Atlas Shrugs

PALESTINIAN WEEK ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES: EMORY - MODERN DAY POGRAMS

"Palestinian Week" The historical lie manufactured by the brutal terror master Yaser Arafat,  systematically  used to beat the Jews about the head, is spinning out of control. "Palestinian Week" is a rotating band of goons disgorging hate, thuggery, intimidation and terror. It is sponsored by Muslim Students Association (MSA), a key lobbying organization for the Wahhabi sect of Islam, with a network of over 200 chapters on college campuses. Founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, MSA was named in a May 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum as one of the Brotherhood's likeminded "organizations of our friends"[1] who shared the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation.

I am well aware of the this rampant anti-semitism activity at notorious college campuses like UC, but Emory?
 

This from a  "huge fan and avid reader of your blog":

I wanted to share with you something that came across my e-mail box today. I am a brother of AEPi Zeta (Georgia Tech ME, Class '07). I have received the following:

Dear Brothers,

On Saturday night while our entire chapter was out of town at their Fall Formal the house (university owned) was attacked by a Molotov cocktail and set on fire. Luckily passerby's saw it and quickly called the fire department. The damage was confined to a relatively small area of the front door and front porch. There is smoke damage in the house but it's livable.

Last week was very tension filled at Emory with "Palestinian Week" and it culminated on Friday with a mock fence set up degrading Israel's security fence. Tensions were high all week but the week ended and we thought that it was over. Unfortunately, the chapter was called back from their out of town formal to find the fire and it's remnants.

We have all been in touch with the university president, Greek Life people and security personnel. The undergrads are very shaken by this incident. Luckily we have excellent leadership and we have arranged for security for the next few nights as well until things calm down. Our Epsilon Chapter is the largest on campus and very identified as Jewish. The group numbers more than 100 men and they are not a squeamish bunch by any means.

These "Palestinian Weeks" go from campus to campus across North America - about a half dozen or so a year and cause a varied amount of havoc in their wake. We've seen much worse than this in California and Canada but it's scary certainly anywhere it happens. These groups are sponsored and funded by the MSA "Muslim Student Association" and you can probably guess where their funding comes from.

We had another scare tonight at 7:00 PM at Emory and the police emptied our house. An unidentified book bag was on the porch and the bomb squad was called in. It turned out to be nothing but made the kids even more nervous. I am speaking with them every couple of hours and after the early evening scare all is quiet now.  Although this is a university building and I believe they are doing all they can,  I expect the phone to start ringing tomorrow morning from parents. We will do our best to assure them that it's calming down.

Also, in the student newspaper was published the cartoon above.

Here is an article about it, and a request for an apology from the newspaper

In Friday’s Wheel there was a disturbing cartoon directly comparing the Nazi ghettoes with the separation fence the Israelis have erected on the West Bank. This equation is historically spurious and highly prejudicial. The Germans put Jews from throughout Europe in ghettoes to either die a slow death of starvation, deprivation and disease or a faster death with a bullet or poison gas.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, it left behind fertile farms, hothouses filled with advanced hydroponic systems for growing vegetables, and other installations which could have been used to better the Palestinians’ lot. Most were destroyed by the Palestinian people. International funds were raised to help the residents of Gaza. These too have resulted in little improvement. Meanwhile, rockets from Gaza continue to be fired into Israeli towns. A barrage Saturday put 18 people in the hospital. In response, Israel has shut the border between Gaza and Israel, further increasing the suffering of the residents of Gaza.

There is a serious problem in the Middle East but Woodliff’s glib comparison of Jews to Nazis is not only ill-informed, it demonstrates a certain prejudice — antisemitism — which will never help resolve the situation. Whatever one thinks of Israeli policy, to describe it as akin to the Nazi policy of murdering all of European Jewry is to engage in antisemitism and a form of Holocaust denial.

Finally, I was struck by the explanatory note the Woodliff appended to the drawing. No editorial cartoon should need an explanation or an addendum. If the cartoonist is any good, his work should speak for itself. With that I rest my case.

And this from the faculty - a responsible faculty, thank G-d. The professors at Duke could learn a thing or two.

CHUCK SCHUMER: FREE SPEECH = PORNOGRAPHY

This parasite must go. Schumer must be targeted in 2010. How can we make this happen?  Email me any and all ideas. I consider it a righteous goal to spare my state, my country, and my fellow Jews (remember how he helped to undermine Israel's great friend John Bolton) from this evil hack.  I have a friend who worked in his office years ago in Brooklyn when he would pretend to be religious to con the orthodox in the nabe. The man is scum.

Who is with me? Who will help me rid the state of Schumer? Who can we run who will win?

