivalent of a “fallen away Catholic.” If you’re not “all in,” you’re on the other side. In the west, most Muslims aren’t Muslims, as far as the jihadists are concerned. Most Muslim women living in America drive cars, for example. Most Muslims living in America don’t feel it’s their obligation, or a moral imperative, to kill infidels. Their religion is their religion, but it doesn’t get in the way of conscience. That’s great, as far as it goes, but they are actually guilty of the very sin of omission that the mainstream media tries to pin on tea-partiers, in the form of a deafening silence when it comes to their evil, extremist co-religionists constitutes complicity in everything but name.

The non-violent Muslim majority – and I believe that is an accurate description, whether or not they sympathize with the goals of jihad – represents the only real hope the West has of permanently emasculating the violent jihadists. We can not kill every Muslim on the face of the earth, notwithstanding the fact that Judeo-Christian morality prevents us from ever wishing to do so. The only way to negate the jihadist influence it though a “Muslim enlightenment” that would, in theory, find Muslims balancing the secular principles of liberty and conscience against the more morally positive features of their chosen religion. Yet, there is not the slightest possibility of achieving a Muslim enlightenment if we refuse to accept the need to accomplish such a goal and thus deny potential moderates their voices. The mainstream media, it would seem, hasn’t a clue. Their calls for moderation when it comes to the tea-party movement are both shrill and wholly unnecessary. But, when it comes to an actual threat to Western civilization like jihad and Islam, they choose to go mute. That is, after all, the safest course for them, if not for the public they serve.

Thus we can be sure: it will happen to more young American men. Because nothing whatsoever is being done to try to make sure that it won't.

"A father grieves for his son -- and the soldiers he's accused of shooting," by Kristina Goetz for the Commercial Appeal, March 28 (thanks to Axel):

Every other Saturday, Melvin Bledsoe makes a two-hour drive from Memphis to visit the son he still calls by his given name. [...]

Bledsoe studies the face of this dark-haired, brown-eyed 24-year-old in blue prison scrubs and sometimes catches a glimpse of the happy-go-lucky Carlos he raised. Other times, it's Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Muslim convert charged in a shooting at a Little Rock Army recruiting center last summer that killed one soldier and injured another.

That day, two privates who'd recently completed basic training were taking a cigarette break outside when Muhammad drove in front of the building and allegedly opened fire.

Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, of Jacksonville, Ark., was wounded. Pvt. William A. Long, 23, of Conway, Ark., was shot dead. Long's mother was in the parking lot and heard the shots. She looked around and saw her son lying on the ground.

Bledsoe wants to understand how his son turned from middle-class Memphis roots to become a self-described member of al-Qaida who waged what he has described as a "jihadi attack on infidel forces."

"I want to know how, who and why this happened to my son," Bledsoe said. "And I say to you, if it happened to my son today, tomorrow it can be your son. This is something the American people need to wake up to. Tomorrow they could be looking for someone with blond hair and blue eyes."

Muhammad's trial, which is set for June 7, won't likely provide those answers. Pulaski County prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty in the case in which Muhammad is charged with capital murder, attempted capital murder and 10 counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, won't explore his religious beliefs or his claimed extremist ties.

"There's just no need for me to worry about what he says or to try to understand his motivation or anything else," said Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley. "All I care about is what he did and what I think I can prove that he did. Whether he claims to be a Martian who flew in here on a spaceship or whatever doesn't matter."

If we were under Martian attack, that would be a criminally stupid statement. But of course we are under Islamic jihad attack, and no one (except me) will say that Jegley is criminally stupid for ignoring that. Instead, most will hail his freedom from "bigotry" and "Islamophobia."

Bledsoe, 54, says his heart "bleeds for the families of the victims." But he believes the case has broader implications than authorities admit. In the months since the shooting, he has begun his own investigation.

Bledsoe says his son began to change about a year and a half into his studies at Tennessee State University in Nashville, shortly after his first brush with the law.

"He decided to go off to Knoxville one night with a group of other guys and got into some trouble," Bledsoe said. "He was arrested for having illegal guns and a little marijuana."

But the charges were dropped and expunged from his record, according to Bledsoe. The incident "scared him straight." He wanted to change his life but didn't think he was getting enough from the Baptist church. He checked out a synagogue, then a Nashville mosque.

His son started watching Malcolm X movies and read the teachings of Louis Farrakhan but soon became a Sunni Muslim. Bledsoe believes that foreign nationals his son met in Nashville led him to extremist ideas.

