




The Opinions on this page are viewed through a Conservative (Reformed Liberal)lens. Be forewarned that only REALITY is posted here, and not the Rose coloured blinders of most Lefties and Liberals!!












The fundamental premise of much scholarly examination and public discourse is that grievances with U.S. policies in the Middle East motivate Islamist terrorism. Such assumptions, though, misunderstand the enemy and its nature. In reality, the conflict is sparked not by grievance but rather by incompatibility between Islamist ideology and the natural rights articulated during the European Enlightenment and incorporated into U.S. political culture. Acquiescing to political grievances will not alter the fundamental incompatibility between Lockean precepts of tolerance and current interpretations of Islam: Only Islam's fundamental reform will resolve the conflict.
Many scholars mark the post-World War I partition of the Ottoman Empire as the origin of Islamist opposition to the West.[1] The idea that the Middle East would be a tolerant, prosperous contributor to the global environment today if World War I victors had left intact the Ottoman Empire is a premise in the literature accompanying the rise of twentieth-century jihadism. Historian David Fromkin argued in his influential A Peace to End All Peace that present day Muslim unrest is the direct result of Winston Churchill's early twentieth-century decisions.[2] British journalist Robert Fisk also holds British officials responsible although he prefers to blame Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary between 1916 and 1919.[3] Both authors are wrong, though, to base their theories of grievance on such arbitrary demarcation of eras. The roots of jihadism and its opposition to the United States as part of the non-Muslim West were cast long before World War I erupted. The interaction between the United States and Muslim states and societies dates back to American independence.[4] Contemporary jihadism is not the result of accumulated grievance; rather it has for cultural reasons been an integral factor in Islamic societies' interaction with the United States.
The Die is Cast
Almost immediately after independence, the U.S. government found itself in conflict with the Barbary sheikdoms of Morocco, Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli. For centuries, these states filled their coffers by piracy, stealing cargoes, enslaving crew, and collecting ransom. European sea-going nations often entered into treaty and tribute arrangements with the Barbary leaders in order to buy immunity and curtail competition.[5] In 1784, Moroccan pirates hijacked the U.S. merchant ship Betsy in the Mediterranean and enslaved her crew. A year later, Algerine pirates seized two more vessels, the Maria from Boston and the Dauphin from Philadelphia. The U.S. ministers to England and France, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson oversaw a peace treaty with Morocco, but the Algerine leadership refused any accommodation. In 1796, President George Washington ordered construction of six warships to form a U.S. navy and to protect U.S. shipping from Barbary pirates. In 1801, in the wake of an upsurge in piracy, President Thomas Jefferson entered into war with Tripoli, bombarding the city three years later and winning the release of American hostages.[6] Peace did not last. With the U.S. military embroiled in the War of 1812, Algerine pirates again began terrorizing American crewmen and disrupting U.S. trade. They miscalculated. In 1815, President James Madison dispatched a squadron of U.S. Navy frigates, which defeated the pirate fleet and won reparations from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.[7]
For here's the rub. If the Canadian government were using its "kangaroo courts" as a deliberate ploy to syphon off Muslim rage or to guide it into proper bureaucratic (and happily nonviolent) channels, then we could perhaps admire it for its prudence and cunning. But suppose these commissions and tribunals are not a cunning charade, designed to hoodwink ill-tempered Muslims into becoming good litigious Anglo-Saxons? What if the Canadian government actually thought that it could help matters by cracking down on writers like Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, by fining them or by throwing them into prison, silencing those who have the courage to speak of Islam, while encouraging Muslim immigrants to feel that they can manipulate weak-kneed governments into stifling any criticism of their religion and culture? Obviously this naive approach would backfire disastrously, and would end by endangering the very domestic tranquillity that it was trying to preserve.
Of one thing we can have no doubt: Short of a firing squad, there is nothing that the Canadian government can do that will have any effect on what Ezra Levant or Mark Steyn will say and write in the future. You couldn't have picked worse people to try to cow. But unfortunately, it is the nature of the nanny state to bring up citizens who have been trained not to rock the boat. Under a nanny regime, the good citizen is one who is reluctant to speak his mind merely out of fear of what other people might think. For people already this cowed, even the threat of a minor bureaucratic hassle would be a powerful argument for keeping one's mouth shut, and for standing by while our hard-won liberty of discussion is steadily eroded. Canada still has uncowable men like Levant and Steyn; but where will such men come from a generation hence?
Even worse, the threat of ongoing legal action, carried out in a number of different Canadian provinces, might be more than enough to keep less well-known writers and smaller news outlets from exposing themselves to the risk of legal costs that a magazine like Maclean's can afford to take. When faced with the threat of an endless hassle, draining away limited personal resources, many writers will simply take the safer course of not saying anything offencive about Islam. But since it is difficult to say in advance what will be offencive to men like Soharwardy, the safest course will be to say nothing at all. In short, gagging Canadians may not take a generation. It may work in a matter of a few months.