WATCH THIS VIDEO ON SCHUMER PROJECTILE VOMITING THE SPIN ON THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

UPDATE: SCHUMER MUST GO. Van reminded me of Schumer's role in the financial meltdown:

Schumer Caused Banking Crisis, Not O.T.S. Posted by Hans Bader

Senator Charles Schumer recently triggered a massive bank failure by publicizing a letter claiming IndyMac Bank was on the verge of collapse.  That caused a run on the bank by its panic-stricken depositors.  (Taxpayers may end up paying up to $8 billion to bail out the bank).  He's been criticized for that by many, including the Wall Street Journal.

Schumer, target number 1. I will not stop until he is thrown out on his corrupt, decayed ass.

ATLAS RADIO: FLT 93 ISLAMIC MEMORIAL & SAUDI HATE SCHOOL

"I am against this memorial. This is not your memorial. This doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the American people". Tom Burnett

Crescent of Betrayl - get involved! ATLAS ON THE AIR: Today's show at noon will be kicking the ass of the quiet jihad in America. For Atlas readers that want to make a difference and fight the creeping sharia in America tune in. The first half  of the show will discuss the Flight 93 Memorial that is an homage to Islam.  I will have Tom Burnett Sr. , father of  the great American hero Tom Burnett who led the charge to wrest control away from the Muslims that hijacked Flight 93 and attempted to fly it into the White House or Capital Building (check out  Tom Burnett Family Foundation) and the great public advocate Alec Rawls, of Error Theory.

Outrage over this clear Islamic symbolism forced the Memorial Project to agree to make changes, but all they did was slightly disguise the giant crescent. It is still described as a “broken circle,” and the unbroken part of the circle (the crescent) remains exactly as it was.

Call-in Number: (347) 996-3944

Today we will discuss this Islamic Crescent memorial.

Rawls's  training is as an economist. He was writing a book on republicanism (the system of liberty under law)  when he was discovered that the Flight 93 memorial was going to be a terrorist memorial mosque. World Ahead agreed to first publish my book about this rehijacking of  Flight 93 (Crescent of Betrayal, temporarily available for free download at CrescentOfBetrayal.com).

His  position is simple: The planned Flight 93 Memorial is a terrorist memorial mosque. Not only does the giant crescent point to Mecca, but architect Paul Murdoch proves that this orientation is intentional by repeating it in the crescents of trees that surround the Tower of Voices part of the memorial. (Repeated Mecca-orientations demonstrated in this animation). We hosted an open design competition in time of war and literally invited the whole world to enter. Of course we should have expected that the enemy would enter, and try to win a memorial to their heroes instead of ours. Much harder to understand is the willful blindness of those who are charged with the memorialization of Flight 93, which is supposed to be the symbol of our woken vigilance.

    Every place where the terrorists are memorialized in the crescent design, they are placed in the symbolic Islamic heavens (the crescent and star parts of the design). Every place where the 40 heroes are memorialized, they are depicted as symbolically damned, cast out of the symbolic Islamic heavens. One example is in the Tower of Voices, where an Islamic shaped crescent soars in the sky above forty symbolic souls that literally dangle below:               

    Forty symbolic souls, never to rest in peace, gonging for eternity in their symbolic damnation, strung like fish as they hang down from the symbolic Islamic heavens projected in the sky above. Is the Memorial Project trying to start a riot? (Click pic for larger image.)

Previous Atlas coverage on this Islamic Crescent Memorial here.

SAUDI ISLAMIC ACADEMY: The second half of the show I will host  John Cosgrove, Virginia Chapter Director United American Committee. who has led the charge against the jihad teaching Saudi Hate school and this week's stunning victory by concerned Americans.

The UAC regrets that it took the arrest of the ISA Director General, another government report, and a protest to convince the BoS to finally take action and heed the warnings of the USCIRF reports that BoS Chairman Gerry Connolly called TVC member Jim Lafferty slanderous for citing.

This is the Islamic academy in North Virgina that was teaching jihad, Jew hatred, and Islamic supremacy. Cited numerous times, the school promised to revise their textbooks - and they attempted to, with white out.

US GOVT AIDS ABETS CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE COVER UP IN ISLAMIC JIHAD ACADEMY

MURDER TEACHING ISLAMIC SCHOOL DIRECTOR ARRESTED - CHILD MOLESTATION

US JIHAD SCHOOL OK AFTER PROMISE TO REVISE TEXTBOOKS

Small Victory IN SAUDI JIHAD HATE SCHOOL

UPDATE:Robert spencer has this BREAKING NEWS:

Virginia Islamic Academy had its corporate charter revoked and never filled out IRS forms Surprise, surprise. But will their Saudi connection bail them out? I would guess that it probably will. "Virginia’s Islamic Academy on Shaky Legal Ground," by Patrick Poole for Pajamas Media, June 27:

An investigation by Pajamas Media has found that more trouble may be on the horizon for the Islamic Saudi Academy and the Saudi Embassy.
PJM first reported on the academy, a school sponsored by the Saudi Embassy, two weeks ago when law enforcement authorities raided it, looking for evidence that the school’s director, Abdullah Al-Shabnan, had covered up sex abuse allegations by a 5-year old student. The raid occurred just three days after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors had renewed the school’s lease despite evidence that the school continued to use textbooks promoting violence and religious hatred.

