Samhain

A little wickedness, once a year, never hurt anyone. Here's to my Celtic ancestors and their bonfires and blue bodypaint. A little reminder that White Folks Was Wild Once Too. Funny how it's Americans who still remember what it is to be wild, not our stuffy-ass cousins across the Atlantic. Let's pop a video of The Wicker Man into the VCR and party like pagans all night long.

As an added bonus, Halloween is kuffarous. And if we somehow figured out how to get pigs into the picture, it would be mondo kuffarous extremis.

Rosa Parks Lies in State

WASHINGTON, D.C.:

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said Parks' refusal to give up her seat "was the functional equivalent of a nonviolent shot heard round the world."

"She saw the inherent evil in segregation and she had the courage to fight it in its common place, a seat on a bus," said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas.

She fought and won against racial apartheid. Let her strength and spirit inspire those of us who are fighting against religious apartheid for another group of people persecuted by unfair and segregationist laws -- the people of the dhimma.

Eurabia Burns. . .Like Beirut

But of course those of us who've been warning about civil war in Europe for years now are just a bunch of Islamophobic nutcases.

What did you do, O Belle France, to make the Muslims hate you so much? Surely a two-state solution is the answer to all your woes.

Update: A European viewpoint from the excellent group blog, The Brussels Journal. Adds blog member Paul Belien in the comments:

Imagine if an American city would witness four consecutive nights (so far) of rioting by "underprivileged" youth, what would the European press write and what would Chirac and Schröder say.

Indeed.

Comments Enabled

Comments have been enabled here again, but this blog now requires registration and word verification in order to comment. My comments have been dogged by those stupid shopping spam attacks for some time, and I finally figured out how to mitigate them without disabling comments.

Apostasy in Islam

I encountered some good folks over at Shay's place who were unconvinced that apostasy is grounds for a death sentence in traditional Islam. The commentators made all the usual shallow and inaccurate statements that are commonly made by people who don't know much about Islam, but who don't like it when Islam is criticized: "Islam means peace"; "What about all the nasty stuff in the Bible?" etc.This Wikipedia article is pretty decent at presenting the thinking on apostasy in Islam, and includes the citations in the Koran and the ahadith that have been used as basis for the law.

As for all the nasty stuff in the Bible, there's a future long post on the subject that I've had fermenting in my brain for some time. I've just been lacking the energy to formulate it.

Noam Chomsky, Capitalist Pig

Is Noam Chomsky the ultimate "Do as I say, not as I do" leftist? It would appear so, according to this article from Tech Central Station. Millionaire Chomsky's cheek is hard to swallow from my end, but I guess those on the left have a different swallowing mechanism. Look how they love demi-billionaire Fidel Castro, hero of the poor and oppressed.

Child Slavery in the Arabian Gulf

Lost Budgie has an excellent update on the ongoing tragic saga of the thousands of tiny camel jockeys -- some as young as four -- who are imported from places like Sudan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and forced to race camels for wealthy Arabs.

Rosa Parks, RIP

Hat tip: Shay at Booker Rising.

Once More Into The Breech. . .Oh, d-d-d-dear!

Piglet's joined the Crusade, having adopted the equally politically incorrect St. George's Cross as his mascot.

Pogrom Alert: Egypt

A scary situation is developing currently in Alexandria, Egypt, where a Coptic Christian church has been under seige for more than a week by Muslim mobs numbering in the thousands. A blogger called "Free Copts" is blogging it closely. The mobs are upset about a DVD of a play that took place in the church two years ago -- a play that -- you guessed it -- was seen as "insulting" Islam. A Coptic nun has already been stabbed by a mob member; fears of an upcoming pogrom against the Copts do not seem ill-founded.