Over time, his son became deeply observant, and family members became concerned that he was too focused on religion. But they never heard him talk about extremist ideas or doing harm to anyone. He was "just someone trying to find his way in life," Bledsoe said.

In 2007, Carlos Bledsoe legally changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. In September of that year, he traveled to Yemen to teach English and learn Arabic to better study the Quran. He told his family he wanted to find a wife.

"I did not like it," Bledsoe said. "But, you have a year's contract at this place where you're going to teach. I'm saying to myself, 'You aren't going to like it. In a year's time, you'll be dying to get back.'"

Muhammad kept in touch every so often. Then one night after he'd been in Yemen about a year, Bledsoe got a late-night phone call from a woman whose English was so broken he could hardly understand her. It was Muhammad's wife, Reena. They got disconnected. Bledsoe worried that something was terribly wrong.

A few days later, they reconnected. Reena told Bledsoe that his son was in prison because he'd overstayed his visa. He later learned that Muhammad also had a fake Somali passport. After more than three months in jail, Muhammad was deported.

About four months after his return, he was working at a new office of his father's tour bus company in Little Rock. His family had no sense of what was to come.

On June 1, law enforcement officials say, Muhammad allegedly waged his attack with an assault rifle.

Not long after his arrest, Muhammad made a collect call from jail to The Associated Press to say the killing was justified because of U.S. military action in the Middle East. In January, he wrote a letter to the judge, saying he wanted to plead guilty to all charges and was affiliated with al-Qaida.

"I wasn't insane or post-traumatic, nor was I forced to do this act, which I believe," he wrote, "and it is justified according to Islamic laws and the Islamic religion. Jihad -- to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims."...

Bledsoe's questions remain unanswered. He wants to know why his son's case isn't in federal court, and how he was able to buy a gun at a Walmart in Little Rock despite being interviewed previously by the FBI.

Bledsoe said Muhammad was interviewed by a Nashville-based FBI agent during his incarceration in Yemen and that the same agent interviewed him again in Nashville when he returned to the United States. Bledsoe says the FBI should be held accountable for what he believes is negligence in not preventing the attack.

"The FBI knew exactly what the hell was going on and they did nothing to stop it," he said. "No, they did not pull the trigger, but they allowed it to happen."...

Daris Long, father of the Army private killed in the shooting, has his own questions and criticisms. By classifying his son's death as nonhostile, the federal government has, he said, "abandoned my son on the battlefield."

"Being gunned down in uniform by a self-described Islamic warrior obviously does not rise to the level of a terrorist act as far as I can tell under this administration," the retired Marine officer said. "... The failure to include the death of a serving U.S. soldier and the wounding of another outside an Army office in America's heartland as a terrorist act by a home-grown jihadist who has ties to Yemen himself is beyond me."...

Me too, Mr. Long.

As we all know by now, the Obama administration insists the healthcare proposal is needed to control costs. Anyone who knows anything about government programs knows this is a lie. ObamaCare is about introducing government into every aspect of our lives.

It’s about power. Government-run healthcare is the progressives’ Holy Grail and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.

In an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Vice President Joe Biden just admitted this blindingly obvious truth. In a discussion of the healthcare push, Biden baldly stated, “You know we’re going to control the insurance companies.”

If the socialists in support of this plan had the integrity to admit that they don’t give a rodent’s rectum about costs and were to admit that this is really about material equality and redistribution of wealth it must be possible to have a little bit of respect for them.

But they won’t admit the obvious because they know that it won’t sell in America, a tax revolt nation founded on principled hostility to overweening government. Clearly the thugs in Congress and the White House learned well from Saul Alinsky, the Marxist Machiavelli who insisted that socialists had to learn to sound like patriotic, Constitution-loving Americans when making the case for redistributionism. Alinsky wisely advised the long-haired hippies of the 1960s to get a haircut and start wearing ties in order make their radical ideas less frightening to the American public. Alinsky knew that in America honesty about socialism gets socialists nowhere.

Even today the Obama White House barely acknowledges the size and the depth and the intensity of the opposition to its un-American healthcare plan and to its authoritarian tactics.

[...] Almost anyone who lives in Jerusalem knows that the area in dispute, Ramat Shlomo, is a Jewish neighborhood and has been so for thirty years. It is surrounded by other Jewish neighborhoods and no Israeli in their right mind would consider surrendering it in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. Giving up Ramat Shlomo would be the equivalent of giving up the world famous Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the tony Jerusalem suburb of French Hill and even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. All three are just as integrated into the Jewish identity of Jerusalem as Ramat Shlomo. Only by accepting the Palestinian narrative - that all of Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians, could anyone possibly envision the suburb as future Palestinian territory.