Since then Abdullah Al-Shabnan has been charged with failing to report the child abuse allegations and obstruction of justice. A protest was held last week in front of the academy and it received considerable local media coverage, including from the Washington Post. That coverage no doubt played a role earlier this week when in a stunning about-face the Fairfax Board of Supervisors sent a letter to the State Department asking them to determine whether the lease should be renewed or not in light of the report earlier this month by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) that reviewed the academy’s textbooks and found that incendiary and hateful passages had not been removed.

The school has issued a press release claiming that the passages have been “mistranslated and misinterpreted,” and saying that the “textbooks are no longer at use at the Academy.” That contradicts statements made last week by school officials to the media that textbooks will be rewritten and reissued before the beginning of school. Why would the textbooks need to be rewritten if those under scrutiny are no longer in use?

The textbooks are not the only elements of the school that don’t hold up under scrutiny.

Virtually all of the establishment media press reports have wrongly claimed that the school operates independently of the embassy as a private entity. Even Tom Casey, the State Department’s deputy spokesman, made this error during his June 24 daily press briefing:

QUESTION: I understand that you’ve received a letter from the — from Fairfax County asking you whether you could give an opinion on the lease of the Saudi school in Alexandria and whether the county should extend that lease, which I am told it’s worth $2.2 million a year. But — just, I mean, do you expect to pronounce yourselves on that? Is that something that you –

MR. CASEY: Well, I think it’s something we’ve just gotten. We’ll certainly take a look at it and see what kind of response would be appropriate, but I — you know, it’s not something we’ve had a chance to really look through. As you know, this is a school that is incorporated and overseen through the county there. It’s not an institution that we have any sort of formal role in accrediting or managing. But certainly, we’ll take a look at the letter and if there’s some thoughts or advice that we can offer, we’ll certainly do it.

And State Department spokesman Nichole Thompson has also said:

This is a private school. It is not a part of the Saudi embassy. It is not part of a diplomatic mission.

These claims by State Department officials make clear their position that the Islamic Saudi Academy has maintained a separate corporate identity from the Saudi Embassy. But a review of the corporate records on file with the Virginia State Corporation Commission finds that the Islamic Saudi Academy’s corporate charter was terminated by the state on December 27, 2004. There is no indication from state records that the incorporation has been revived or renewed, and the last corporate report the school has filed with the state of Virginia that we could find was 2004 — the same year its corporate charter was terminated. A check of corporations in neighboring District of Columbia and Maryland found nothing for the academy.

Shocked? Don't be. Why should they have to obey kaffir laws?

 

 

Bin Laden's Right Hand at Center of Al Qaeda in UK Receives $100K in Benefits

Atlas caption: "mmmmm me belly full with taxpayer $$$. lets kill infidels, but first me jiyza. where's me jiyza? mmmm belly rub. (belch) me hungry, roasted Jew please"

Abu Qatada, Bin Laden's right hand man at the centre of al Qaeda's activities in the UK will be given  benefits upwards of 16k a year. The radical Islamist preacher should never have been  released from jail earlier this week.

Hey Merry ole England, open mouth, INSERT GUN.

Muslim extremist Abu Qatada to receive £8,000 incapacity benefits a year - for his bad back Mail Online hat tip Kasper

Fanatical cleric Abu Qatada is to receive almost £8,000 a year in benefits because he has a bad back.

The suspected Al Qaeda leader, described as Osama bin Laden's ambassador in Europe, will get £150 a week of taxpayer's cash after being released from jail last week.

Astonishingly, he was granted the incapacity benefit because his back condition makes him unfit to work, even though he is only allowed out of his home for two hours a day, meaning it would be almost impossible for him to get a job.

UPDATE: Gateway has the breakdown of the £50,000 in welfare benefits. The whole family is scamming the system

 

What took so damn long?

I am glad the panel upheld it --- why was it even a question. It is not lost on me that while we are still prosecuting the war criminals from the last holocaust, the prepations for the next holocaust are well underway.

U.S. panel upholds deportation of Nazi guard Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals panel has upheld an order to deport an 83-year-old Wisconsin man accused of serving as a Nazi SS guard whose duty was to finish off dying Jews in a two-day mass execution in Poland that killed more than 40,000, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.

Josias Kumpf participated in a 1943 Nazi operation that resulted in the murder of thousands of innocent victims. His culpability in this atrocity does not diminish with the passage of time," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich.

The department said Kumpf had admitted to participating in what the Nazis called "Operation Harvest Festival" in November 1943. About 42,000 Jews were killed over two days in the mass execution at three prison camps in German-occupied Poland.