How Islamists Are Undermining France's Economy

Scary read on how Islamists are infiltrating French companies and using their business networks to proselytize Islam, pass along proprietary company information to jihadists, and impose Islamic mores and customs on fellow workers:

In a report commissioned by several retail and courier
companies, Eric Denece - director of the French Center for Research and Intelligence - said that the Islamists' strategy is to "take control of Muslims within the workforce" and then "challenge the rules in order to impose Islamic values. "There are numerous instances, even if few businesses are willing to speak openly about them," Denece said in the report, which was based on interviews with police, intelligence officials and company staff. "For example, around 10 prayer-rooms have been discovered at EuroDisney," he said.

The claim was originally made in a report by the police intelligence service RG in mid-2004. Spokesman Pieter Boterman said: "We are a multicultural and non-discriminatory company with more than 100 nationalities and all the main religions represented. But we do not think the company is the place for people to express private religious convictions." Denece also quoted the head of a freight company employing 3,000 people at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris who complained to the RG of "the presence of a small group of Muslims bent on imposing their work methods under the threat of repeated strikes".

"The growth in power of radical Islamism is a new menace, which can threaten the integrity of a business," Denece said. Supermarkets and other large stores are a prime target, according to the 30-page report. "Hypermarkets have noted that employees who are heavily involved in proselytizing systematically seek out jobs as telephone operators, delivery-men, cashiers and security officers - positions which allow easy exchanges of information, money and goods," the report said. Muslim women working at supermarket cash registers are also being placed under pressure to wear the headscarf, it said. According to Denece, the primary threat of Islamism to business is "sectarian", because it can undermine the loyalty of employees and destroy morale. It should therefore be "treated in the same way as the threat from scientology and other sects", he advised. But he also said that there are increasing instances of patent illegality - including theft, embezzlement and the supply of inside information
to criminal gangs.

Separation of Church and State for Thee, Not For Me

Public school teachers are subjected to blatant Islamic dawah in Maryland. Separation of church and state issues don't seem to be much at issue here as the educators learn how to chant "God is Great" in Arabic and other First Amendmently questionable behaviors.

Where's the vaunted ACLU when you need them? Too busy going ballistic at some public school teacher hootenanny for evangelical Christians to notice? It's funny how the Left's favorite religion doesn't seem to be covered by separation of church and state issues.

Well, perhaps you can't fault the dawaganda purveyors too much. They're going to need all the PR assistance in Maryland that they can get if their co-religionists succeed in their current efforts to blow up Baltimore's motor tunnels.

Jihad Comes to the Islands

Shay at Booker Rising reports on a recent jihad bombing in Trinidad, the fourth in a row:

"As Muslim extremists exploded another bomb in St. James, Trinidad on Friday, October 14. The bombs was
described as being of ‘low density’, but created a chaotic scene and 7 people were injured due to the explosion outside a popular nightspot. There have now been five arrests in connection with Friday’s bombing, one of whom is affiliated
with the local militant Muslim group, otherwise known as Jaamat-al Muslimeen. But liberal apologists will try to tell you that Muslim extremists only care about foreign policy, not about imposing their will on folks' cultures."

Murder Rate Hits 40-Year Low

Associated Press:

"WASHINGTON - The nation's murder rate declined last year for the first time in four years, dropping to the lowest level in 40 years. Experts said local rather than national trends were mostly responsible.

The rates for all seven major crimes were down and the
overall violent crime rate reached a 30-year low, according to the FBI's annual compilation of crimes reported to the police.

There were 391 fewer murders nationwide in 2004 than the
year before. The total of 16,137 worked out to 5.5 murders for every 100,000 people.

That's a decline of 3.3 percent from 2003 and the lowest murder rate since 1965, when it was 5.1."

As some of us oldies recall, 1965 was the cut-off year when the Great Gramscian Cultural Revolution really started to affect major US established institutions. Hmmm, wonder if there's a correlation?

Denmark Has a New Prince

I have plumped for him to be called Hamlet but Fjordman didn't think it was funny. I disagree: a Danish prince named Hamlet would be a fantastic tourist draw at least. But it's true, the joke would last only as long as he was still Prince and not King of the tiny Norse kingdom.