The punditocracy is awestruck by the apparent petulance of it all. What, they are all asking, did he hope to gain? Was the intention to dress down Netanyahu and bring him into line? Well, the Israeli prime minister is defiant and there is no sign whatsoever he will accede to the administration's demands that he cancel the permit. This stance has rallied much of the country behind him. Rather than weakening the Israeli leader, as Obama might have hoped, he has only added to his political capital.

The Palestinians watch in delight as they wait for the Americans to deliver Israeli concessions without having to do anything but chew on their falafel. They win either way. If the peace process continues to stall they can continue to wait, which is their modus operandi anyway. If Obama finally gets Netanyahu to say uncle, they will be dealing with a castrated Israeli leader viewed as unable to control his own foreign policy.

The Arab League, those irredentist potentates, are no doubt rolling around on their palace beds in glee. They had made clear to Obama that there could be no further progress in Middle East peace without resolving the grievous wound to Arab pride caused by the Arab-Israeli dispute. Ramat Shlomo has become their poster child for Israeli transgression and so now they are winning too, convincing an American president to do their bidding....

Read it all.

Luckily, the Post was decent enough to publish this magnificent response: "Counterpoint: In defence of Wafa Sultan," by Joanne Hill in the National Post, March 12 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Tarek Fatah has used the National Post to present a one-sided, inaccurate and potentially dangerous editorial about statements made by Dr. Wafa Sultan during her March 3rd debate in Toronto with Dr. Daniel Pipes.

Mr. Fatah's article is not an unbiased report: it is an opinion piece full of loaded terms such as slur, attack, hateful, anguish, Islam haters and vitriol. He misquotes Dr. Sultan and presents as fact a conclusion that is not supported by any of her statements: a conclusion that I believe puts her life in danger.

I am a freelance reporter; I covered the debate between Dr. Pipes and Dr. Sultan for the Jewish Tribune. I have an audio recording of the entire event, including the Question and Answer period, so I can state with complete accuracy what was and was not said by Dr. Sultan.

Mr. Fatah assumes the authority of a mind-reader to reveal what he claims is Dr. Sultan's hidden intention. Given his first-hand experience of the eagerness of some Muslims (or "Islamists" if he would prefer) to issue death threats against anyone who is perceived as threatening Muslims, there are three reasons why I find it disturbing that he would attribute to Dr. Sultan this motivation: "Perhaps the answer she had in mind was too outrageous even by her own standards: Force Muslims to convert or die."

This is disturbing, first of all, because Dr. Sultan said nothing that would lead the listener to come to this conclusion. When asked during the Q&A, "How do you get Muslims to reform? Do you expect them to convert to another religion?" Dr. Sultan replied:

"Give them the freedom to choose: that's all I'm asking for. Give them the freedom to search, to ask, to be exposed to different sides, different values, different lifestyles. I can tell you from my very own experience, what has helped me to reform myself is being exposed to Western values and being free to express my conclusion. I always compare between my life under Islamic Sharia and my life as a free woman in America and I write about that on my website in Arabic. So when you expose people to different [sic], and you give them the freedom to choose, that's all we need in the Islamic world. I'm not asking [them] to convert to a different religion; I'm asking to grant them the freedom to choose, the freedom to be, to follow whatever path they want to follow. That's all."

Second, this is what Dr. Sultan said at the conclusion of the Q & A:

"I'm not speaking up against Islam to please anyone but my conscience. We suffer a lot under Islamic Sharia. It is not fair. Enough is enough. We need to live our lives as human beings. I want you to know I'm not here to incite anyone against Muslims. Muslims are my family: my Mom, my brother, my sister. You know, I cannot peel off my own skin. I feel sorry for them because they are victims of a very hateful ideology. Really, if you take a look at any Islamic country, what do you see? Nothing but miserable situations, especially women who are living in this society. So I am speaking up to save them, looking for a better future for them. And believe it or not, when it comes to my readers in the Arab world, I feel it is easier for me to address my thoughts than to penetrate the Western mind. People in the West live by the Western ethical code which doesn't allow them to judge people based on their religion - and there's nothing wrong with that-but they need to know that Islam is not merely a religion: it is also a political ideology and that's what I am fighting. That's what I am speaking up against. And I hope one day, the future for our generation in the Muslim world will be much better than the life I lived under Islamic Sharia in Syria."