And is it just Canada that we are talking about? After all, if enough Muslims continue to react with violence to criticism of their religion and culture, all the other nations of the West will eventually be forced to make a tragic choice between two of our highest values. Either we must clamp down on critics of Islam, mandating a uniform code of political correctness, or else we must let the critics say what they wish, regardless of the consequences, and in full knowledge that these consequences may include the death of innocents. This is not a choice that the West has had to face since the end of our own furor theologicus several centuries ago, but, like it or not, it is the choice that we are facing again today.
For those that don't know him, Major General Peter Cosgrove is an "Australian treasure!" General Cosgrove was interviewed on the radio recently. You'll love his reply to the lady who interviewed him concerning guns and children. Regardless of how you feel about gun laws you gotta love this! This is one of the best comeback lines of all time. It is a portion of an ABC interview between a female broadcaster and General Cosgrove who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military headquarters.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
So, General Cosgrove, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
GENERAL COSGROVE:
We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery and shooting.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?
GENERAL COSGROVE:
I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?
GENERAL COSGROVE:
I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
But you're equipping them to become violent killers.
GENERAL COSGROVE:
Well, Ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?
The radio went silent and the interview ended
Britain planned to build a Taliban training camp for 2,000 fighters in southern Afghanistan, as part of a top-secret deal to make them swap sides, intelligence sources in Kabul have revealed. The plans were discovered on a memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.
The Afghan government claims they can prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."
The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.
The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.
It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.
President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.
An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.
The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.
A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."
Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.
The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.
Today sees the publication of a devastating report on the rise of "honour-based" violence against women from immigrant communities in the UK. It is devastating not just because it reveals the complicity of some "community leaders" in killings, attempted murder and beatings, but also because its sources are so authoritative.
Crimes of the Community, by a new non-political think tank called the Centre for Social Cohesion, is based on the testimony of Asian women's groups, which have bravely decided to speak out against a growing assault on women made possible by an alliance of religious fundamentalism and state-funded political correctness.
The report also has the backing of Nazir Afzal, director of the West London Crown Prosecution Service and the CPS expert on honour killings. According to the CPS, one woman a month dies in this way.
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Not all these atrocities are carried out by Muslims: the Hindu and Sikh communities also suffer from - and are implicated in - the ghastly practises of honour killings, religiously inspired beatings and forced marriages. But Islamic traditionalists are the prime offenders, and their leaders quickest to dismiss allegations.
The UK Sharia Council describes forced marriage as a "media exaggeration"; mosques turn away representatives from Asian women's groups; when Mohammed Arshad, chairman of the Dundee Mosque and a religious adviser to the NHS, tried to arrange the murder of his son-in-law, the Tayside Islamic and Cultural Education Society asked for his seven-year jail sentence to be reduced to community service because he was so "respected and honoured".
Crimes of the Community describes societies that are scarcely recognizable as part of 21st-century Britain. According to a women's refuge in Derby, some Asian taxi firms will take threatened girls "straight back to the place they've just escaped from".
In many cases, says the report, "women fleeing domestic violence or forced marriage have been deliberately returned to their homes or betrayed to their families by policemen, councillors and civil servants of immigrant origin".
The Pennines Domestic Violence Group accuses Asian councillors in Huddersfield of blocking their activities, with the support of white councillors. Most shockingly of all, Asian women's groups say they do not trust Asian police officers not to deliver girls back to their abusive families.
Clearly, honour crimes in closed communities pose a daunting challenge to police forces. Yet it must be met. Mr Afzal makes the disturbing point that areas of Islamist terrorism and honour crimes coincide almost exactly: we are dealing here with a threat to security as well as freedoms.
Meanwhile, as this study concludes, politicians who turn a blind eye to these crimes are denying basic human rights to women simply because they come from a foreign culture. They are, in short, racists.
Some Asians(muslims) in the police and in Government jobs have been accused of blocking the crackdown against so-called honour killings.
It is alleged they are not only failing to help desperate women trying to flee abuse and arranged marriages but are actively encouraging punishment for those they believe are breaking traditional taboos.
Terrified victims who seek official help are even being tracked down by a network of Asian men working in Government departments and social services, according to a study written by the think-tank Social Cohesion.
One woman was found by her family after she signed on at a Jobcentre where a member of the Asian community was working.
Liberals often argue that in criticizing American actions and culture, artists are actually defending American principles by holding the nation to its own standards. That argument would make sense in an atmosphere of contending visions that showed both America’s greatness and its imperfections. But when the arts purvey only a consistently anti-patriotic and anti-military message, it seems clear that they have in fact detached the ethos from the country that embodies it. In doing so, American artists are adopting European-style cosmopolitanism, which leaves them virtually incapable of depicting warriors as heroes. “International society has ideas to defend—ideas of universal justice—but little actual ground,” the political thinker Robert Kaplan wrote recently. “And without ground to defend, it has little need of heroes.”