Kumpf, who had joined the Nazi SS Death's Head guard in 1942, was serving at the Trawniki slave-labor camp at the time of the massacres, the department said.

"Kumpf stood guard as approximately 8,000 Jewish prisoners, including approximately 400 children, were shot and killed in pits at Trawniki," the department said. "According to Kumpf, his assignment was to watch for victims who were still 'halfway alive' or 'convulsing.' If any of the prisoners attempted to escape, he stated, his job was to 'shoot them to kill."'

The massacre was "one of the most infamous crimes of the Holocaust," said Eli Rosenbaum, head of the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations.

The Justice Department said Kumpf had immigrated to the United States from Austria in 1956 and became a U.S. citizen in 1964. The special investigations office and the U.S. attorney for eastern Wisconsin sued in 2003 to strip Kumpf of his citizenship and won the case in 2005.

"Josias Kumpf participated in a 1943 Nazi operation that resulted in the murder of thousands of innocent victims. His culpability in this atrocity does not diminish with the passage of time," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich.

UPDATE: Austria, OTOH, is still choking on its own Jew hate. Freakin Nazis ........Suspected Nazi war criminal, 95, found relaxing with football fans at Euro 2008

'Wanted Nazi' at Euro 2008 will not be extradited Times Online hat tip wolf

Austrian authorities have defended their decision not to extradite a wanted Nazi war criminal who was spotted supporting his national team at the European Football Championships.

Milivoj Asner, a Croatian citizen wanted for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during World War Two in Croatia, is number four on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre list of most wanted surviving Nazi criminals.

Croatia has repeatedly demanded his extradition in order to put him on trial, but Austrian authorities have refused to hand him over, after court experts determined that he was suffering from Alzheimer Disease and old age dementia.

Mr Asner, 95, however, has been spotted in the company of his wife Edeltraut during a leisurely walk though the southern Austrian town of Klagenfurt, where the couple reside, and was filmed drinking wine and mingling with Croatian football fans.

However, officials at the Austrian Justice Ministry told The Times that they stood by their decision not to extradite Ms Asner, as he had been declared unfit to stand trial by medical experts on two separate occasions.

May they all rot in hell. And the Nazi murderer deserves a bullet right between the eyes.

Evil takes a Roman Holiday

Show me your friends - this is priceless

Barbarians of a feather, rot together

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith called Mugabe's presence in Rome "obscene". Britain also criticised Mugabe's rare foray out of Zimbabwe where he is fighting for his political future in an election runoff.     

"This is the person who has presided over the starvation of his people. This is the person who has used food aid in a politically motivated way," Smith said.     

"So Robert Mugabe turning up to a conference dealing with food security or food issues is, in my view, frankly obscene," added the Australian minister, who is also to attend the Food and Agriculture Organization summit.
[...]
There were also protests in Italy by activists, leftist politicians and Jewish groups against Mugabe and Ahmadinejad.    

"It is in no way legitimate for the people of Zimbabwe to be represented by a head of state who has been disowned by the international community and who is unwanted by his own people," Sergio Marelli, Italian host of a forum on food sovereignty coinciding with the summit, told AFP.     

"We are against all dictatorships," Radical Party spokeswoman Anita Friedman told AFP.     

Zimbabwe faces acute food shortages after land reforms and the collapse of the farming sector.     

The 84-year-old president is subject to a travel ban to the European Union because of sanctions imposed after he allegedly rigged his re-election in 2002, but is able to attend UN forums.     

Ahmadinejad's presence at the summit "addressing the tragedy of hunger in the world symbolises the devastating contradiction between the violence of totalitarian governments and their demogogic statements," demonstration organisers said in a statement.     

[..]

"For nearly 30 years, the rulers in Tehran have negated the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, women, gays, student associations and anyone who does not agree with the regime's policies," the statement said.  (more here)

Meanwhile, the poison dwarf, yet again, threatened the tiny Jewish state with annihilation:

Iran's president took yet another swipe at Israel and the U.S. today claiming the former "would soon disappear off the map" while he branded the latter a "satanic power" which faced destruction.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke out at a gathering of foreign guests marking this week's 19th anniversary of the death of Iran's late revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

He said: "You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene."

Turning to the United States, he added that the era of decline and destruction of its "satanic power" had begun. He said: "The bell on the countdown of the destruction of the empire of power and wealth has begun to ring."

