In an article that makes good sense until the very last sentence, Ken Blackwell writes at Townhall:

The recent high-level comings and goings between Jerusalem and Washington remind us of nothing so much as all those “consultations” between top-level officials of two other democratic allies seventy-six years ago. In 1936, everyone wanted to stop the German army coming into the de-militarized Rhineland, but no one was willing to use force to prevent it. Hitler sensed this weak resolve in the Americans and the British. The Americans were still in the throes of isolationism in 1936. Britain wanted to talk about Hitler’s move into the Rhineland, but it did not want to use force, or even allow the threat of force.  Hitler could smell fear.  …

As the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran can sense weak resolve and fear in the US leadership now.

Consider this: Iran has been at war with the U.S. for more than thirty years. When they seized our U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, that was an act of war. When they recruited terrorists to kill 241 U.S. Marines and Navy corpsmen in Beirut in 1983, that, too, was an act of war. 

The Iranians are also at war with Israel. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly said he can foresee a world without the U.S. and Israel. He says Israel should be “wiped off the map,” that the Jewish state is but a “two-bomb country.” What kind of bombs would those be?

U.S. policy makers are desperate, it seems, to dissuade Israel from striking Iran. Gen. Martin Dempsey has been to Israel carrying that warning. Sec. Leon Panetta publicly worries that Israel may be planning a “surprise attack.” In Britain, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg frets that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons installation would be “potentially destabilizing.” 

What, one wonders, does Mr Clegg understand by the word “stable”, if what is happening in the Islamic world seems to him to be stability? And Iran’s threat must be seen as part – the most dangerous part – of the jihad that Islam is waging with ever greater ferocity and determination against the West.

Looking at the chaos, violence, oppression, and tumult throughout the region today, where exactly does the Right Honorable Mr. Clegg see the stability that might become “destabilized”?

As worrisome as an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities might be, Iran with a nuclear weapon is infinitely more dangerous. …

Israel reminds us that when a nation’s very survival is on the line, that nation will do whatever it must do to meet its sworn enemy. Israel followed the advice of American and British administrations. They urged [Israel] to evacuate Southern Lebanon. Now Hezbollah, supplied by Iran, rules there. Israel withdrew from Gaza. Now, Hamas, another Iranian cat’s paw, holds sway there. The Israelis — prodded by Bill Clinton and the illusory Oslo accords — let Yasser Arafat’s unreformed Palestinian terrorists have “authority” in the West Bank.

Today, surrounded by mortal enemies, with their backs to the wall, Israelis are told to take more “risks for peace” by a US. administration that is outraged by the sight of too many Jews in Jerusalem.

If we wait until the Iranians have sunk their nuclear weapons deep into hardened bunkers it will be too late. The Obama administration will not act in time. Later will be too late.

Israel: Don’t wait; hit the Iranian nuclear facilities now. The world will thank you for it.

The world will thank Israel?

If so, the sun will be blotted out by trillions of flying pigs.

How can it benefit Israel to give Alawites asylum when the Assad government falls?

Apparently the Israeli government is preparing to do so.

Will a victorious Sunni majority in Syria hunt down the Alawites in revenge for the dictatorial Assad rule? Some Israelis seem to think so.

But why does Israel want to protect them? And would its hospitality extend to the vicious mass-murderer Bashar Assad himself? No, he would surely not flee to Israel. The very idea boggles the imagination.

How would Israel cope with thousands of hostile Alawites within its borders, even if only for a few months or years?

This is from the Cyprus Mail:

Israel is making preparations to house refugees from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect should his government fall, Israel’s military chief told a parliamentary committee today.

“On the day that the regime falls, it is expected to result in a blow to the Alawite sect. We are preparing to take in Alawite refugees on the Golan Heights,” a committee spokesman quoted Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz as saying.

Assad has faced 10 months of popular revolt in which more than 5,000 people have been killed, according to United Nations figures. Israeli officials have said they do not expect his government to last more than a few months.

In a speech today, Assad again blamed the unrest on a foreign conspiracy against Syria.

His “foreign conspiracy” accusation includes Israel, of course. Israel and the US.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said last week that Assad “is weakening” and will fall this year.

“In my opinion … he won’t see the end of the year. I don’t think he will even see the middle of this year. It doesn’t matter if it will take six weeks or 12 weeks, he will be toppled and disappear,” Barak said.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel rarely censured the Assad government for its domestic crackdowns and has said little about the crisis that erupted last March. …

But in May last year, Israel accused Syria of orchestrating deadly confrontations on the ceasefire line between the two countries as a distraction from Assad’s bloody crackdown. …  Israeli sources note that Assad has not tried since then to turn the Golan into a “second front” in a bid to externalize his crisis.