And third, the terrible, secret motivation which Mr. Fatah attributes to Dr. Sultan is in fact a commandment made by Mohammed to his followers regarding non-Muslims:

"Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them... If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them." (Source: Sahih Muslim Book 19, Hadith #4294.)

There is more.

Contrary to what Mr. Fatah writes, Dr. Sultan did not say: "Muhammed was a child rapist."

Rather, she said: "As a married man, Mohammed raped Aisha when she was nine; he was 54."

If Mr. Fatah is hurt by this statement, perhaps he should consider the source: Islamic doctrine. I challenge Mr. Fatah to deny this....

Oh, you can bet he did. Read it all, and read the comments at the National Post piece also. And then consult the Islamic source here.

The formidable Ali Sina weighs in here.

Despite the shocking loss of Ted Kennedy’s old Massachusetts Senate seat and the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia and opinion polls consistently showing an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed to ObamaCare, progressives in the nation’s capital show no signs of backing off. They are hellbent on forcing change down the throats of Americans even if it means shredding the Constitution by using the so-called Slaughter Solution that would allow ObamaCare to pass without a vote on the legislation.

President George W. Bush, vilified as he was by the left when he was in office, didn’t try to impose his will on the American people without lawmakers taking a vote. Faux conservatives Karl Rove and former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) pushed the misguided, useless Medicare Part D plan (prescription drugs for seniors) and twisted lawmakers’ arms to get it passed. As contemptible as their behavior was to real conservatives (i.e. people who believe in limited government), even they didn’t try to ram their legislation through without the people’s representatives voting on it. They acknowledged by their behavior that Congress makes the laws.

But leftists don’t care about the Constitution and are content to transform America into a kind of low-grade dictatorship if it helps their healthcare nationalization legislation go through. They want it done and they want it done now by any means possible. (Historian Michael Zak likens the healthcare proposal to the infamous Enabling Act.)

If the flagrantly unconstitutional Slaughter Solution is used and allowed to stand it amounts in a sense to a coup d’etat, that is, a fundamental structural change in our system of government without the consent of the governed. Nothing will stop the Democrats in the future from imposing their will on the American people without taking a vote. Hello cap-and-trade and card check. Anyone who supports the Slaughter Solution supports a kind of treason against the Republic.

This is not a rhetorical flourish. Congress passes the laws of the land. If the laws of the land can be approved by Congress without a vote being taken in which lawmakers are forced to take a stand for or against, the whole idea of representative government is washed away.

Radio talk show host Mark Levin was dead on last week when he said on his show that House Rules Committee chairman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) should be expelled from Congress for promoting her authoritarian plan for avoiding a vote on ObamaCare. It should surprise no one that Slaughter is a longtime ally of organized crime syndicate ACORN which she voted to keep federal tax dollars flowing to even after ACORN workers were shown on video enabling the sexual exploitation of underage girls.

She’s not the only one who should be expelled from Congress. Anyone who supports the Slaughter Solution supports the overthrow of the American system of government. Anyone who votes for it should make their peace with the political gods because electoral judgment is coming in November.

Richard Cohen’s excellent article in the Washington Post on Wednesday March 2nd, offers several compelling reasons why Israel doesn’t deserve to be compared to South Africa under Apartheid, but I believe that it will be hard for many on the left who think of the State of Israel in that manner to ever understand this, unless they know the truth, that Israel isn’t and never has occupied any Palestinian Arab owned land.

In her excellent article “Palestine – The Big Lie”, Sharon Nader Sloan lays out the true history of Israel, going all the way back to ancient Israel, all of which clearly proves that:

1: There’s never existed a “Palestinian State”

2: Jerusalem was never the capital of any nation other than Israel.

In fact there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. They’re just Arabs, like all the rest. They hate Jews because their religion tells them to, and because in a matter of a few short years after modern day Israel was created, the Jews took that barren and desolate land and turned it into a bountiful and beautiful Garden of Eden growing oranges the size of basketballs. Of course by doing this, right under the Arabs’ noses, and for all the world to see, they showed the Arabs up for what they are, a culture of backwards, bigoted and racist barbarians, whose only contribution to human civilization was the invention of Algebra. Thanks a lot for that BTW! (sarcasm mine)

Then, to add further insult to injury, when shortly after her founding, all of Israel’s close neighbors got together and attacked her, all of those brave and manly warriors were made to look like “girly-men” by the Israeli military, and it’s easy to imagine how that made them feel.