Disgraceful: Passing Motion 25

When I spoke to Caroline Glick about the impending motion in the UK against Jews in academia she said,

"I think it’s important to understand, that you know, these calls for boycotts of Israeli universities and academics are seasonal propaganda initiatives that try to demonize Israel, you know, every spring or every fall, or whatever. But it’s important to understand that there is an academic boycott of Israeli institutions by British universities; it’s been going on for several years and whether it’s institutionalized in a vote or not the fact of the matter is that, university departments and professors in Britain and publications systematically boycott their Israeli counterparts. And I think, you know, that it’s important to realize that it’s already happening it’s not a “are they going to decide boycott Israel or not?”. They are boycotting Israel; it’s just a question of how often they want to bring it up.
[...]
Because in addition to the fact that they are already boycotting Israeli academics and institutions, they are using it not just quietly and saying “we prefer not to deal with Jews” but they are doing it in a way that gives them constant propaganda initiatives and campaigning items. Because they pretend that they are not doing it but they are because they have embraced this anti-Semitic ideology which they call anti-Zionism and they use it in their everyday lives that’s how prevalent it is in British culture today and that’s why Britain is such a problem".

Well today motion 25 passed ..... from the Normblog hat tip Mara

Passing Motion 25 (by Eve Garrard)

Yesterday I attended the University and College Union's annual congress, where a motion encouraging a boycott of Israel was debated. The union leadership were at great pains to say this wasn't a boycott motion, and it's true that the motion didn't use the word 'boycott': but it called on members to consider the moral and political implications of collaborating with Israeli academics; it asked them to discuss the occupation with those colleagues; it claimed that most Israeli academics are 'complicit' in the conflict; it mentioned that criticism of Israel isn't anti-Semitic 'as such', while ignoring the fact that the proposed measures are not a matter of criticism but of ostracism and punishment; and it raised the question of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions. Legal advice on this motion, taken by the Jewish community's Stop the Boycott campaign, has said that it amounts to a call to discuss a boycott of Israeli academics which risks violating the Race Relations Act, and the General Secretary implicitly acknowledged this when she said that the union would implement matters within the law. So it looked to me, and to all the other anti-boycotters I spoke to, exactly like a motion encouraging people to consider a boycott.

Motion 25 was passed, by a huge majority. There was a real, palpable desire in the meeting to take some action against Israel. An otherwise rather somnolent audience woke up at the first mention of Palestine, and applauded every suggestion that action should be taken against Israel. A congress which had just passed very moderate motions on Burma and Zimbabwe and Sudan, about solidarity with trade unions and asylum seekers, and putting pressure on governments, quite clearly felt that these measures weren't sufficient for Israel's crimes: that for Israeli academics, nothing but punishment would do.

At first the discussion was procedurally unexceptionable - both sides of a debate were permitted on an amendment which called, among other things, for the motion to be put to a ballot of the whole membership. This amendment was voted on and rejected - the majority of union delegates didn't want to give the membership of the union the opportunity to choose for themselves on this issue. But when Motion 25 itself was proposed and seconded, several delegates spoke in favour of it - and then it was moved that it be put to the vote. None of the people who wanted to speak directly against the motion were permitted to do so. However, the motion's proposer, Tom Hickey, was at this point allowed by the Chair to speak in favour of it again. No explanation or justification was provided for halting the debate before anyone could speak against the motion, while allowing its proposer to speak twice. I have to say, though, that in my opinion even if the debate had been conducted in an impeccably proper manner, it would have made very little difference: that audience really did want to vote against Israel.

This measure will discriminate against Israeli academics, and will impinge quite disproportionately on Jewish academics here in the UK. Most of them do not support any academic boycott against Israel, nor the de-legitimization of Jewish nationalism and of Israel's existence; and many of them want to work in collaboration with Israeli colleagues. Whether or not the procedures mandated by the motion are actually implemented is a matter on which the union executive will decide, but in some ways the damage is already done - the vote has normalized discrimination, the union leadership has made no effort to address, or to get Congress to address, the relevance and implications of anti-discrimination law in the UK, and if the policy isn't ultimately implemented the membership will be encouraged to think that some inappropriate force has pressured the union to drop it. So whatever now happens, the motion's supporters have achieved one thing: they have exacerbated the sense of isolation and alienation in the union felt by those who, even though they may strongly criticize some of Israel's policies and practices, sympathize with her often terrible problems, see the need for her existence, and wish her well. Their sense that the union is not a friendly environment, that it is ultimately a hostile place for people like them, will have materially increased as a result of today's activities by their union colleagues.

Because motion 25 was passed, I now belong to a union which is trying to discriminate against those of its Jewish members who don't think it's right to single the Jewish state out for punishment over and above far worse polities, or that it's right to hold it, and it alone, wholly responsible for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I spent yesterday afternoon sitting in a room with a large group of otherwise unobjectionable people, knowing that the great majority of them want in practice to discriminate against their Jewish colleagues. It wasn't a pleasant experience. (Eve Garrard)

In a Morally Ill World...Nazis -- Allies What's the diff"?