Although Israel and Syria are technically at war, and Syria is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war of Israel’s foundation, the Golan Heights had long been quiet. …

Barak said Syrian weapons could be transferred to the militant Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, “something we view with great gravity. Syria is believed to possess chemical weapons.”

Assad, who is a willing cat’s paw for Iran, would transfer them to Hezbollah and probably has done so. It’s far less likely that a Sunni government in Syria would arm a militant Shia organization.

The elements of the story don’t add up. It is not Jewish lore, law, or pose to forgive enemies, and in this instance it would obviously be a very short-sighted, unjust, and dangerous thing to do.

If you like pictures of flowers opening, have a high boredom threshold, can stand monotonous religious chants and the intoning of nonsense, and would be amused to catch a glimpse of Nancy Reagan as an evil Freemason, this is the video for you.

This is from an article by Jack Doyle at the MailOnline:

The number of Muslim converts in Britain has passed 100,000 …

The figure has almost doubled in ten years – with the average convert now a 27-year-old white woman fed up with British consumerism and immorality.

Whose “consumerism and immorality”? Their own?

Or maybe it’s not so much consumerism and immorality that drives them into the arms of Islam, as an attraction to young Muslim men. If they marry them, maybe they’ll learn in time to speak of “subjugation”, and know all too well what it means.

The numbers, revealed in a study by multi-faith group Faith Matters, have led to claims that the country is undergoing a process of ‘Islamification’.

The survey of converts revealed nearly two thirds were women, more than 70 per cent were white and the average age at conversion was just 27.

But the organisation’s report argued that most converts saw their religion as ‘perfectly compatible’ with living in Britain.

It said: ‘Converts do not represent a devious fifth column determined to undermine the Western way of life – this is a group of normal people united in their adherence to a religion which they, for the most part, see as perfectly compatible with Western life.’

They’re real thinkers, you see. Done their research, understand the ideology of Islam through and through. Found not a trace of immorality in it.

And their schools never taught them that there is anything wrong with Islam, did they? Said nothing about it being incompatible with Britain’s democracy, it’s equal treatment of men and women, its traditional tolerance and freedom?

The report estimated around 5,200 men and women have adopted Islam over the past 12 months, including 1,400 in London. …

The survey … asked converts for their views on the negative aspects of British culture.

They identified alcohol and drunkenness, a ‘lack of morality and sexual permissiveness’, and ‘unrestrained consumerism’.

What’s slavery compared to the evils of alcohol, sex and shopping?

Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, said: ‘Conversion to Islam has been stigmatised by the media and wrongly associated with extremist ideologies and discriminatory cultural practices.’

Conversion to Islam stigmatised by the media? We haven’t noticed much of that.

Islam wrongly associated with extremism and discrimination?

In 2001, there were an estimated 60,000 Muslim converts in Britain. Since then, the country has seen the spread of violent Islamist extremism and terror plots, including the July 7 bombings.

Converts who have turned to terror include Nicky Reilly, who tried to blow up a restaurant in Bristol with a nail bomb, shoe bomber Richard Reid and July 7 bomber Germaine Lindsay.

Those were reported by the media. But maybe the converts didn’t research that deeply.

(Hat tip George)

Islam has woken up to modernity. Muslims feel humiliated by their backwardness. A violent onslaught against the Western world is their foolish attempt at a remedy.

The jihad as it is being waged now is the most widespread, most aggressive temper tantrum in recorded history.

(Video from Hot Air)

On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution — returned triumphantly to Tehran on an Air France flight from Paris after 14 years in exile.

Now, 33 years later, that return was reenacted in a bizarre ceremony that saw guards carrying a giant cardboard cutout of Khomeini down the stairs of a passenger plane and a waiting crowd paying their respects to “him.”

Iranians have been faced with many unusual and absurd events in the past three decades of the rule of the clerics. The February 1 ceremony, however, may have topped them all.

Couldn’t this be described as idol worship? A terrible offense in Islamic doctrine.

Picture and commentary from Israellycool.

The Occupy movement is turning against and horrifying its supporters on the religious left.

This is from an article by Mark Tapson at Front Page:

Initially, the Los Angeles Times pronounced the Occupy movement “a predominantly secular undertaking,” although it did note that “some left-leaning religious groups see a golden opportunity in the Occupy movement, whose central message of greater economic equality resonates deeply among faith-based progressives.”

Sure enough, religious progressives did rush to anoint the movement as it began to swell. [Some] religious left icons … rhapsodized about the Occupiers standing with Jesus in their defense of the poor, even resembling St. Francis of Assisi….