No Clear Vote in Liberia

Voting will go to a second round as popular soccer star George Weah and Harvard-educated Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson each garner substantial percentages of votes.

Moonbat Lies Again

The Guardian's star columnist George Moonbat constantly tells lies, as one would expect from a Guardian star columnist. Back in the days when I bothered to read the Guardian, I would often catch a Moonbat blooper and email him to correct it. He never responded, and never corrected the mistake. I can only surmise that Moonbat doesn't care if he tells the truth or not -- as long as his lies can be credibly used to serve his political agenda -- an attitude that appears to be shared by a lot of leftist European "journalists".

Scott Burgess at the Daily Ablution reads Moonbat so that I don't have to. Last week he caught the Great Lunar One telling a particularly large whopper: claiming that sex abstinence programs in some US schools were causing the teen pregnancy and abortion rate to skyrocket. As anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with the subject knows, teen pregnancy rates in the US have been declining precipitously since the early 90s, as Scott at Daily Ablution amply documents. (Scott's evisceration of Moonbat's latest deceit is contained in a post just after the one about the musical comedy.)

More Nazification of the European Left

Davids Medienkritik has posted a review on the German/Dutch-financed film Paradise Now which presents Palestinian suicide bombers in a sympathetic light. Medienkritik finds little to distinguish the film from anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda from two generations ago.

Liberia Votes Today

Shay at Booker Rising highlights today's Liberian elections , as a new chapter is written for one of US history's strangest sagas. The "returned" African-American freed slaves who founded Liberia, Africa's oldest republic, named their capital after James Monroe and patterned their flag and constitution after the US's. I wish them all the best.

That said, the sad history of Liberia and its civil wars shows that the well-intentioned attempt to reverse time and history by placing the American-born freed blacks "back" in an African colony wasn't really successful -- for the simple reason that the colonizers were no longer Africans, but Americans. It breaks my heart to read the history of Liberia and see settlements with names like "New Georgia" and "Maryland Colony".

Germany Has a New Government

Of a sort. David's Medikenkritik is blogging closely.

Read the Fine Print.

By way of Fjordman, I came across this site that is devoted to "fisking" the Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which competes with the secular Universal Declaration of Human Rights supported by the UN. Read it carefully, for it shows how deeply the Islamic concept of "human rights" conflicts and contrasts with secular Western concepts of human rights.

The Islamic version, which was compiled by top Islamic scholars meeting in Cairo, sounds just ducky, but states in the fine print that any "rights" granted by the document are superseded by Islamic sharia -- which among other things, lays down the death penalty for any Muslim who seeks to convert to a religion other than Islam. This, by the way, was the main reason why the Islamic scholars could not accept the secular Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- because the secular version guarantees freedom of religious conscience.

This fisk is pretty good, but it could be improved a bit in several places. For example, Article X, section b could do with the additions I've added in blue:

b) In a Muslim country religious minorities [but not nonbelievers i.e. "polytheists" and athiests and agnostics] shall have the choice to be
governed in respect of their civil and personal matters by Islamic Law, or by
their own laws. [However, in criminal and civil matters involving a dispute between a Muslim and a non-Muslim, Islamic sharia shall prevail -- which seriously discriminates against the non-Muslim. Example would be a case where a non-Muslim was accused of murdering a Muslim, but his testimony on his own behalf, in a case in which the sharia punishment is automatically excecution, would be worth only half of that of a Muslim accuser.]

It's important to note that the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, which makes a mockery of the secular version, was drafted by a committee of mainstream Muslim scholars, not Bin Ladenist "extremists."

This is a good example of how far apart the West and Islamia are on extremely important political issues -- and an illustration of how foolish are those who think that an accommodation with Islamia will not result in a rollback of Western advances in individual rights first conceived under the Enlightenment.