The sickness of the left. Crying about bad behavior during a war to save mankind. Bad manners during war? I think not. The objective is to win. But don't let that stand in the way of the new narrative being designed to poison the collective young mind. Clearly, academia has softened and corrupted  the brains of our youth, these new lies won't be hard to take root.

No wonder Churchill ha such a hard time, this was the asshattery of his time as well.

It's this type of absurd 'moral' relativism that's holding back the West from fighting our enemies now. To even pose this query in regard to the Allies vs. Nazis at this point in time, is even more pathetic and an insult to the vets as well as the survivors...  (hat tip wolf)

We are losing our power to reason, the very power to think.

Were we any better than the Nazis?

Sam Leith on Nicholson Baker's new account of World War 2

In July 1940, Hitler issued what Nicholson Baker calls ‘a final appeal to reason’. ‘The continuation of this war,’ he said in a speech, ‘will only end with the complete destruction of one of the two warring parties . . . I see no reason that should compel us to continue this war.’

‘It’s too tantalising, since there’s no shadow of a doubt we will reject any such suggestion,’ Frances Partridge wrote in her diary afterwards, adding the savagely deflating rider: ‘Now I suppose Churchill will again tell the world that we are going to die on the hills and on the seas, and then we shall proceed to do so.’

If this fascinating and upsetting book is the story of anything, it is above all the story of Winston Churchill telling the world that we are going to die on the hills and on the seas, and of people then doing so — and dying, too, in the forests and in the valleys, the ghettos and in the cities, in the air and in tunnels under the ground.

[...]

Since Winston Churchill is still widely regarded as the man without whose doughty stand against Nazi Evil we would all be speaking German, he is Baker’s biggest target. And, boy, does he go to town. The Churchill presented here is infantile, capricious, egomaniacal and sybaritic — a ruthless militarist excited by war, careless of the lives of his own and enemy civilians alike, and intoxicated by his own rhetoric. ‘His real tyrant is the glittering phrase,’ the Australian Prime Minister noted, ‘so attractive to his mind that awkward facts may have to give way.’

[...]

The standard squawk of protest will be that Baker is indulging the unforgivable sin of ‘moral equivalence’. I don’t think he is — though he wades in exceptionally deep waters. He is indulging, we can say, in ‘moral comparison’. He is interested above all in trying to find a way to step to one side of the endless rhetorical circles by which ends justify means, and the means of the other side justify making your means your ends. He is interested in the self-affirming pathology of violence, and in the ways that a war, waged by all means deemed necessary by its leaders, became on both sides a racist war of extermination.

Beyond any doubt, there were crazed symmetries, because both sides believed that the answer to violence was more violence. Canting references to ‘peace-loving’ nations driven to take up arms by intolerable aggression were belied by the bloodthirsty reality. ‘Peace offensive’ is a term used with great pungency here; as is talk of the ‘moral effect’ on civilians of indiscriminate bombing. The one common enemy Churchill and Hitler had were people who didn’t want to kill at all. Pacifists and humanitarians were regarded on both sides as a pernicious threat — to be suppressed in print and interned in person.

The two chief evils Human Smoke addresses in most detail are both things that the Allies took the lead on: bombardment and blockade. Both were methods of war aimed at civilians. Both caused incredible suffering. Both were sold on a series of lies. Both did not work. The response in both cases was to step them up.

As refugees and civilian populations in Belgium, Poland, Norway and Holland faced starvation, Churchill refused to let food relief through the blockade. He told Parliament that fats would be used by the enemy to make bombs, potatoes used to make fuel, and that — less plausibly — ‘the plastic materials now so largely used in the construction of aircraft are made of milk’.

UPDATE: Read Phyllis Chesler: What in the World is Wrong with the World?

Even Islamic Jihad Savages Think Dhimmi Carter is Disgusting

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (even worse than Hams) refused to take a meeting with  scumbag Carter no matter how hard he begged. Ugh. What an embarrassment this  morally depraved hater of Jews  is for  our great nation.

Islamic Jihad: We Refused Carter’s Request for a Meeting Eric Trager, Commentary Magazine

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has announced that its leadership has refused former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s request for a meeting. According to PIJ’s QudsNews website, Egyptian authorities contacted PIJ Secretary-General Dr. Ramadan Shallah on Carter’s behalf earlier this week, inviting Shallah to meet with Carter in Cairo. Shallah is listed on the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, and the reward for information leading to his apprehension is $5 million. In turning down the request, Shallah declared that Carter is “carrying an American-Israeli agenda,” while PIJ spokesman Daoud Shahab blasted Carter’s criticism of Palestinian rocket attacks during the former president’s visit to Sderot. E-mails and phone calls to the Carter Center press office seeking confirmation of Carter’s outreach to PIJ have not been returned.