St. Francis of Assisi, it is worth noting, was very much like the average Occupier: a rebel against his bourgeois parents who had made their ample fortune in trade.

By the beginning of December The Huffington Post asserted that “more than 1,400 faith leaders from around the country [had] signed a pledge of solidarity with Occupy protesters.” They conducted services and provided counseling, and their churches hosted Occupy meetings. Religious communities of all stripes rushed to offer the Occupiers shelter and solidarity:

In addition to spiritual ministry and space to assemble and sleep, religious communities have provided the Occupy movement with material support such as food, clothing, tents, blankets and heaters.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote that Jesus would be among the Occupiers of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that the movement had prompted people to examine themselves and ask, “What would Jesus do?” …

If the Occupiers did ask themselves “What would Jesus do?” then they apparently came to the conclusion that Jesus would expose himself, rape, urinate and defecate in public, endanger children, steal, trespass, trash public and private property, harass and denounce Jews, assault non-protesters and police, block traffic, take drugs, hurl Molotov cocktails and blood and vinegar, and more. … To date, arrests at Occupy events number over 6,000, including over 400 in Oakland alone last weekend.

By contrast, the Tea Party movement doesn’t even litter.

So it was only a matter of time before the Occupiers began misbehaving in the very churches that had given them sanctuary and assistance …

Members of the movement urinated on a cross inside a Brooklyn church recently and have been accused of desecrating New York’s West Park Presbyterian Church. The pastor ordered sixty protesters to leave the sanctuary after one of them stole a bronze lid from the $12,500 baptismal font. Initially a supporter of the Occupy movement, the pastor now is outraged by their behavior …

Some leftists begin to see sense when they’re hit on the head or robbed by fellow leftists. But we don’t suppose that any number of hits on the head will wake up Archbishop Rowan Williams. He’s probably still expecting a polite Thank-you note from leaders of the Occupy movement.

Occupiers also began wreaking havoc in London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, the very one where Archbishop Williams claimed Jesus would be showing His solidarity.

The registrar of St Paul’s, Nicholas Cottam, described the disruptions:

Desecration: graffiti have been scratched and painted on to the great west doors of the cathedral, the chapter house door and most notably a sacrilegious message painted on the restored pillars of the west portico.

Human defecation has occurred in the west portico entrance and inside the cathedral on several occasions.

We like the idea of human defecation “occurring”. No actual crapper to be blamed for crapping intentionally in the sacred precincts. It recalls the old Christian conundrum about “hating the sin but loving the sinner”.

He also noted noisy interruptions during services, foul language directed at staff, and the use of alcohol and other stimulants that appeared to “fuel the noise levels day and night.” Litter has piled up and dogs roam freely on the site. This led to more than half of the schools scheduled to visit the cathedral cancelling since the occupation began there in October. Visitor numbers were also down by half, leaving the cathedral’s cafe, shop and restaurant “faltering.”

A little trade on the side? What would St. Francis have said about that?  And isn’t there a story about Jesus chasing money-changers out of the Temple? Okay, not money-makers, but still …

The cathedral’s director of community and children’s services expressed concern about people who were exhibiting behaviour that was indicative of poor mental health …

Only some people? And we’d assumed that all members of the Occupy movement were in poor mental health!

… people who were exhibiting signs of drug use including stumbling and compulsive behaviour, people who had body odor arising from significant periods without washing or change of clothing and a number of people who were clearly under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

The only surprising thing about all this being that the director was surprised.

Occupiers recently threw Bibles at police officers from an abandoned San Francisco hotel, and disrupted a Right to Life rally inside the Rhode Island state capitol, shouting down a priest’s prayer and tossing condoms on Catholic school girls.

Well, boys will be boys.

And sentimental idealism whether of the church or a political movement invites a dousing with the cold water of actuality.

Where are you going, humankind?

The future now being shaped by new technologies seems to scare some of the very people who know most about them.

These extracts are from an article by N.M.Guariglia which we find somewhat incoherent, in that it dodges about from subject to subject, and needs more explanation than is given; but it predicts amazing technological developments and it is grandly eschatological:

The reaction to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was heartening. In just a few days, the American people were able to compel Congress to shut down SOPA, a terrible piece of legislation. My congressmen wrote me saying he was sorry, didn’t know what he was thinking. Of course, on the discouraging side, in order for the people to care or even know what was going on, it took huge Internet companies like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Google to publically protest the would-be law. SOPA and its Senate cousin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), were at their core Internet censorship bills. Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — now run by former Senator Chris Dodd of Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac fame — embarrassed themselves and wasted millions in lobbying for the legislation. In response, we had the largest online protest in history. And it was successful. …

We too are glad of that.