As Ms. Sloan points out, Palestine is a region, not a nation, in the same way that the Sahara is a region. Most of the Arabs who owned land there SOLD it to the Israelis. The Israelis paid what to them were enormous sums for their land, and they were happy to take it. Not one square inch was stolen from anyone.

And if the need for a “Palestinian State” were so great, why didn’t we hear anyone demanding a “Palestinian State” during the 19 years that Jordan occupied Jerusalem and the entire West Bank? Why did they ever reject the UN compromise of splitting the land controlled by the British up into a Jewish state and what would have been a Palestinian State” in the first place? Instead they decided to go to war to destroy Israel, after which that land legally became Israel’s by right of conquest!

So why should there be a Palestinian State”? The Arabs are free to live there, there are even Arab members of the Knesset. Are they saying that they’re entitled to their own state because they live there? If so, how would we feel if the huge number of Hispanics in California demanded their own state as well? And while we’re at it, how would the non-Hispanic Californians feel about the Hispanics, if they were constantly throwing rocks at them, and harassing them 24/7?

The idea that the Jews in Israel are occupying Arab lands is taken for granted by almost everyone, and like Global Warming, it’s just another BIG LIE!

There was something particularly annoying — even harmful to society — during the health care summit held last week between President Obama and leading members of the House and Senate.

It was the president’s calling all the congressmen and senators by their first names.

It is easy to appreciate just how demeaning this was of each House member and senator: Just imagine if any of them had called President Obama “Barack.”

However negative any conservatives deem this presidency, we would consider it scandalous if anyone publicly referred to this or any president by his first name. For America ‘s sake, I do not want the office of president or the president himself demeaned.

Likewise, for America ‘s sake, I do not want the office of representative or senator demeaned.

Yet that is exactly what Obama did. At perhaps one of the most widely watched dialogue between members of the United States Congress and a president in American history, Obama lowered the dignity of the men and women who serve in those capacities.

That this has largely gone unnoted — and, I presume, will be widely dismissed as trivial — is more a statement about the culture of our times than it is of the unwillingness of mainstream media to criticize this president.

Other presidents and members of Congress have on occasion publicly referred to members of Congress by their first names (though this, too, is relatively new and wrong), but rarely if ever in as formal, let alone prolonged and public, a setting as the health care summit.

Why did the president do this? Why did he choose to call the most prominent members of House of Representatives and Senate — and a member of his cabinet — by their first names while he was only referred to as “Mr. President”?

One reason was to place himself on a higher and qualitatively different plane than everyone else at the summit. It was effectively the president of the United States and the boys (and girls) showing him deference. Anyone who disputes this needs to explain why the president did not ask to be called “Barack” and why no one called by his or her first name did the same to the president.

A second reason, that only theoretically conflicts with the first, is that this president is a man of the left to the depth of his soul, and therefore has egalitarian instincts. Consequently, he likely thinks that there is something not quite right in sustaining class-based titles by referring to people by their honorific; and conversely, there is something charming in publicly calling senators, representatives, and members of his cabinet by their first names.

A third — related — reason, is the egalitarian spirit that has pervaded American society since the 1960s and ’70s. Obvious examples include students calling teachers by their first name, young people calling adults by their first name, congregants calling their clergymen by their first name, and the like. In almost every case, there has been a loss of prestige to the person and to the profession (yes, adulthood is a profession) and a corresponding loss to society.

In 28 years of radio, I have never called an interviewee who had a title by his or her first name. A psychiatrist who teaches at the UCLA School of Medicine has been on my show a number of times. Though he has been one of my closest friends for over 20 years, I have always addressed him as “Dr. Marmer” on the radio, never “Steve.” Likewise all the rabbis, priests and ministers with whom I am friends are all “Rabbi,” “Father” and “Pastor” when I address them in public.

Some will argue that this was precisely what Sen. Barbara Boxer was saying when she said to Brigadier General Michael Walsh, who was testifying before a Senate committee, “Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?’” And therefore, anyone who ridiculed her for that comment cannot now complain that President Obama did not call senators and congressmen by their titles.

But the argument has no merit. Walsh never called Boxer “Barbara.” If he had, it would have been scandalous. He called her “Ma’am,” which, along with addressing a man as “sir,” is how the military (and many others) show people respect.

The issue, in any event, is publicly addressing people with titles by their first name — especially when the one doing it must be addressed by his title. Even if President Obama had used “Mr.,” “Ms.” or “Mrs.,” it would have been acceptable.

