DENYING THE OBVIOUS ABOUT ISLAM

Shoebat begins by explaining his frustrations with Westerners who consistently misunderstand the nature of the Islamists: "Ever since I left radical Islam, I have consistently run into Westerners who are oblivious to the mind-set of radical Islamists, and being on both sides of the fence, I have felt like I am Captain Spock of Star Trek - always having to explain to Captain Kirk how the aliens thought. Yet the first problem I encountered when speaking to Westerners is that they always think that the Muslim world has the same aspirations as they do, seeking liberty, equality, modernisation, democracy, and the good life."...

Trifkovic argues that much of the media, and many of our leaders, are still trying to act as apologists for Islam: "That consensus, as we see in the opening clips of Blair, Bush and Clinton, rests upon the implacable dogma that there is something called 'real Islam' (peaceful, tolerant and as American as apple pie), and then there is 'extremism' that is an aberrant and unrepresentative deviation of Muhammad's faith. (Blair's assurances that the 9-11 attackers were not 'Islamic terrorists' but 'terrorists plain and simple' would have been on par with U.S. President Roosevelt declaring, after Pearl Harbor, that the attackers were not 'Japanese airmen', but 'airmen' plain and simple.)"

Radical Islamists may in fact simply be acting in accord with their own Islamic faith and tradition. But many Western classrooms downplay the numerous violent and unpleasant aspects of Islamic history. "The upholders of the mindset that promotes and mandates such rubbish in our classrooms will naturally treat the truth about Islam as inadmissible, and that's why What the West Needs to Know will be ignored by them. They dominate the entertainment industry - just look at Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, which conveyed the message that, in a conflict between Christians and Muslims, the former attack, the latter react. The true hero of the movie is Saladin, a wise warrior-king sans peur et sans reproche; its villains, the coarse and bloodthirsty Europeans."

Spencer concurs, saying: "The free world is under assault everywhere from the forces of jihad, working from the teachings of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and notably the words and deeds of Muhammad. Yet in America and the West, taking note of these rather obvious facts only brings one opprobrium, if the chattering classes deign to take notice at all: one is compelled in the mainstream of public discourse to deny the obvious. Everyone is busy tossing away common sense, reason, and basic powers of observation."

Shoebat recounts how, in some public speeches he gave warning of Islam, many in the audience attacked him, not radical Islam. He recalls: "At another speech, one Rabbi critiqued the New Testament as 'riddled with violence', I had no problem with his right to state this, yet when I confronted him I asked 'Why do you feel free to critique the New Testament, but afraid of critiquing Islam's well documented violence?' to which he could not reply. It didn't matter that I stated in my speech that a Jew had the right to critique Christianity, a Christian had the right to critique Mormonism and Islam, and a Muslim had a right to critique the Bible and Christianity, I was still accused of racism and bigotry against Islam. One can say almost anything against any other religion but Islam. Why?"

Concludes Spencer: "Today the comprehensive guilt trip that is multiculturalism makes it impossible for Western policymakers and media to look squarely at the nature of Islam. If the Islamic world has a problem with the West, it must be our fault - because of Iraq, or Abu Ghraib, or Israel, or Mossadegh, or something. This is an intriguing inversion of the old colonial paternalism: whereas the 'white man's burden' assumed that it was the role of the West to bring civilisation to the colonised areas, and that the civilising 'burden' was in no sense shared by the colonised people, so today the Left sees the evils perpetrated by the enemies of the West as entirely provoked by the West: once again, the 'non-white', non-Christian West has no responsibility for its own actions. But the arrogance of this perspective likewise never registers in the public sphere - it is as invisible as the Islamic doctrines of jihad and the supremacism of the Sharia."

More here

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SARCASTIC BUT TRUE

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was designed to make U.S. company finance more transparent and company bosses more accountable. In practice it has placed huge bureaucratic burdens on companies domiciled in the USA. The solution? Move domicile! The post below says that the move is on

Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley... London loves you! The more I read about the flood of money coming into the City of London from the United States, the more I am convinced that in the spirit of Christmas and fraternal Anglosphere conviviality, the people of London should say a heartily thank you to Maryland Democrat Paul Sarbanes and Ohio Republican Michael Oxley.

In fact, in the new year I plan to launch a subscription appeal to put up a pair of gold plated statues somewhere in the square mile, depicting these two fine politicians throwing handfuls of dollar bills to a multitude of grateful City of London bankers, fund managers, stock brokers and other sundry worthy capitalists, as great numbers of companies decamp from New York and list in London instead.

And so Paul and Michael, on behalf of all those fine folks here in Merry old England whose Christmas bonus packages have gone through the roof, thank you. We could not have done it without you. God bless globalisation.

If England is less bureaucratic, it shows how exceedingly bureaucratic the alternative is. Prof. Bainbridge has more details about the idiocies of Sarbanes-Oxley

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ELSEWHERE

How Britain gets people out of those evil cars: "The chance of being assaulted at a mainline railway station has nearly doubled in the past five years, according to figures from the British Transport Police. There were 1,270 violent attacks against passengers at stations last year compared with 702 in 2001 - an increase of 80 per cent. By far the most dangerous station is Leeds Central, where there were 159 attacks. In 2001 there were 75. Next are listed the main London stations - including Victoria and Waterloo - Birmingham New Street and Cardiff Central. The amount of violence had increased or stayed level at all the 61 stations covered by the British Transport Police figures, with the sole exception of Liverpool Lime Street".

Regulators Scuttle Proposal for Budget Airline: "The US government has blocked plans by Richard Branson's Virgin Group to launch a budget airline in America. Officials refused to grant Virgin America an operating licence because the carrier was 'not under the actual control of US citizens'. Under US law, airlines must be 75% owned and controlled by US citizens. California-based Virgin America, part of British billionaire Mr Branson's Virgin Group, had planned to start domestic US flights in 2007. Virgin Group has stakes in airlines in Europe, Australia and Nigeria." Why not let American air travelers decide if they prefer an airline carrier owned by non-American?

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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