The intent of SOPA/PIPA was to centralize cyber-security under the auspices of the federal government in order to crack down on “piracy” and copyright infringement. In doing so, the American people’s liberty would have been undermined, freedom of information would have been threatened, and existing and adequate copyright laws would have been circumvented and ignored. It would have been a litigator’s dream. Worse, the legitimate issue of cyber-security — more so: the nature of the future itself — would have been entirely overlooked, as it is currently misunderstood.

The nature of the future? Currently misunderstood? He goes on to talk about it in a way that is fascinating but obscure to technological laymen like us:

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the heads of security for Raytheon — very interesting guy. “When ones and zeroes are involved, offense will find a way to win,” he said. Encryption defenses may work for a time; they may even get better. But that will require decentralization. Impenetrable information security will be sustained in a space off the grid. “When we go from mega-, giga-, and terabytes to peta-, exa-, and zetta-, we’ll be entering a brave new world of the infinitesimally small. And then there’s the quantum world.”

Yes, the quantum world. When one considers the future of this century, there are at least three existential threats.

The first is traditional in scope: the possibility of great-power warfare (with China, perhaps). This is least likely, I believe, due to old-established Cold War principles amongst rational actors: deterrence and mutually assured destruction.

More likely, at least in the nearer future, with Iran. The mullahs and many devout Muslims do not, it is said, fear destruction because Islam “loves death”.

The second threat: the probability of a terrorist organization smuggling and detonating a nuclear device in an American city (and the incomprehensible aftermath).

A suitcase nuclear bomb? Yes, such a thing has been spoken of for decades.

And then the third: “GNR.” Genetics (biotechnology), Nanotechnology (quantum science), and Robotics (Artificial Intelligence; A.I). GNR is riding the wave of information technology and its exponential growth. You take 30 steps linearly, you’re at 30. You take 30 steps exponentially, you’re at a billion. This is what’s come to be called the Singularity: the scientifically foreseeable point in the near-to-medium-future in which human beings have created technological intelligences so intelligent — billions of times more intelligent than today’s strongest computers — and so subatomic — as small to an apple as an apple is to Earth — that we will have created nothing less than nano-gods.

Nano-gods?  Because they’ll be so “intelligent”?

These gods will then enter our minds. Probably by way of eye drops.

Gods will enter our brains through our eyes?

Do not misunderstand. There is much promise in this — clearly. But there is also great peril. It is a deeply philosophical discussion. A man either comprehends this trajectory, and prepares for it, or puts it out of his mind. The implications are enormous. Will this transcendence expedite our evolution, or will it destroy our individuality, our liberty, our humanness?

With gods in our belfries we wouldn’t be human in quite the same way as we’ve known human to be, would we? And if all the gods entering all our brains through all our eyes are the same, our individuality would be considerably diluted. As for our liberty – that would depend on the values of our immanent gods.

And how should we prepare for “this trajectory”?

Could either the users or preventers turn tyrannical? Who will guard the guardians? Will attempts to control and regulate these technologies succeed in accomplishing precisely the dystopia we may fear the technologies themselves will create? Will we merge with these intelligences or will they be distinct entities? Does the future need us at all? …

Well, at the very least, the way he’s projecting it, the future will need our eyeballs. And our brains to start with, though after that they’d never be the same again.

But whether we keep such intelligence as we have now, or exchange it for the intelligence of nano-gods, it seems we are doomed because intelligence per se is a killer.

Life is rare; intelligent life, infinitely rarer. The silence of the universe conveys “the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves… intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe — an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so.”

Even for gods? Perhaps we shouldn’t bother with the eye drops then.

There seems to be a sense amongst humanity that something big is right around the corner, something unequivocal.

“Unequivocal” meaning final?

Collectively, we’ve taken to apocalyptic and supernatural assumptions.

Was it not always thus with many human beings?

Nearly half of Americans think the Rapture will happen by mid-century.

Nothing new there.

Hollywood, ironically, has stoked along these ideas. It won’t be found in the Mayan Calendar, but rather in [Carl] Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar. It won’t be coming out of the clouds, but rather into our brains. This is it. This is where we are and this is where we’re going.

Where exactly?

Disappointingly, he does not say. He jumps back to the Sopa and Pipa threats.

Information is power. It is …  an infinite resource on a finite planet. As free people, we should encourage the dissemination of information technologies under one condition: our security and liberty are not endangered. In the future, the government may assume undue authority and force information companies into subservience for authoritarian reasons, or these companies, in trying to avoid total subservience, and in trying to destroy their competition without competing, may preemptively give the government what it wants. This is not free-market capitalism, nor is it humanism. This is a form of fascism. …  SOPA and PIPA were just two more examples of this troubling trend.