For a more thorough commentary/critique on the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, I recommend this book by Ann Elizabeth Mayer. However, even Mayer's thorough commentary doesn't go far enough -- she pooh-poohs the idea that advocates of sharia would want to bring back human chattel slavery which is fully legal in and sanctioned by the sharia.

I do not believe that this is the case, based on personal experience of reviewing many Islamic websites where scholars refuse to denounce the practice of slavery.

Okie Jihad Update

Gates of Vienna reports that a local mosque is denying that the suspected Oklahoma Jihad bomber, Joel Hinrichs, ever attended services there. I seriously doubt the veracity of these claims but felt obligated to pass along the information anyways.

Update on NYC Subway Bomb Threat

NEW YORK -

"Details emerged about an alleged plot to attack the
city’s subways with bombs hidden in bags and possibly baby strollers as local and federal officials jostled over the credibility of the threat.

A Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by
The Associated Press said the attack was reportedly scheduled to take place on or around Sunday, with terrorists using timed or remote-controlled explosives hidden in briefcases, suitcases or in or under strollers."

We Luv Our Mum. . .

Seventy-four percent of American adults see Great Britain as our closest ally, says the Harris Poll:

Great Britain still holds a very special place among
U.S. adults as almost three-quarters (74%) think of them as a close ally. Canada (48%), Australia (44%) and Israel (41%) receive high marks but they are quite distant from those received by Great Britain.

Federal Tax Receipts Up, Deficit Down

WASHINGTON, DC --

The US federal budget deficit narrowed to a better-than-expected 317 billion dollars in the fiscal year ended September 30, as corporate tax payments exceeded forecasts, congressional officials said.

The CBO said the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year completed September 30 amounted to about 2.6 percent of the gross domestic product down from 3.6 percent in 2004.

Revenues were up 17.5 percent in the fiscal year compared
with a 16.3 percent gain in fiscal 2004, CBO said.

In other economic news, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the national jobs picture was much less than expected:

Payrolls fell by 35,000 in September. That marked the first decline since May 2003, when the labor market was struggling to get back on its feet after being set back by the 2001 recession. The drop in September was the largest since a decline of 54,000 jobs in April 2003.

Despite the drop, the damage to national payrolls was less than many had feared. Economists were forecasting a loss of at least 150,000 jobs.

"This indicates that the job market is holding together pretty well," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. Payrolls fell by 35,000 in September. That marked the first decline since May 2003, when the labor market was struggling to get back on its feet after being set back by the 2001 recession. The drop in September was the largest since a decline of 54,000 jobs in April 2003.

Despite the drop, the damage to national payrolls was less than many had feared. Economists were forecasting a loss of at least 150,000 jobs.

"This indicates that the job market is holding together pretty well," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

Once More Into the Breech Dear Friends

Ozzie blogger Nilknarf has an interesting email dialogue going with Chris Doyle, the official from something called the Council for Arab-British Understanding who wants to get rid of England's 800-year-old Cross of St. George in order to make Muslims feel a bit more at home in the Sceptered Isle. (Crosses apparently make them cross; just as pigs make them feel a bit pikey.) Well worth reading Nilknarf's response to Doyle's disingenous waffling.

Mr. Doyle seems to think that St. George isn't English enough to be England's patron saint, and then on top of that, there's that awkward Cross that makes Muslims feel so cross.

I disagree with Mr. Doyle's contention that St. George isn't "English" enough. The saga of St. George The Dragonslayer is the one of a courageous individual standing up to tyranny, a theme that resonates strongly throughout English history, as well as through Judeo-Christian culture in general.

And one which we Yanks have adopted as an important part of our own national narrative -- for who is Will Kane but David/St. George standing alone to fight the monster represented by Frank Miller's gang of thugs?