Perhaps the president thought that Americans would appreciate that he is so friendly with all these congressmen and senators — even Republicans — that he calls them all by their first names. If so, he seriously miscalculated. If he did not object to “Mr. President,” he had no right to drop “senator” and “congressman.”

But, as noted, Mr. Obama is a man of the left. And the cultural left does not particularly like “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” “Pastor” or “Rabbi” — or “Senator” or “Congressman.” And if you don’t think this is a right-left distinction, read right and left reactions to this column.

Perhaps thank is the wrong word; we have Feminists to blame for the influx of Slut TV. Yet, their silence regarding the same is deafening. Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Rock of Love, The Bad Girls Club, even Mtv’s The Real World, all epitomize the very worst in female degradation and show just how much damage the “sexual empowerment” fallacy, pushed by the Feminists, has caused. Okay, so maybe we should thank them for that; we are now seeing proof of their agenda-driven theories failing in practice.

Women, existing solely as sex objects (and the really bad kind) are rampant in the reality show genre. Yet, we hear nothing from Feminists. Except, of course, in the case of Kourtney Kardashian, who became pregnant as a result of her “sexual empowerment” and chose to not have an abortion. Then, the self-avowed Feminists spoke up:

People magazine (and CNN) carry cringe-worthy quotes from Kourtney Kardashian and why she decided to have a baby: “I looked online, and I was sitting on bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty from having an abortion…I was reading these things of how many people are traumatized by it afterwards.”

Good to research your options, bad to fall for anti-choice claims of “post-abortion syndrome.”

Huh. Of course, to them the taking of a child’s life should cause no pain or guilt. It’s just a clump of cells and stuff! Anyone who says otherwise is a nutty wing nut liar! Instead, they are outraged over being called slutty and by the concept that perhaps random promiscuity should be a tad shameful.  No, really. This is their response to a Washington Times article about “Slutty Feminism” (article excerpt is followed by Feministing’s editorial comments in bold):

In Columbia University’s sex column, “Sexplorations,” Miriam Datskosky explains why the all-too-common “walk of shame” shouldn’t be shameful at all. She argues that, men and women should be able to go out and have sex whenever and with whoever they like, and when walking home the next morning — wearing the same clothes from the night before, their make-up smeared and their hair a mess — they shouldn’t be judged: “It is not up to a random stranger to make you feel ashamed.” Moral relativism and the sexual revolution had a baby, and boy is it ugly.

Because as everyone knows, the only appropriate post-sex responses are guilt and shame.

Stuart’s holier-than-thou attitude: “Sexual freedom has turned into sexual obsession. Perversion and promiscuity are applauded, morality and chastity condemned.” So having sex is immoral, but calling women “sluts” is just dandy. With a moral barometer like that, I think I’m better off being a slutty feminist.

Well, Jessica — if the slutty shoe fits. I like the straw man, excuse me, straw woman, argument, too. As if anyone said that sex itself was wrong or immoral. I suppose it is understandable that she is so confused. These are the same people who believe that women are “empowered” by being sex machines on television shows where the camera men need to wear hazmat suits, the house furniture needs to be covered in plastic and you need a prescription for Valtrex upon completion of your stint there.

By their constant attempts to demonize motherhood, to turn it into a punishment and a detriment to one’s happiness, they ended up diminishing women. Instead of realizing that being a life-bearing nurturer is one of the very best things about being a woman and is an attribute in and of itself, they constantly try to take that away, all in the name of some delusional perceived “equality.” Equality and being different are not mutually exclusive; they don’t get that.

In the end, their pro-abortion stances, their encouraging of “sexual empowerment”, their “it’s okay, just use birth control and do whatever feels good” lifestyles have dehumanized women. By encouraging women to focus on sexual “equality”, they’ve taken away any requirement that women be treated as something other than a sexual toy. Why would anyone respect you as a human being, if you don’t respect yourself?

As a result, we now have an onslaught of degrading shows, based entirely around these “equal” women who sleep around, do walks of shame home (and not the fun kind) and live tweet their abortions. Life? Motherhood? Meh. THAT is oppressive. But, having the entire country watch you sleep around with no caring or consideration? That’s empowerment! Wow. You’ve come a long way, baby.

Unlike Jessica of Feministing, I embrace neither the word slutty nor the word feminist. I’m a woman. And a Mom.

—–

(cross-posted at Red State)

Follow Lori  on Twitter and read more of her work at Snark and Boobs, iOwntheWorld , Right Wing News and Red State.