This news should finally shatter Carter’s credibility as a peacemaker. Of course, Carter’s decision to meet Hamas leader Khalid Meshal had already sullied his Nobel reputation, with his posse of former laureates canceling their plans to visit the Middle East with him in response. Earlier today, Carter’s credibility sank even further, when CNN reported that Mahmoud al-Zahar and Said Seyam-two of Hamas’ most radical leaders-would convene with Carter in Cairo.

Yet Carter’s attempt to meet with PIJ is his most disturbing gambit to date. After all, PIJ is generally considered even more extreme than Hamas. While PIJ shares many of Hamas’ militant features–including its coordination of terrorist activities, calls for Israel’s destruction, and theocratic aims–PIJ lacks Hamas’ social and political significance. It does not have the social welfare network on which Hamas has built its popularity, while PIJ’s refusal to participate in the 2006 parliamentary elections points to its minimal public authority among Palestinians. Carter is therefore unable to argue that PIJ is somehow central to any Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which is the very argument he has used to defend his meetings with Hamas officials.

Ultimately, one is left to wonder when Carter’s constant efforts to outdo his own moral stupidity will end.

PELOSI PERFIDY PLANNED US DEFEAT

Andy sent me this EXPLOSIVE story: The Speaker of the House, California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, lead an entourage to hold talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, with intentions of undermine our military operations inside Iraq, and members of that entourage met with members of the PKK (The Kurdistan Workers' Party), an affiliated terrorist organization, namely PJAK (An arm of the PKK who were tasked with handling the battle within Iraq.) leader Rahman Haji Ahmadi, and everybody in the know was too scared to go public with it.

Remember that trip last spring by Pelosi (in the hijab no less) and 7 members of congress to Syria?...and remember how after their trip the PKK started their incursions into Turkey and the Turks moved troops on the border and tensions between the PKK and the Turks suddenly seemed to escalate?...leading some on the right to imagine the speaker of the house trying to cut off the supply line to our troops in Iraq so that we will loose the war...there was much speculation about the Speaker having a hand in this?...and remember the "intense" diplomacy between Sec. Rice and the Turks? Eventually things got under control, but for a time it looked uncertain. This seemed like the perfect coup by the liberal democrats to sabotage the war effort by cutting off our supply lines running through Turkey. But there was nothing to verify any of this except mere speculation and a healthy dose cynicism. Until this morning. Well, sorta.

Andy (who sent me all this data)  was listening to talk radio when the host Jim Quinn of The Quinn & Rose Show mentioned for the second day in a row the aforementioned topic of the Pelosi trip. The reason he was talking about this a year removed was because the topic came up about how the democrats killed the free trade deal with Columbia, effectively siding with the narco terrorist group FARC, and Thug Hugo Chavez. Which made him revisit the Pelosi/Syria trip once again. That was yesterdays show.

Today he informed his listeners that someone in Washington was listening in to yesterdays show and heard him talking about the Pelosi trip, and that that DC listener had sent an email to someone he [Quinn] calls "son of deep throat" telling him that he was exactly right about someone from Pelosi's delegation meeting with members of the PKK. He said the letter went on to explain that it wasn't Pelosi who met with them. It was the late Tom Lantos, and Louise Slaughter (D) NY who met with the PKK members. This is a rough transcript.

Certain members of Pelosi's 7 representative delegation to Syria last spring met with officers of the PKK an affiliated terrorist organization...this is not an assumption...this is something that several republican congressmen know with 100% certainty, but they can't come  forward with it because they need to protect sources and methods...It was not Pelosi who originally had the meeting with the PKK, nor was it Henry Waxman or the original Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison...It was Tom Lantos and Louise Slaughter democrat from New York who had the actual meeting with Haji Amadi, the leader of the PJAK, which is an arm of the PKK who were tasked with handling the battle within Iraq, and other PKK and KCK officers. He said that one PKK officer Marrett Kereillin(sp)  has even bragged on  this and other meetings in interviews in English and Arabic and Farci language publications. This is all the source could and likely will say...He feels if we continue to talk about it the story could break in the national media...the possibility of some Kurd or even a PKK member or a sister terrorist organization might be willing to discuss what they know or one of the intelligent sources, French, US, Israeli, Iraqi, who already are aware of the meeting will finally see the need to leak it...or even a democratic staffer will come forward with the facts... If this is true we have a bunch of people in the congress of the United States who have committed treason...they have actually consorted with the enemy to create a situation that cuts off the   supply line to an American military operation...Tom Lantos is dead Louise Slaughter is still alive...If this is true...this is enormous...it's so big the average American can't even get their head around the idea that the speaker of the house would lead an entourage to try to undermined a military operation and put our people in danger.

Anybody out there know more. Give it up - CONFIDENTIALITY GUARANTEED.

Remember my interview with Sandmonkey right after Pelosi left?

SANDMONKEY: Let me tell you something. I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago and I met a couple of Syrian activists. They one thing they told me that was really funny about the Pelosi visit. After Pelosi came to Syria two things happened. People on Syrian TV were saying, "We forced the Americans to knock on the Damascus gate!" Sort of like an admission that we messed things up in Iraq so much that America had to come and beg for their help.