I think St. George is very English indeed. After all it's "Once more into the breech dear friends" for the sake of Harry, England and St. George. . .not for the sake of Abdullah, Al-Anglostan, and Prophet Mohammad (although I'm sure that if Mr. Doyle were to have his way, Shakespeare, like the ancient flag of England, could be "adjusted" to accommodate these very thoughts).

Do Western people have any right at all to have our own customs and traditions anymore? And why don't the English Jews, Hindus and Sikhs get so cross over St. George's Cross?

Court Protects Anonymous Blogger

DOVER, Del. :

"In a decision hailed by free-speech advocates, the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a lower court decision requiring an Internet service provider to disclose the identity of an anonymous blogger who targeted a local elected official."

Oklahoma Jihad Update

Michelle Malkin's got lots of new links on the Oklahoma Jihad. The blogosphere's not letting this one go.

US Oil Dependency: I Was Going to Blog on This, I Swear. . .

But Glenn Reynolds beat me to it. The easiest, quickest and cheapest way to mitigate US dependency on fossil fuels/foreign oil is to encourage telecommuting for all office workers who don't absolutely have to be in the office every single day. I would go farther than Reynolds though -- I would have the private and public sectors agree to set aside a specific day for "Telecommuting Day" which would be the heaviest highway traffic day of the week (probably Tuesday or Wednesday.) It would be voluntary but participating organizations might get some kind of perk -- tax breaks or whatever -- for each telecommuting worker. The DoE could support the effort with the usual PSAs and posters.

With a specific day set aside for telecommuters, it would be easier for the bean-counters to quantify the savings in gas consumption, road maintenance, air quality, emissions reduction, etc. It would also make life easier for those workers who still have to commute, by giving them at least one day a week on which they can count on light traffic. (Well, two days if you count Fridays, when many people like to call in sick or take a vacation day.)

Following up on his article, Reynolds has linked to several sites that plump for telecommuting as a partial answer to our energy woes: The Evangelical Ecologist and a story about Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) who promotes telecommuting for federal office workers.

Breath Still Being Held. . .

On Monday, I wrote the following about reports of a suicide bombing at the University of Oklahoma this past weekend:

"The curiously restrained tone of the news reports on this incident remind one of past efforts to downplay any Islamic connection to other suspicious events, such as the Washington sniper terror of three years ago.

UPDATE: Apparently the splodeydope was a white non-Muslim engineering student, and reports of a second bomb are now being denied. But with memories fresh of John Allen Muhammad, the Washington sniper who was continually presented by the MSM without his adopted Muslim name, I'm still kind of holding my breath."

Michelle Malkin and other bloggers are now reporting that the suspected suicide bomber, Joel Hinrichs, attended a local Islamic center. And a photo of Hinrichs in full white-boy Islamic-convert-style beard is being circulated throughout the blogosphere (see Malkin link.)

Breath still being held. . .

Steyn Weighs In

"As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet
and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore."

--The incomparable Marc Steyn takes on the Great UK Pig Jihad.

Caribou Coffee Run By Sharia

US company Caribou Coffee, which recently filed for a public stock offering, said in its IPO filing that the company would be run by sharia principles, according to an article by investment website The Motley Fool:

When my Foolish colleague W.D. Crotty recently gave
investors a good look at the newly public Caribou Coffee (Nasdaq: CBOU - News), there was one interesting detail he omitted. And this detail, if misunderstood by the investing public, could cause some rather significant problems in the future.

After the deal is done, Caribou Coffee will still
be controlled by its primary investor -- Arcapita Bank, formerly known as First Islamic Investment Bank. Those who run Arcapita (and its subsidiaries) do so
according to Islamic principles collectively known as shari'ah (or shariah or sharia). Shari'ah encompasses a wide range of rules and customs, including some that directly impact the running of a business.