Taliban commander buys his Freedom, Again
Released: January 8, 2008 19:30
Last Modified: January 8, 2008 19:32
KABUL - A high ranking Taliban commander has bought his freedom from an Afghan prison for the third time in three years . Mullah Sorkh Naqaibullah claims his latest release cost him 10,000 euros($14,800.00) to buy off corrupt officials and leave his cell.
The man, nicknamed the Red Mullah, told the British broadcaster BBC that he in similarly fashion escaped lengthy detention sentences in 2004 and 2005. He is especially active in Helmand province, where British soldiers are operating.
He was last arrested in July of last year. He served 5 months of a lengthy sentence before buying his way out, and is already leading new operations against NATO soldiers in the district of Gereshk.
The international community that is trying to secure and rebuild Afghanistan has been complaining for years about the flagrant corruption in the Asian country. The BBC reported Tuesday that after this latest embarrassing incident, an official investigation has begun.



Dutch MP and leader of Holland's "Party for Freedom," Geert Wilders, is being denied his right to freedom of expression by a coalition of Islamists and leftists who wish to stop the production of his upcoming film, which takes a critical look at Islam. Mr. Wilders has been the object of death threats for years made by extremist Muslims - he sometimes receives as many as 40 in a single day. As a result, he must have 24 hour security and is being forced to live under near house arrest in his own country.
The threats on Mr. Wilders' life must be taken seriously, they are real and ongoing. The inciteful actions of his opponents - including those who have now started an anti-Wilders ["Stop the de Verwildering"] movement, outrageously labeling him as "evil," - are putting his life in even further jeopardy.
Brussels - Belgian security authorities believe that a terrorist attack on the country is possible over Christmas after 14 suspected extremists detained earlier in the week were released, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
The country's security services have been put on a higher alert level until January 2, but citizens have been told that there is no need to panic.
Reinforced police patrols are to operate in public places, such as Christmas markets, shopping areas and bus and train stations.
Security personnel at the capital's transport companies have been placed on elevated alert as is normally the case when EU summits are held in Brussels.
The 14 suspected Islamic extremists were released overnight after being held on suspicion of planning to break a former footballer, Nizar Trabelsi, out of the prison to which he was condemned for 10 years for planning an attack on a Belgian military base in 2001.
A spokesperson for the public prosecutor's office said that searches of the suspects' homes had uncovered documents but no weapons or explosives.
One of the detainees was the widow of a suicide attacker who in 2001 killed Ahmed Shah Masud, who as head of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance had been fighting the Islamist extremist Taliban in central Asian country.
"We had sufficient evidence for a terrorist threat and therefore did not hesitate to arrest suspects," the spokesperson said.
Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto".
Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.
But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers.
"We don't want to do anything that will disturb the people or upset the people." Sardar Rana, said a spokesman for the Central Mosque
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- Insurgents here have booby-trapped two human corpses with bombs recently, killing two Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province, says a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
An improvised explosive device concealed by an Afghan decapitated by insurgents killed two civilians and wounded two others on Dec. 21, after they discovered the body in a cemetery outside Kandahar City, ISAF Brig.-Gen. Carlos Branco said Monday.
A second booby-trapped dead body of a man was discovered about 18 kilometres from the first, just outside of Kandahar City, on December 23. It caused no casualties.
Canadian soldiers joined the renowned Royal Gurkha Rifles Sunday in a battle to eliminate the source of rocket fire that targeted two Kandahar military outposts.
But when the coalition forces showed up, insurgents hiding out at a compound near the Pashmul district shied away from a fight. It's the third joint operation between the Gurkhas -- a highly-praised Nepalese infantry division of the British army -- Canadian soldiers and the Afghan National Army.

Asadabad, Afghanistan - Afghan intelligence agents said on Monday they had detained a woman hiding a bomb-filled waistcoat of the type used in Taliban suicide attacks under her all-covering burqa.
"She was carrying the suicide waistcoat for the Taliban. We had intelligence reports that she was working for the Taliban," said the official, who asked not to be identified.
Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S
I don't know what happened here. But this happened on my Air Canada plane ride to London, England in December 6th, 2007 from Toronto.
At 3:15 sec he says "f'in white people". I personally believe that another passenger somehow provoked or encouraged this persons paranoid behaviour.
What is important is that everybody arrived safely.
I am no medical doctor so I have no idea what this man was going through, but I feel that he seemed more concerned for his own safety? I think he was scared. I think it's a very fascinating phenomenon.
My partner and I decided we should videotape this in the interest of sharing the experience we went through on this plane with those interested.