But the day after Pelosi's visits there were immediate arrests of Syrian activists. That was the fruit she yielded. "Oh the Americans came over and they said they have a different foreign policy  and they're more interested in placating Bashar's ego." And he went out and got [arrested] everyone he wanted because he knew he had an ally in Washington that wouldn't pressure him as much.

UPDATE: More on Pelosi aiding FARC at Fausta's hat tip Larwyn

A dark day in history: Nancy hands out 'the Chavez Rule'

UPDATED

Wednesday night I wrote an article for Pajamas Media explaining the consequences if Nancy Pelosi delayed a vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Yesterday Pelosi, who I now consider an enemy of America, changed the voting timeline rule on trade pacts from 90 days to whenever.

This is the first time in history that Congress failed to approve a major trade pact.

Monica Showalter of Investor's Business Daily yesterday afternoon describes why this is an evil move (yes, I am choosing my words carefully - it is an evil thing Pelosi has done). I post the editorial in its entirety (emphasis added):

Pelosi's War
Congress: The cowardly start more wars than the courageous. Nancy Pelosi's craven altering of House rules to kill off Colombia's trade pact brings that danger to the Andes. If war breaks out, her name will be on it.

April 10 may end up as a date which will live in infamy. The Speaker of the House not only refused to step forward and be counted on approving the vital Colombia free-trade agreement, she ran away from letting anyone else vote on it.

After President Bush submitted the pact to a vote under fast-track rules, she changed them to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon. By a 224-195 House vote, the voting timeline rule on trade pacts was changed from 90 days to whenever. Pelosi now can hold up Colombia's treaty however long her caprice dictates.

"The message Democrats sent today," a bitter Bush warned after Thursday's vote, "is that no matter how steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient."

Pelosi's move leaves Colombia, an ally, in limbo and uncertainty. She may think her clever maneuver was done in a vacuum, but it wasn't. In Venezuela's capital of Caracas, where Hugo Chavezfla-bank-meeting-to-focus-on-biofuels Apr-3-2008 holds forth, and in the jungles of Colombia, where drug terrorists hide out, Pelosi's move was watched closely.

Indeed, within hours of the vote, Latin American media already were calling Pelosi's maneuver the "Chavez Rule."

The Venezuelan dictator is no doubt fascinated at how Pelosi could do this to America's best ally in Latin America, punishing a vibrant democracy by isolating it from all the other nations that have sought and won free trade.

Unlike, say, military aid, this deal costs the U.S. nothing, is too small to have much impact on the U.S. economy and is mainly about ending tariffs on U.S. goods sold in Colombia, matching the no-tariff trade that Colombian firms already get here.

Free trade was what Chavez's enemy, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, considered his best weapon. And Pelosi knocked it right out of his hand, just to placate her party's union supporters .

Only a month ago, Chavez sent 10 tank divisions to the Colombian border after Colombia's army blew away a FARC terrorist kingpin. He warned he would bring war inside Colombia.

Encircled by tanks not only in the East by Venezuela but also in the South by Chavez's cat's paw, Ecuador, Colombia asked the U.S. for just one thing: to pass the free-trade agreement. No tanks. No jets. Just free trade.

Now without it, Chavez might be emboldened to strike. After all, he'll hear from congressional sources that Pelosi probably won't bring up a vote on the trade pact for at least several months. He'll use that time to pick fights with its now-forsaken neighbor. The fact that Colombia can't get even a trade pact tells him all he needs to know about American commitment.

So even though the pact was not rejected outright, its absence will be inherently destabilizing. There's nothing Chavez or his FARC allies dread more than Colombia armed with trade rights that will boost its economy beyond the allure of Chavista populist promises.

At Argentina's 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Chavez made his enmity toward free trade known by hurling insults at the president of Mexico and vowing to "bury" free trade.

Now, thanks to Pelosi's bid to shunt Colombia off to trade limbo, the potential for war in a tinderbox Andean region â€" over any border incident or FARC terrorist attack â€" has been heightened.

The world and its dictators don't sleep. The cowardly number that Pelosi did on Colombia likely will prevent the soft power of free trade from working, instead opening the gates to the hard power of war â€" and pulling in the U.S. whether Pelosi likes it or not. If so, we'll have the her to thank.

Nancy Pelosi has covered herself in a cloak of shame and infamy. Unfortunately for us, everybody in the hemisphere will have to pay the consequences.

The message Pelosi has sent the world is that in America, the only superpower in the world, political squabbles take precedence over security interests.

I expect she'll be paying Hugo a visit soon.

UPDATE
Drop Dead, Colombia
Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocks a trade deal with America's closest South American ally

UPDATE: The Freeps are on it.

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