Specifically, shari'ah influences how the company
borrows or lends money, how it may engage in derivative transactions, and what sorts of products it may sell. On the subject of borrowing and lending, shari'ah
can be a bit confusing, and there is disagreement within the Islamic community as to what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable transactions. While Caribou
has borrowed money in the past, investors should realize that negotiating future borrowings that comply with shari'ah could take a little time and might impair the company's access to quick sources of capital."

Sympathy for the Devil

David's Medienkritik blogs on the trans-Atlantic leftoid elite's ecstatic embrace of Paradise Now, a German-Dutch film that glorifies Palestinian suicide bombers. The film has been given a prize for "peace" by Amnesty International because it doesn't "judge" the suicide bombers (why is that a manifestation of "peacefulness"?).

No, the film apparently just gives them a blank check to do whatever they want, ending with the suicide bombing of one of the main characters which only shows a white light, not the flying arms, legs, guts and brains we all know is the result of these desperate actions by "freedom fighters." But, don't despair -- the suicide bomber character actually passes up the chance earlier in the film to blow up a sweet-looking little Israeli kid. See, these are nice people after all!

Much of the Western left is in a very sick place.

Free Piglet!

Lost Budgie and other bloggers are launching a "Free Piglet" blog movement to protest the forced imposition of Islamic cultural values on Western people, specifically the numerous Islamic-inspired attempts to rid the United Kingdom of pig statues, pig calendars, and most horrendously of all, pig-themed children's stories and fairy tales -- some of which we've been telling our children for centuries. Post your favorite picture of a pig or use this Free Piglet artwork on your blog!

Do it not only for Piglet, but for Wilbur, Babe, Porky and Petunia, the Three Little Pigs, Pigs in Space and Miss Piggy.

Message to the Islamofascists and all your assinine PeeCee non-Muslim allies: You're not taking our bloody pigs. Not by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chins!

UPDATE: Sterling Times has a great collection of charming pig images on display too. How could I have forgotten the wonderful Piglin Bland from the Beatrix Potter books as one of the pigs needing liberation from Islamic cultural imperialism?

Suicide Bombing Attempt at Oklahoma Game

What looks very much like a plan to kill lots of people at the University of Oklahoma's football stadium during game time seems to have been foiled by stadium security guards. An unknown person blew himself up just a few yards from the stadium, and additional explosives were later found at the site:

NORMAN, Okla. — One person was killed in an
explosion near a packed football stadium at the University of Oklahoma (search) on Saturday
night in what authorities said appeared to be a suicide.

The blast, in a traffic circle about 100 yards from Oklahoma
Memorial Stadium (search), could be heard
by some in the crowd of 84,000, but university President David Boren (search) said no one inside the stadium was ever in danger.

"We are apparently dealing with an
individual suicide, which is under full investigation," Boren said in a statement. There was no information about the person who was killed, and no reports of any other injuries.

A police bomb squad detonated explosives found at
the site of the blast. The area near the stadium was searched by bomb-sniffing dogs.

The curiously restrained tone of the news reports on this incident remind one of past efforts to downplay any Islamic connection to other suspicious events, such as the Washington sniper terror of three years ago.

UPDATE: Apparently the splodeydope was a white non-Muslim engineering student, and reports of a second bomb are now being denied. But with memories fresh of John Allen Muhammad, the Washington sniper who was continually presented by the MSM without his adopted Muslim name, I'm still kind of holding my breath.

Picture of a Pig

Just because it's still legal here in the US to look at pictures of pigs.

'Muricans.

We take a licking but keep on ticking.

God bless the people of New Orleans and all the Gulf States.

I Get It Now.

The Brits are trying a clever new tact in fighting jihadi terror: acting so stupid it'll make Osama's boys laugh themselves to death. Otherwise, how else can a reasonable body explain this report from The Sun:

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office — in case they offend Muslim staff.

Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan. Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: “It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs.”

Or perhaps they're trying to open up a new lucrative job field over there in the Ummah Kingdom: dhimmitude training seminars for stubborn infidels. They seem to be the world's experts in the subject matter.