This will be the most consequential century in the history of life on Earth. Technology is man’s greatest invention. It is a fine servant, but a most dangerous master. We should neither concede its control to a central authority nor prove to become dependent on it, for we will have sullied both human integrity and individual liberty. The next president, to his surprise, will likely have to address the potentialities of transhumanism, both good and bad, and so he will not have time for the little things our cheap culture will seek to put him through.

“Transhumanism”? Our transitioning into gods? What little things will he not have time for – reducing the national debt? Stopping Iran mounting a nuclear attack?

And how is our culture “cheap”? As compared with what other culture? Or does he mean we would be cheap if we demanded that he address the problem of the national debt rather than oversee our transition into gods?

While we think a little more human intelligence, of the ordering and explaining kind, could have been applied to the composition of the article, we are grateful to the author for the fun it has given us.

It may not inspire us to engage in a deeply philosophical discussion. We confess we do not comprehend “this trajectory”, have no idea how to prepare for it, and will soon put it out of mind. But we’ve enjoyed it while it lasted.

Adolf Hitler did not seize power in Germany; he was given power by democratic process, and then he established his dictatorship.

Hamas came to power in the Gaza strip through democratic election. It is unlikely to allow another election.

In Tunisia and Egypt, democratic elections have brought parties to power which intend to bring their countries under sharia law.

Elections in Iraq and Afghanistan will not give Iraqis or Afghans freedom under the rule of law. The majority of Iraqi and Afghan voters do not want freedom under the rule of law.  To call either country a democracy in the Western meaning of the word is to affect deliberate blindness.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

The advocates of democracy have been unable to admit that Hamas, Al-Nahda, the Brotherhood and the Salafis are the people’s choice because they represent their values and ideals. The Salafist victory in Egypt … was not based on any external factor or political cunning, but on their core message of hate for non-Muslims, repression for women and …  tyranny for Egypt.

Democracy is not in itself a prescription for good government. The very fact that it expresses the will of the majority of a nation is precisely why it is dangerous.

The trouble with democracy is that it is representative. It is representative in Egypt, in Tunisia, in the West Bank, in Iraq and beyond. …

Democracy has not worked all that well throughout the rest of the world either.

After all the efforts made to keep the Sandanistas out of power, El Salvador’s supreme leftist pedophile Daniel Ortega is back in the Presidential Palace in Nicaragua. …

Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the second largest party in the Russian Duma is the Communist Party. Its actual vote totals are probably higher due to the fraudulent nature of the elections under the control of Putin’s United Russia Party. This roster is rounded out by the Liberal Democratic Party, which is run by a career lunatic who has proposed conquering Alaska, dumping nuclear waste on nearby nations and rounding up the Jews into camps. If Putin’s power base finally collapses, then the party best positioned to pick up the pieces is the Communist Party. It’s not at all inconceivable that within the decade we will see the return of a Communist Russia. …

Democracy is not a universal solvent. It is not a guarantor of human rights or the road to a free and enlightened society. …

A strong showing at the ballot box eliminates the need to gather a mob. …

In Turkey the electoral victories of the AKP gave [it] the power to radically transform the country. Given another decade the elections in Turkey will be as much of a formality as they are in Iran. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will follow the same program, bringing down the military leadership as soon as they can to the applause of the European Union and the United States who care more about the appearance of democracy than the reality of the totalitarian state they are endorsing.

When Western powers facilitate – in Iraq and Afghanistan compel  – democratic elections, they only encourage a charade; they play along with the pretense that universal suffrage will guarantee freedom. But most Russians and Nicaraguans don’t want freedom. The men of Iraq and Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, do not want freedom; their religion negates freedom, commands submission to an ancient set of oppressive laws.

Democratic elections are only as good as the people who take part in them. When the people want the Koran or Das Kapital, then they will get it.

Such elections measure the character of a people …  The Egyptians failed their election test [of character] … As did the Tunisians and the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

To the advocates of universal democracy such failures are only a temporary manifestation that can be reversed with enough funding for social NGO’s and political outreach. But the reality is that they represent a deeper moral and spiritual crisis that we ignore at our own risk.

Democracy worked for the West, as the least bad system of government yet devised, because the West wanted freedom under the rule of law. Nations get the government they deserve. Or, as Daniel Greenfield puts it, “Governments reflect the character of the people they rule over.”

The “democratic” elections that have taken place in Islamic states prove it.

Democracy is allowing the Muslim world to express its truest and deepest self. … By helping to liberate them we have set their worst selves free.